This publication is a lobby material to advocate the passage of the National Land Use Act. It shows the adverse effects of the lack of land use planning in coastal communities especially in the advent of  a natural disaster. This publication features the Typhoon Haiyan-affected coastal communities in the Visayas Region of the Philippines as examples. It also recommends how this dismal situation could be lessened in the future.

La experiencia del matrimonio de Narciso Raya y Segundina Poma es un acceso a tierras de tipo familiar, en su condición de comuneros son usufructurarios de las tierras colectivas dentro de la comunidad Huancalle que fue beneficiada con la entrega de tierras perteneciente a una hacienda. En 2010, hubo una reubicación de la comunidad en otros terrenos a raíz de los desastres naturales en la región.

The economies of many countries such as the Gulf and Southern African States are to a considerable extent sustained by financial flows from extraction of mineral resources and fossil fuels. The discovery of such fortunes, in sufficiently viable quantities, can be a significant national blessing for effectively addressing development challenges. However, experience in other countries has shown that financial resources obtainable from mineral and fossil fuel extraction – the Extractive Industry, have not always assisted economic and social development.

The land tenure system of Tanzania has passed through different historical milestones which form the basis for the analysis of the land tenure regime in general and tenure relations for land owners and users in particular in the past eight decades. The history dates back to 1923 when the British colonial legislative assembly enacted the Land Ordinance cap 113 to guide and regulate land use and ownership in Tanganyika which was their protectorate colony. Prior to this law, all the land in Tanzania was owned under customary tenure governed by clan and tribal traditions.

 Peri-urban areas in Ethiopia like that of other African countries are places where much of urban growth is taking place and as a result the competition for land between agriculture and nonagriculture (urban built-up property) is intense. It is there that new properties and property rights emerge and at the same time the existing traditional or customary rights may also disappear or dissolve. This study has attempted to assess and demonstrate the process of built-up property formation process in the transitional peri-urban areas of Ethiopia.

The acquisition of land by foreigners in developing countries has emerged as a key mechanism for foreign direct investment (FDI). FDI is defined by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as the category of international investment that reflects the objective of a resident entity in one economy to obtain a lasting interest in an enterprise resident in another economy.

Kenya is going through a period of intense transition. The country's main development policy, Vision 2030, is just entering the second Medium Term Plan of Implementation from 2013. The development priorities focus extensively on large scale investments, for industrial, irrigated agriculture, utilization of newly discovered natural resources, and infrastructure development. Land is therefore a central commodity for realization of the sought after socioeconomic transformation.

The Land Act, 2012

The Land Registration Act, 2012

The National Land Commission Act, 2012

The Environment & Land Court Act, 2011

The Urban Areas & Cities Act, 2011

A Land Information Management System (LIMS) is an information system that enables the capture, management, and analysis of geographically referenced land-related data in order to produce land information for decision-making in land administration and management. The system is a Geospatial Information System (GIS) driven for the purposes of handling and managing parcel based information. The Republic of Kenya, located in East Africa, ranks 33rd in the world in terms of population with 38.6 million people and has a land area of 224,081 square miles.

This book exposes the key land use and environmental problems facing Kenya today due to lack of an appropriate national land use policy. The publication details how the air is increasingly being polluted, the water systems are diminishing in quantity and deteriorating in quality. The desertification process threatens the land and its cover. The soils are being eroded leading to siltation of the ocean and lakes. The forests are being depleted with impunity thus destroying the water catchments.

In Kenya, insecure land tenure and inequitable access to land, forest and water resources have contributed to conflict and violence, which has in turn exacerbated food insecurity. To address these interlinked problems, a new set of laws and policies on food security and land governance are currently being introduced or designed by the Government of Kenya. The new Food Security Bill explicitly recognizes the link between food security and land access, and the 2012 land laws target the corrupt system of land administration that made much of Kenya’s land grabbing possible.

The absence of a clearly defined land use policy in Kenya after years of independence has resulted in a haphazard approach to managing the different land use practices and policy responses. Land use continues to be addressed through many uncoordinated legal and policy frameworks that have done little to unravel the many issues that affect land use management. The Constitution of Kenya 2010, Kenya Vision 2030 and the Sessional Paper No. 3 of 2009 on National Land Policy all call for a clear framework for effectively addressing the challenges related to land use.