This article is concerned with the hypothesis that devolution, understood as entrusting local government
with significant domains of autonomous discretionary power, will lead to the equitable and efficient management of
natural resources. The paper focuses on the three domains of power conceived by some theorists as critical in the management
of natural resources, namely making rules, implementing rules, and resolving disputes in relation to these rules.

This report, a summary of the substantial challenges that continue to plague South Africa’s efforts to reform land administration system, proposes that key decision-makers and informers involved in communal land administration undergo a mindshift in thinking. This shift should be from focusing exclusively on transferring communal land to traditional leaders, Common Property Institutions and private individuals, to recognising and accommodating existing forms of social tenure.

From January 15 to February 6, 2018, the USAID’s Tenure and Global Climate Change Program and Land Portal Foundation co-facilitated a dialogue on experiences of documenting household and community-level customary rights in Zambia. The dialogue brought together the perspectives of government, traditional leaders, practitioners, civil society, and academics to consider how customary land documentation can contribute to national development goals and increased service delivery in rural and peri-urban areas.

India’s ambitious development agenda involves facilitating investment for economic growth, infrastructure development, and social progress. Yet, thousands of investment projects have been stalled to date, raising red flags for the health of the country’s financial regulatory systems, public sector banks, and investment community. While official reasons given for stalled projects remain opaque, deep contestation leading to conflict on public (and private) lands must be better understood as a substantive risk to investments.

Land and resource conflicts in India have deep implications for the well-being of the country’s people, institutions, investments, and long-term development. These conflicts reveal deep structural flaws in the country’s social, agrarian, and institutional structures, including ambiguities in property rights regimes and institutions. In 2014, a study focusing primarily on reports in the national media reflected the gravity of these conflicts.

Since 2009, Oxfam and others have been raising the alarm about a great global land rush. Millions of hectares of land have been acquired by investors to meet rising demand for food and biofuels, or for speculation. This often happens at the expense of those who need the land most and are best placed to protect it: farmers, pastoralists, forest-dependent people, fisherfolk, and indigenous peoples.

 

This report explores some of the key issues to consider when supporting new land-based social enterprises. The findings are drawn from interviews with 13 representatives from social enterprises who received direct technical, business and training support from Shared Assets between 2013-15.

This publication explores what scaling ‘well’ means for social innovators. It is based on our research into how social innovations across a range of sectors have approached the challenge of scaling up. It supports our Scaling Land Based Social Enterprise : Decision Making Toolkit. This work was funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

The report was commissioned by Forest Research, and reviews the data available on the management of woodlands by local authorities in England. The report focuses on the extent to which community groups and social enterprises are involved in their management.

Amphone talks about using the land to grow his crops

 

Between 1970 and 1992, the World Bank
assisted financially in about 15 wildlife-related projects
in Sub-Saharan Africa. The lending volume was US$ 368
million or about 1percent of the Bank's totals lending
during the same period. While geographically, these projects
have been concentrated in East Africa, especially Kenya, the
others are located in Somali, Malawi, Botswana, Cote
d'Ivoire, Zimbabwe, Ghana, the Central African

The book provides an evaluation of, and
policy advice on key environmental, social, and economic
issues concerning the development of nature tourism. Using
KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa as a case study, it highlights
both the benefits, and trade-offs I promoting, an managing
sustainable nature-tourism development, and it assesses how
policy can enhance nature tourism's contribution to
economic growth, poverty reduction, and conservation. The