5 chapters: introduction; features, triggers, and drivers of the global rush for land; impacts; factors shaping the land rush; conclusions and policy considerations. Africa is the prime target, the best land is often being targeted for acquisition, national elites are playing a major role, the rural poor are frequently being dispossessed, compensation for resource loss is rarely adequate, women are particularly vulnerable.

In Liberia it is estimated that around half the country’s land mass has been promised to foreign companies and investors. From 2009-11 the Sustainable Development Institute and NAMATI embarked on an action research project to support rural communities to protect, document, and manage their customary lands and natural resources. Drawing from lessons learned in the field, they sought to bring the voices and realities from rural Liberia to influential policymakers.

A brief on the need to secure land rights for the world’s pastoralists, who manage rangelands that cover a quarter of the world’s land surface but have few advocates. Covers the different paths pastoralists take; resource scarcity in the face of uncertainty; pastoralism and land use; loss and fragmentation of pastoralist lands and blocking of livestock routes; managing climatic variability and climate change; initiatives for securing pastoralists rights to land (Niger, Tanzania, India, Ethiopia).

The 3 case studies are located against the backdrop of changing land governance, tenure policy and legislation in Botswana, Madagascar and Mozambique. They examine how power and authority over decision-making and resources or functions is distributed between central, regional and local levels of governance. They explore the roles and perspectives of other actors such as non-governmental bodies, traditional governance institutions, user associations or village committees, the private sector and other organisations of civil society.

The law is supposed to protect a woman’s rights to land. The law is failing, and husbands can ignore their wife’s legal rights. Why? And what should be done about it?

Summarises highlights from the first two and a half years of the programme, including insights on the legal levers that can be used to maximise local voice and benefit from local land rights to investor-state contracts through to community-investor partnerships, as well as a few milestones in IIED’s work on legal literacy training, exchange of experience and policy advocacy.

Includes what is the problem and what can be done?; the law and customary land rights; how does Forest Law treat customary land rights?; lessons from other African states; the way forward. Argues that the current de jure reality is that most rural Cameroonians are little more than squatters on their own land with regard to forests and other land assets.

In many parts of Africa, legal services organisations have developed innovative ways for using legal processes to help disadvantaged groups have more secure land rights. Their approaches, tools and methods vary widely – from legal literacy training to paralegals programmes, from participatory methodologies to help local groups register their lands or negotiate with government or the private sector through to legal representation and strategic use of public interest litigation.

5 briefs analyse the roots of African land tenure systems, recent policy trends and the phenomenon of large scale land acquisitions. The briefs are: Customary Land Tenure in the Modern World; Putting 20th-Century Land Policies in Perspective; Land Reform in Africa: A Reappraisal; The Status of Customary Land Rights in Africa Today; The Global Land Rush: What this Means for Customary Land Rights.

Main chapters cover access to land and poverty reduction, land redistribution, and securing land rights. The last includes the role of land markets, women’s land rights, securing local resource rights in foreign investment projects, protecting the rights of indigenous peoples and pastoralists, conflicts.

Divided into 7 sections: introduction – tenure insecurity, poverty and power relations; the subordination of customary land rights; attempts to make amends; an end of century turn-around – towards the liberation of customary land rights; launching reform through new policy and law; the need to assure success; how to make land reform work? Argues that dramatic improvement in the legal status of customary land interests is globally on the horizon.

Discusses highlights from a recent academic article exploring whether 3,000 bilateral and regional investment treaties protect ‘land grab’ deals and how these impact the land rights of rural people. Argues that, if not properly thought through, international treaties to protect foreign investment could compound shortcomings of local and national governance, undermining the rights of people impacted by the investments.