Exploration and mapping of alternative land uses suggest ways to foster territorial development pathways that can coexist with a forest cover. As the Pampas and Chaco are becoming one of the most relevant global grain suppliers of South America, the fast expansion of crops over pastures (Pampas) and dry forests (Chaco), ongoing climate changes, and extremely flat topography, make these regions vulnerable to rapid and non-linear hydrological shifts, including long-lasting floods and salinization processes.

The validity of a title deed, or whether a property owner purchased in good faith, has recently been questioned and rejected by the land commission, a body under the auspices of the office of the presidency. In 2015 for over two weeks, both residents ‘abasangwa’ and repatriates ‘abahungutse’, stood together to oppose the Burundi land commission: the Commission Nationale Terres et autres Biens (CNTB, National Commission of land and other Assets), who are revisiting land restitution cases it had previously settled.

This policy brief serves to aid policy for land management especially in Cross River State, Nigeria. Following incessant conflicts between communities and investors (individuals, companies, multinational etc.) within the rainforest communities in Nigeria, and Cross River state in particular, Environmental Right Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FOEN) conducted a study anchored on bottom-up accountability and governance: securing community tenure rights to land in impacted communities in Betem, Akpet, Idoma and Akamkpa in Cross River State Nigeria.

In Uganda’s Kabale district, too many people had been trying to make a living from too little land. Because of overpopulation and exhaustion of the soil by intense cultivation, the area had gone into decline. Then, researchers and farmers — supported by the International Development Research Centre — joined forces to revitalize the region.

Library has French version: TIC au secours des éleveurs du Sahel

The people of the Sahel — that huge region stretching along the southern edge of the Sahara Desert — are still striving to recover from the fallout of the terrible droughts that have afflicted the area since 1973. Drought has shattered the momentum of socioeconomic development in Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal. According to researchers with Burkino Faso’s Institut de l’environnement et de recherches agricoles, “Rural men and women are now struggling to survive in a land that is exhausted, denuded, desiccated, and swept away by the wind and water.”

The study analyzes the impact of degradation of private land as well as common land resources on migration decisions in three dryland districts in Gujarat. The study concludes that overall, in dry areas such as Gujarat, access to irrigation, rather than land ownership is likely to deter migration. The poorest rural households in dry land regions are the least likely to migrate. Thus, any employment creation in rural dryland regions is most likely to help the poorest. Further, it was found that degradation of common-pool land resources influences short-term but not long-term migration.

Though only at its mid-term, the project has been successful in policy influence, securing funding which for the first time will be used for forest and pastoral plantations on farmers’ land, without expropriating them, and thus assuring joint responsibility for proper management. New models put forward by the project combine preservation measures with intensive irrigated fodder production, and development of complementary income-generating activities involving olive and fruit-tree plantations.