A study commissioned by IIED. With less than 20 percent of landholdings in Uganda currently registered;land governance is at the forefront of a profound change as customary land is demarcated and registered. A key challenge is to ensure the equitability of this process involving gender and social equality;the protection of the poor and vulnerable comprising children and the disabled;and the environment.

An encouraging story about how four communities regained control of their lands acquired by the Bioshape jatropha plantation in Kilwa District. Contains the Bioshape investment and the local response; from community-centred dialogue to government commitments; a reason to celebrate; next steps: consolidating community land tenure in Kilwa and Tanzania.

Covers: land law revision; President starts land law consultation – with battle over privatisation expected; contradictions put a progressive land law under pressure. By 2018 the Norwegian company Green Resourcesland grab had given it 369,000 ha in Mozambique;which it finally admits it cannot handle and now proposes to give most of it back to the communities it was taken from. A consultation on the revision of the 25-year-old land law was launched by President Filipe Nyusi on 16 July 2020 but it will be controversial.

Forests managed by Indigenous and other local communities generate important benefits for livelihood, and contribute to regional and global biodiversity and carbon sequestration goals. Yet, challenges to community forestry remain. Rural out-migration, for one, can make it hard for communities to maintain broad and diverse memberships invested in local forest commons. This includes young people, who can contribute critical energy, ideas, and skills and are well positioned to take up community forest governance and work, but often aspire to alternative livelihoods and lifestyles.

Rapid expansion of unsustainable farming practices in upland areas of Southeast Asia threatens food security and the environment. This study assessed alternative agroforestry systems for sustainable land management and livelihood improvement in northwest Vietnam. The performance of fruit tree-based agroforestry was compared with that of sole cropping, and farmers’ perspectives on agroforestry were documented.

As with the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), Argentina has experienced an intense process of deforestation and loss of natural vegetation in the last few decades. As the eighth-largest country in the world, with a total mainland area of more than 2.7 million km2 , this not only has significant implications for the region, but globally too. Native forests, such as those in the “Chaco” region in the north of the country, have been particularly affected by this process.

À rebours des autres régions du monde, l’Afrique pourrait devenir bientôt le continent de la déforestation, avec la République démocratique du Congo qui perd plus d’un million d’hectares de couvert arboré par an. En Afrique centrale, la déforestation est le fait d’une petite agriculture dont l’emprise géographique s’accroît avec la démographie et la volonté de se constituer des patrimoines fonciers.

Chapter in a book;“Rethinking land reform in Africa;opportunities and challenges” by the African Natural Resources Centre;edited by Cosmas Milton Obote Ochieng for the African Development Bank. A think piece reflecting on changing commercial pressures on land in low and middle-income countries; the role of law in shaping the ways those pressures manifest themselves; the limits of business standards in driving systemic change; and the case for comprehensive law reform to secure rural land rights.

The author has now run this site as an absolute dictator for 20 years;first in Oxfam space (2000-12) and since 2012 in Mokoro space. The article covers the origins of the site;the various motivations and the important role of changing technologies. The site is essentially a place to disseminate arguments in favour of pro-poor land reform and against simple solutions to complex issues. After the 2008 global financial crisis it included work on the impact of the global land grab on Africa.

This study assesses the impact of the Satellite Woreda Approach on rural land administration performance of 28 woredas and critical success factors to institutionalise the approach.This resource was published in the frame of the Land Investment for Transformation (LIFT) Programme. For more information;please check: https://landportal.org/community/projects/land-investment-transformation...

The increasing expansion of cropland is major driver of global carbon emissions and biodiversity loss. However, predicting plausible future global distributions of croplands remains challenging. Here, we show that, in general, existing global data aligned with classical economic theories of expansion explain the current (1992) global extent of cropland reasonably well, but not recent expansion (1992–2015).