The Guiding Principles are designed to help a number of stakeholders develop larger-scale agricultural investments that are more likely to prove sustainable, beneficial, and successful for communities, investors and governments.

This extract from the book Terra contains the contents page, introduction, and executive summary of the whole book, and chapters 10 and 11 on land policy in Angola. The book presents research on post-war urban land management options and the use of action research as an advocacy tool in drafting the 2004 Land Law. Chapter 10, on land policy and land legislation, covers the legal background, a chronology of Angolan laws and the legal revision process, the draft land law, specific recommendations on intermediate and evolutive rights.

A critical analysis of the draft Land Policy. Contains introduction, land delivery system and accessibility to land, title deeds on customary land, vestment of land, land market, gender issues, allocation to foreigners (with particular reference to white farmers from Zimbabwe), dispute resolution, land management information systems, concluding remarks.

Paper presented at Surveyor’s Institute of Zambia seminar. Includes the effects of a fragmented customary rural land management system; the need for both land reform and rural land management authorities; the benefits of institutional and land tenure reforms; and a case study example of Botswana.

Why does the delimitation of local authorities’ area of influence cause so many problems in most West African countries? Does decentralization not usually result in the artificial and top-down creation of local administrative units whose entire legitimacy in the area of land management is yet to establish, while village or inter-village authorities have strong anchorage?

Covers why do we need to think about policies to formalise land rights in developing countries?; primarily a political issue; policies to formalise land rights are not a panacea; inclusive formalisation policies present considerable challenges. Shows that policies to formalise rights raise highly political issues and often contribute to exclusion.

There are gender-differentiated impacts when land is harnessed for commercial investment. Land policy needs to address the gendered nature of power relations within families and land tenure systems, and the implications of rural social relations on processes of community consultation, land management and dispute settlement. Without this, land investment policies will not reach their goals of tenure security for all, agricultural productivity and increased revenue.

Despite progressive provisions on gender equality in Tanzania’s land laws, women have little representation in land allocation decisions. Mainstreaming gender in local regulations can help address this problem. The Tanzania Women Lawyers Association, in partnership with the World Resources Institute and Lawyers’ Environmental Action Team, developed model by-laws to improve women’s participation in local-level decision-making on village land management. This took place in Kidugalo and Vilabwa villages in Kisarawe district.

Large-scale agricultural investments impact upon men and women in different ways, yet women’s voices and interests are not always heard in decisions about land.

Land and decentralisation policies in Senegal have been closely linked since independence in 1960. Public lands are currently managed by the local governments of municipalities and rural communities, with the latter responsible for the land and natural resources in unprotected parts of their territory, and the former empowered to issue building permits.

Includes a series of articles on finally starting the process of developing a National Land Policy in Kenya, including an editorial, the overall concern, the squatter crisis, public land management.

During the last two decades, local conventions have increased in the field, and are now considered as promising alternative solutions for a participatory management of natural resources and land. But what does the concept ‘local conventions’ mean? What is the contribution of these conventions to the improvement of natural resource and land management? Are they recognized by the law? What are their limitations?