The land management practices of pastoralist Maasai communities have a major bearing on landscapes and wildlife habitats in northern Tanzania. Pastoralists manage lands according to locally devised rules designed to manage and conserve key resources such as pastures and water sources. Dry season grazing reserves are an important part of traditional land management systems in many pastoralist communities, providing a ‘grass bank’ for livestock to consume during the long dry season when forage invariably becomes scarce and domestic animals are stressed for water and nutrients.

This article examines how property rights expectations affect resource management incentives. It utilizes expected property rights over different timespans and of different strengths, corresponding to (a) investments of different intensities and (b) farmers' sense of security regarding their often de facto property rights. The results suggest that property rights and their alienability in ten-year time matter to intensive infrastructural investments, although not to lighter investments.

Over the last 130 years, patterns of land use in central Australia have altered dramatically, and so too have fire regimes and fire management objectives. Although Aboriginal people still have tenure over large parts of the landscape, their lifestyles have changed. Most Aboriginal people now live in towns and settlements and, although fire management is still culturally important, the opportunities for getting out on country to burn are constrained. Large parts of the landscape are now used for pastoral production.

Smallholders in many tropical highlands cause serious environmental damage. The Cameron Highlands of Malaysia offer an excellent opportunity for studying how farmers interact with environment, changing markets, infrastructure development, indigenous peoples, and tourism, and how these shape innovation. Our surveys in 2002-2004, 2006 and 2007 show that farmers have intensified production and in doing so some have adopted less damaging practices. We assess trends and causation of changes; this offers opportunities for more proactive management.

We investigated the relationships of land tenure, biological, cultural and spatial variables and their effect on the intensity of management of 20 edible plants used by the Santa Maria Tecomavaca community in Oaxaca State, Mexico. We developed a non-linear generalized model showing that land ownership, cultural importance and biological characteristics of a plant are the most significant factors influencing farmers' decisions to intensify management of plant resources.

This study looks at wood curio carving in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, Africa. Although the local people, Ndebele and Shona, have always carved, they now face a weakened economy, due in large part to land reforms in 2000. Thus, more people sculpt wood as a form of livelihood. As one man said “Starvation taught me art”. As a result, gender roles are shifting as men and women begin to enter realms previously reserved for the other. Environmentally, carvers poaching trees deforests the woodlands. As more individuals turn to making crafts sustainability deteriorates.

Among the remaining tropical forests of lowland Latin America, many are inhabited by indigenous peoples, and the sustainability of their land uses is a point of heated debate in the conservation community. Numerous small-scale studies have documented changes in indigenous land use in individual communities in the context of expanding frontier settlements and markets, but few studies have included larger populations or multiple ethnic groups.

The Cambodia environment monitor 2008 is one of a series of environmental reports prepared for East Asian countries under an initiative sponsored by the World Bank. The objective of this series is to present a snapshot of environmental trends across a range of issues. The purpose of the monitor is to engage and inform interested stakeholders about key environmental changes in an easy to understand format accessible to a wide audience. This report identifies seven strategic priorities for the Royal government of Cambodia and its conservation partners.

Document de travail sur les régimes fonciers 7. Ce document analyse la gouvernance foncière dans les divers pays d’Afrique centrale en relevant des problèmes communs et des mesures entreprises par les Etats. L’étude reconnaît que la corruption, la non application des lois, l’abus de pouvoir ou la confusion des rôles transparaissent dans la plupart des pays et représentent des défis majeurs pour l’application des principes de bonne gouvernance.

Documento de trabajo sobre tenencia de la tierra 6. Este documento ofrece una evaluación del estado de la gobernanza de la tenencia de la tierra y recursos naturales en África occidental, comparando las políticas, legislaciones y prácticas nacionales con los principales criterios y normas de una buena gobernanza. El estudio identifica los desafíos a los que los Estados deben hacer frente aunque reconoce también las buenas prácticas e iniciativas emprendidas en materia de gobernanza de la tenencia de la tierra y recursos naturales.

Durant l’Année internationale de la montagne en 2002, la FAO et ses partenaires ont lancé une évaluation à grande échelle et un examen mondial de l’état actuel et des tendances futures de l’aménagement intégré et participatif des bassins versants. Les objectifs généraux étaient de promouvoir l’échange et la diffusion d’expériences dans la mise en œuvre de ces projets durant la décennie 1990–2000, et d’aider à identifier une vision pour une nouvelle génération de programmes et projets.

Document de travail sur les régimes fonciers 6. Ce document établit un état des lieux de la gouvernance foncière et des ressources naturelles en Afrique de l’ouest en confrontant les politiques, les législations et les pratiques des Etats avec des principaux standards et critères de bonne gouvernance. L’étude identifie les enjeux auxquels les Etats doivent faire face ; elle reconnaît également les bonnes pratiques et les initiatives entreprises en matière de la gouvernance de la tenure des terres et des ressources naturelles.