This report titled Land in India: Issues and Debates is part of an initiative under the aegis of India Land & Development Conference (ILDC) which has a long-term objective of bringing out an annual Status of Land in India volume. This report is a modest beginning in that direction by drawing on the works of ILDC partners to present a quick over view of some of the key developments and debates in India’s land sector. The report brings together 11key issues which currently engage the minds of the policy makers and researchers in India.

With the aim of improving farmland use efficiency without damaging the social function of farmland, Chinese policymakers have proposed the ‘trifurcation of land rights’ reform. When it comes to realization of the law, however, neither the Ownership Model nor the Bundle of Sticks Model can adequately explain this reform. The tree concept of property, which provides a new perspective in delineating property rights based on the function served by specific properties, is thus adopted.

The Great Timber Heist: The Logging Industry in Papua New Guinea, exposes massive tax evasion and financial misreporting by foreign logging companies, allegedly resulting in nonpayment of hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes.

Land governance is proven to be significant in the development and survival of any nation. However, challenges associated with land governance have been a continuing debate as they keep changing due to the progress of any given society. Most researches on land governance have concentrated on the general aspects of land administration and management with reference to best practices of good governance.

The state owns over 80% of the land in Sri Lanka. The remainder is owned by private parties. Under the State Lands Encroachments Ordinance, all waste lands, forest lands, unoccupied and uncultivated lands are presumed to belong to the state until the contrary is proved (section 7) and all cinnamon land which have been uninterruptedly possessed by the state for over 30 years are held and deemed to belong to the state (section 6).

On July 21, 2011 the then Acting Prime Minister Sam Abal announced the establishment of a Commission of Inquiry to investigate 77 land leases which were issued under the Somare government’s Special Agriculture & Business Leases (SABL). The inquiry, which was later extended by Prime Minister Peter O’Neill in October 2011 for a further five months, discovered that over 90 percent of the leases totalling over 5 million hectares were illegally obtained from traditional landowners (Zealand, 2015).

THE REPUBLIC OF UGANDA THE LAND ACT, CAP 227 THE LAND REGULATIONS, 2004 Form 17

THE LAND ACT,CAP 227 THE LAND REGULATIONS, 2004 Form 18

The second in a series of three reports entitled, “The Stolen Lands of Afghanistan and its People; The State Land Distribution System,” this report focuses on how state lands are distributed. This paper is the result of a desktop review and joint research by the UNAMA Rule of Law Unit (RoL) and the Civil Affairs Unit (CAU) in seven provinces—Kabul, Nangarhar, Kunduz, Balkh, Herat, Gardez, and Kandahar.

This country profile presents the Land Matrix data for Cambodia, detailing large-scale land acquisition (LSLA) transactions that:

• entail a transfer ofrights to use, control or own land through sale, lease or concession;

• have an intended size of 200 hectares (ha) or larger;

• have been concluded since the year 2000;

• are affected by a change of use (often from extensive or ecosystem service provision to commercial use);

• include deals for agricultural and forestry purposes. Mining operations are excluded.

This is our Final Report. It differs markedly from our Interim Report in structure and content layout as a direct result of the manner in which the government received our Interim Report. This change of strategy on our part, amongst other imperatives, is a full acknowledgement that the government is entitled to demand of us a Final Report of a kind that suits its purposes. However we do have a duty to report the truth as we discovered the truth through our investigations, in the context of our own experiences as well as offer best options on the way forward. 

El presente trabajo analiza las situaciones problemáticas de tenencia de la tierra, particularmente las que afectan a la pequeña producción familiar. Partiendo del estudio realizado por PROINDER en base a la información del Censo Nacional Agropecuario de 1988, se presentan los cambios de tenencia y estructura de la tierra a nivel nacional incorporando los datos del Censo Nacional Agropecuario 2002. En segundo lugar se realiza una actualización de la información sobre las situaciones problemáticas de tenencia de la tierra identificadas en el trabajo anterior.