Land is the repository of memory and keeps traces of the past in the absence of a strong written tradition. It is perceived as an open book from which anyone can read and learn about local history: place names, old roads, legends and stories attached to places. For local people, bulldozing the landscape is seen as erasing their history, and disturbing social organisations and traditions. In Cambodia--as in many other countries--land is an extremely important economic resource and asset. Land is livelihood.

This is a mixed methods study on the Cambodian Cadastral Commission (CC), a body set up in June 2002 to resolve disputes involving unregistered land. It was conducted by the Center for Advanced Study in collaboration with the World Bank Justice for the Poor Program, National Cadastral Commission Secretariat and the German Development Cooperation (GTZ). The study undertakes a review of the functioning of the CC and evaluates a new case management/incentive scheme which was being piloted with the support of GTZ.

The first of 7 Working Papers presented at an FAO regional technical workshop for sub-Saharan Africa on legal empowerment of the poor (LEP) in Nakuru, Kenya, in October 2006. Divided into 7 issues: land markets, individualised land tenure, and land titling; pluralism; informal settlements in urban and peri-urban areas; gender; decentralisation and institutional development; pastoralism; dispute settlement. Each issue is examined through four dimensions: the international, the colonial, the national, and the social.

This paper has been prepared for the Commission on the Legal Empowerment of the Poor and it argues for a particular focus on securing land and property rights for the poor in sub-Saharan Africa. It presents the key challenges faced in achieving such an objective and outlines proposals for action, combining the strong body of existing work underway across the continent with the added energy generated by the current Legal Empowerment initiative.

Land Tenure and the ‘‘Evidence Landscape’’ in
Developing Countries

This is an examination of the interface between land and environmental conservation in Kenya. Part II examines the different regimes of land tenure and their implications for environmental conservation. It also reviews the powers of the state to regulate land use. Part III reviews the legislative framework for environmental conservation in Kenya. Part IV reviews the case law on land and the environment. Part V concludes.

In order to address this problem and to guide its policy advocacy work, the ERETO project commissioned a study to review existing and planned policies and laws that currently touch upon pastoralism and analyse how they actually impact, or are likely to impact, on pastoral and agro-pastoral livelihoods.  The policies and laws reviewed include those dealing with overall national development, those specific for the livestock sector, those dealing with access to pastoral resources, those dealing with conservation of wildlife and other natural resources, and those dealing with decentralisation a

This article focuses on the role of environmental movements that have an influence on state policies regarding community forestry in Thailand. It analyses how conflicts between the state and local people over the right to manage forest resources have ceased to be seen as isolated incidents, but as part of a structural shortcoming in Thai law.

Indigenous, mobile, and local communities all over the world have for millennia played a critical role in conserving the earth’s patrimony. They have protected forests, wetlands, rangelands, watersheds, hunting grounds, rivers and streams and other water catchment systems that are to day the basis of prosperity for all nations. “Community” husbandry of these resources has been done for a wide range of reasons ranging from economic, cultural, spiritual, aesthetic to many others.

Africa’s Great Lakes Region has in recent years experienced
political strife, armed conflict and population displacements
with severe humanitarian consequences. While these events
have clearly revolved around political struggles for the control
of the state, recent research has pointed to the significance
of access to renewable natural resources as structural causes
and sustaining factors in struggles for power in the region.
Contested rights to land and natural resources are significant,

Unruh J (2005) Property restitution laws in a postwar context: the case of Mozambique. African Journal of Legal Studies 3:147-165

Kyrgyzstan was one of the first countries from the former Soviet Union (FSU) to privatize agricultural land and remains the only country of the five Central Asian countries that has distributed land to the former collective and state farm members and dismantled the majority of these large farms.