This paper explores the impact of natural resources on development. It uses new data on natural resources to show that, contrary to the popular ‘resource curse’ hypothesis, resource abundance in itself is not negative for a country’s economy.

This paper constructs a framework for and reviews studies on property rights reforms in the agricultural and natural resources sector. In the case of agrarian reform, several hypotheses are posited: that agrarian reform will increase the rate of capital accumulation of beneficiaries and improve tenurial security, but may have negative impacts on land access, investments of landowners, and efficiency of land use. For the natural resources sector, the implications of open access and promotion of property rights are surveyed for the Philippine case.

This paper identifies key issues and develops guidelines for conducting research on the relationships between property rights and technology adoption in smallholder agriculture.The topics addressed in the paper are: definition of scope and termskey issues pertaining to the relationships between technology adoption and property rights variables data collection and measurement issuesanalyses and interpretation of findings The primary target groups for this paper are researchers and policy analysts wishing to undertake or interpret empirical research

This paper addresses the issue of land security and sustainability. The paper tackles the assumption that, in the case of China, giving farmers more secure land rights would undermine the function of land as a social safety net and, as a consequence, not be sustainable or command broad support.The report draws on data from three provinces, one of which had adopted a policy to increase security of tenure in advance of the others.

Better protection of property rights can affect several development outcomes, including better management of natural resources. This bibliography and rapid review is concerned with two principal outcomes:  reduction in investors risk and increase in incentives to invest, and improvements in household welfare.The literature search was completed both in academic journals and aggregator databases, specifically Google Scholar and Scopus, and the DFID database R4D.The outline of the Rapid Review on Property Rights paper:

This article discusses the case for an international treaty on animal genetic resources, confirming that one-third of the world’s livestock breeds are now endangered.

The ‘war on drugs’ has failed. Despite an increase in law enforcement, production levels of coca – the crop used to make cocaine – have hardly altered in the last decade.A 2017 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found that coca cultivation in Colombia had increased by 52 per cent; thus, there is an urgent need to find alternative policies to counter illicit behaviour.

Considers the cultural dimension of applying the land information system (LIS) concept to lands held under customary land tenure. The article recognizes that the LIS concept has been developed primarily to serve the needs of countries with a western-style land market where individual land rights are the norm. However, many countries where customary landholdings exist, or predominate, are also interested in establishing LISs to manage their land resources better. The article has three main sections.

Secure land rights are important for development and poverty reduction and the greatest challenges for providing such rights are in urban, peri-urban areas, and the most productive rural areas. This publication updates and revises UN-HABITAT’s 2004 publication ‘Urban Land for All’, and stresses the need for policies that facilitate access to land for all sections of their existing and future populations – particularly those on low or irregular incomes.

Explores how the institutions of property rights and collective action play a particularly important role in the application of technologies for agricultural and natural resource management.Technologies with long time frames tend to require tenure security to provide sufficient incentives for adoption, while those that operate on a large spatial scale will require collective action to coordinate.

This working paper focuses on the Movement of the Landless (MST) and the various legal strategies used to redefine property law in Brazil. Through a number of legal strategies MST has helped produce watershed high court rulings, contributed to the process of constitutionalising law, and made access to land more equitable in parts of Brazil by redefining property rights in practice.The paper explores legal change triggered by the strategic action through what Bourdieu calls the juridical field (relating to the function and administration of the judicial system).

This draft paper outlines a strategy for World Bank involvement in land policies. It focuses on property rights to land, land transactions, and socially optimal use of land.