28 May 2014

GRAIN | La Vía Campesina

For immediate release

Friends of the Earth’s report, ‘What’s your pension funding? How UK institutional investors finance the global land grab’, highlights the investments of UK institutional investors, such as British Airways Pension Fund, Legal & General and Standard Life, in companies accused of grabbing land, destroying the environment, and undermining sustainable livelihoods.

Forest Peoples Programme and the Amerindian Peoples Association are pleased to announce the publication of a new special report:

Edited by Kate Dooley and Tom Griffiths

Authors: Oda Almås (FPP), Lawrence Anselmo (APA), Laura George (APA), Tom Griffiths (FPP), Solveig Firing Lunde (RFN) and Jean La Rose (APA)

May 2014

ISBN 978-0-9544252-8-9

Land remains the most significant productive asset for the majority of Malawians, yet it is far from being equitably distributed. It is estimated that up to 84 per cent of Malawians eke their livelihoods directly out of agriculture which contributes over 90 per cent to the country’s export earnings, about 39 per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and accounts for 85 per cent of total employment.

Paper systematically evaluates the political economy of Zimbabwe's emerging land policy in the 1990s in the context of other land reform programmes in Southern Africa.

Assesses the process of rural land registration in Mozambique and the outcomes for poor and marginalised groups. The research finds that community land registration, under the 1997 land law, can strengthen community rights to use and benefit from their land in relation to outsider interests in land. However, intra-community and intra-household land rights are not addressed, since it is only community land boundaries which are registered.

This paper documents a participatory approach for supporting black South Africans in developing knowledge and skills to use land, acquired under the land reform scheme, more effectively. This approach enables land reform groups to work jointly through a sequence of steps in order to develop and implement a land management plan.The participatory planning method can be summarised into four main stages. First, the land reform group seeks to understand how the agricultural sector operates in its area, and identifies those agencies that provide technical and managerial support.

This paper discusses the nature of the land problem in the region and tries to situate the general land reform process in Zimbabwe within a regional context.It examines the four key land problems facing the region the discriminatory and insecure forms of land tenure that are found among variouslandownership regimes the increasingly imbalanced landownership structures and factors underlying itthe contradictory tendencies towards irrational land-use patterns through both the over utilisation and underutilisation of land the devotion of most prime lands and resources to production for externa

In Southern Africa, landlessness due to the asset alienation that occurred during colonial occupation has been acknowledged as one of several ultimate causes of chronic poverty. Land redistribution is often seen as a powerful tool in the fight against poverty in areas where a majority of people are rural-based and make a living mostly, if not entirely, off the land.

The area of arable land in Bulgaria continually decreases. Agricultural land is divided into 10 categories on the basis of soil quality and characteristics and into 8 classes on the basis of erosion degree. An increase of contaminated land has been observed. The most serious problem is water erosion as it affects 80% of the total arable land. On the contrary, the use of fertilizers and pesticides has decreased in recent years. Priority measures of the governmental policy have found place in the National Agriculture and Rural Development Plan over the 2000-2006 period.

This case study assesses the strengths and weaknesses of a simple, inexpensive, village-based land registration system put in place between 1996 and 1998 in Tigray, Ethiopia.The authors found that the system worked well and fairly - in large part due to it’s simplicity and low cost. Success also depended, however, on effective local governments which were able to prevent inequities from unforeseen shortcomings.

Malawi's Community Based Rural Land Development Project was conceived as an effort to alleviate rural poverty by making it possible for land-poor households to buy land where it was available within specific districts. This paper discusses the factors that deter relocation, and those that hamper permanent settlement in new sites after the initial relocation has occurred. The study clarifies that access to new land entails leaving the home village for an unfamiliar environment.