Since Independence, India’s states have employed several land reform ‘tools,’ including reforming tenancy, imposing land ceilings, distributing government wasteland, and allocating house sites and homestead plots. This article briefly summarises some of these past efforts and attempts to draw broad lessons for informing possible policy paths ahead.To date, the authors argue, the effectiveness of the legislation has been mixed and progress over the last few years has slowed. But the link between rural poverty and landlessness remains.

This tool aims to support the scrutiny and the improvement of positive outcomes of laws for rural communities. It explores the reasons behind variable practical outcomes (good, average and bad) then suggests changes in how to develop laws, put them into practice or enforce them.

This paper examines the current wave of land tenure reform in eastern and southern Africa. It discusses how far tenure reform reflects a shift in powers over property from centre to periphery. A central question is whether tenure reform is designed to deliver to rural smallholders greater security of tenure and greater control over the regulation and transfer of these rights.Policy conclusions include:whilst diverse in initial objective, and uneven in delivery, tenure reforms address a remarkably common set of concerns.

This draft paper outlines a strategy for World Bank involvement in land policies. It focuses on property rights to land, land transactions, and socially optimal use of land.

Extractive industry investment in Latin America has increased considerably since the early 1990s, especially in the last decade. Expansion of extractive activities into new territory has led to new rounds of conflict and contestation in the region, including over resource use and control, territorial occupation, relationships between existing rural livelihoods, and extractive investment and conservation versus extraction.

Women’s land ownership and control have important connections with their empowerment in Pakistan’s agricultural context. However, the link between these has largely remained unexplored; and there has been only a few research to determine how many women own or control land in Pakistan. The Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) carried out a multiple pronged research in 2007-09 to fill this knowledge gap and to examine the reason behind women’s land ownership and empowerment.

This paper presents an overview of pastoral systems and addresses rights issues around access and control of resources in the context of climate change.

This article, a summary of the book sharing the same title, examines issues around the allocation of land and education within families.

The analysis of land investment and tenure security usually assumes land scarcity. However, some developing countries have communities with land abundance. This article therefore examines the effects of land abundance for investment and tenure security. The author finds that in contrast to the literature, area farmed is a determinant of investment and tenure security. However, no link exists between investment and tenure security.

This study focuses on mining related conflicts in Tanzania, a relatively new mining country. It argues that unclear land and mining rights, and conceptual differences in how land and mining rights are perceived, contribute to conflict in the country and to a feeling among both local people and human rights advocacy groups that the government has betrayed ordinary people.The study finds that there have been seven recorded conflicts related to mining companies in the country, six of them taking place over the last seven years.

Improving women’s ability to securely access land is recognised as an effective means to increase gender equality and advance other key social and economic development goals. Despite progressive laws in many African countries, gender disparities commonly persist in women’s access and ownership of land.

This paper addresses the amelioration of the impact of AIDS on land tenure and livelihoods. The author argues that, in Lesotho, land policy development should be informed by the status of community support and welfare for those infected and affected by HIV/AIDS. He offers three main policy recommendations as follows: Land administrators should be fully informed about the epidemic and various legislations that govern the rights of the affected households. This will help to ensure uniform implementation of measures to support affected households.