Context and backgroundColonial legacy and the continuous implementation of neoliberal policies have led to the creation of institutional pluralism in the planning of customary land in peri-urban areas in Ghana. During land commoditisation, peri-urban customary land planning regularly involves physical planning authorities, traditional authorities, and private surveyors. The community members are rarely involved in the planning of their communities, and the planning often leads to the eviction of the community members from their ancestral land.

ABSTRACT Context and background Zambia has grappled with implementing the land titling from 2017 when it started the piloting of the National Land Titling Programme through the seventh National Development Plan (2017-2021). The implementation started in 2017 with a small pilot project conducted in Lusaka City in areas called Madido and Kamwala.

Context and background Despite steps implemented by Local Government Authorities to guarantee appropriate urban land development, individuals in informal settlements are developing in violation of laws, rules, and norms. Millions of individuals have grabbed property and constructed temporary houses to gain a footing in cities, in violation of law and ownership rights. Squatter colonies can be found in cities of newly developing economies on hillsides, parks, roadside, unplanned land on urban outskirts, and even valuable land in city centres.

By the mid-century, urban areas are expected to house two-thirds of the world’s population of approximately 10 billion people. The key challenge will be to provide food for all with fewer farmers in rural areas and limited options for expanding cultivated fields in urban areas, with sustainable soil management being a fundamental criterion for achieving sustainability goals. Understanding how nature works in a fast changing world and fostering nature-based agriculture (such as lowinput

Women’s Voice & Agency beyond the household (VABH) has increasingly been recognized as critical to strengthening resilience, increasing women’s access to important resources, improving women’s decision-making power, and facilitating broader social networks (Njuki et al. 2022). Despite rapidly intensifying climate change in recent years, a knowledge gap persists as to how climate change may affect women’s VABH in developing countries.

In the next 30 years, Africa’s population is expected to double, and the continent will be home to 2.5 billion people. Almost half of this population will be living in urban agglomerations. Metropolitan cities, such as Lagos, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam or Abidjan will host several tens of millions of urban dwellers. Peri-urban areas are most affected by the cities’ expansion and undergo important social, political and economic transformations.This Ifri briefing analyses how these changes translate into land governance, a key sector of urban development.

Countries in Southeast Asia have been developing quickly from a predominantly rural to predominantly urban society, leading to a rapid increase in urban land. This increase in urban land has mainly occurred in river deltas and floodplains, exposing humans and human assets to flood hazard. Here we present an assessment of current and future flood risk in five countries of mainland Southeast Asia, using a new modeling approach that accounts for differences in urban land systems.

Today, the Coalition for Urban Transitions releases a new report ‘Seizing the Urban Opportunity’, which provides insights from six emerging economies on how national governments can recover from COVID-19, tackle the climate crisis and secure shared prosperity through cities. Launching as a call to action for national governments ahead of COP26 in Glasgow, it builds on the Coalition’s flagship 2019 report: Climate Emergency, Urban Opportunity.

The rise of urban populations has rendered cities in both developed and developing countries vulnerable to poor health and diseases that are associated with urban living conditions and environments. Therefore, there is a growing consensus that while personal factors are critical in determining health, the urban environment exacerbates or mitigates health outcomes, and as such the solution for improving health outcomes in urban settings can be found in addressing socio-environmental factors that shape urban environments.

In the context of rapid urbanization, poorer residents in cities across low- and middle-income countries increasingly experience food and nutrition deficiencies. The United Nations has highlighted urban agriculture (UA) as a viable solution to food insecurity, by empowering the urban poor to produce their own fresh foods and make some profit from surplus production. Despite its potential role in reducing poverty and food insecurity, there appears to be little political will to support urban agriculture.

Informal settlements represent a challenging operational context for local government service providers due to precarious contextual conditions. Location choice and land procurement for public infrastructure raise the complicated question: who has the right to occupy, control, and use a piece of land in informal settlements? There is currently a dearth of intelligence on how to identify well-located land for public infrastructure, spatially and with careful consideration for safeguarding the claimed rights and preventing conflicts.

Environmental pollution is an important issue in metropolitan areas, and roadside trees are directly affected by various sources of pollution to which they exhibit numerous responses.