In Cambodia, the majority of the population is still composed of smallholder family farmers. 54% of the total labour force is employed in agriculture. They have access to 3.6 million ha of land, representing 19% of the country’s total land. The rest is divided between large scale economic land concessions (12%), public forests and protected areas, unclassified areas and some infrastructure.

Based on the experiences of Amerindian communities in Guyana, this briefing presents some of the main causes of forest conflicts in the country as well as recommendations for how to address these. In particular, the document presents the following points: 

• Lack of full recognition of indigenous peoples’ land rights in line with international law, absence of effective FPIC procedures and limited transparency in forest governance are key underlying causes of forest-related conflicts in Guyana; 

Land tenure is one of the great challenges Habitat for Humanity faces in helping families access decent housing. Countless families around the world lack rights to the land on which they live. Just imagine the stress of knowing that any day you might be forced to move because someone else claims ownership of the place you call home.

Rift Valley Institute PSRP Briefing Paper 14

Asamblea Regional de Miembros de la Coalición Internacional para el Acceso a la Tierra-América Latina y el Caribe.

This publication is the result of the workshop on “Responding to Climate Change and Tenure Insecurity in Small Island Developing States – The Role of Land Professionals” held in Christchurch, New Zealand 30 April – 1 May 2016 in connection with the FIG Working Week 2016. It includes a report of the seminar and a FIG Christchurch Declaration as the main outcome of the workshop.

Disputes over land are a prominent feature of many situations of protracted violent conflict in Burundi, Uganda and South Sudan. Research conducted as part of the programme ‘Grounding Land Governance’ underscores that war reshuffles access and ownership, but also critically changes the ways in which land is governed. Land issues often come to resonate with other conflicts in society, thereby affecting overall stability. This makes interventions in land governance politically sensitive.

After conflict, governments and donors often feel a need for up-scaling and modernizing land use. There is an ambition to achieve economic recovery and contribute to food security through stimulating large-scale investment in land. Our research in Uganda, Burundi and South Sudan suggests that policymakers should be extremely careful when promoting large-scale land acquisitions, both foreign and national. Especially in the difficult transition from war to peace, large-scale appropriation of land risks becoming a threat to tenure security and the recovery of rural livelihoods.

In post-conflict settings, securing tenure of local smallholders is considered of major importance to reduce and prevent local land disputes, to contribute to the recovery of rural livelihoods, and to improve agricultural production. Registration and other ways of formalizing land ownership are generally believed to significantly enhance local tenure security and rural development.

In this study, it has been used a mixed methods approach---quantitative and qualitative methods---to address the overarching question whether the customary land tenure system encourages or discourages local forestry management in Zambia. The data are drawn from nationally representative household survey data, and information from focus group discussions and key informant interviews.

Application form for conversion of customary tenure to leasehold tenure 

Applying peoples’ processes in customary land certification lessons learned from Zambia