This paper presents a case study of land-use/land-cover (LULC) changes from 1975 to 2014 in the central highlands of Ethiopia and traces out its impact on socioeconomic conditions of the local community in the study area. We used four time series Landsat satellite images, that is, Landsat MSS (1975), Landsat Thematic Mapper (1986), Enhanced Thematic Mapper (2000), and Landsat 8 OLI scenes (2014), to investigate the changes in LULC.

This study explores the role of gender as a factor in decision making about alternative land use options and in responses to new investment opportunities, which has received little attention to date. An observational study to determine the different factors affecting male and female decisions to change land use at the individual level in a forest margin landscape in Jambi (Sumatra, Indonesia) was combined with a set of role playing games (RPGs) designed to assess participant responses in a simulated social setting of women-only and men-only groups.

This study used linear programming (LP) to analyse land-use alternatives in the traditional Umbundu farming system in the Angolan central highlands. Farmers of the region have traditionally produced maize and pulses for subsistence and vegetables and timber as cash crops. Different pasture and forest fallow rotations are used along catena production sites. The system is labour-intensive and uses animal traction. LP problems were formulated and solved for a baseline land-use alternative, improved diet alternative and maximal timber production alternative.

In recent years, the concept of ‘food sovereignty’ has gained increasing ground among grassroots groups, taking the form of a global movement. But there is no uniform conceptualization of what food sovereignty constitutes. Indeed, the definition has been expanding over time. It has moved from its initial focus on national self-sufficiency in food production (‘the right of nations’) to local self-sufficiency (‘the rights of peoples’). There is also a growing emphasis on the rights of women and other disadvantaged groups, and on consensus building and democratic choice.

In order to improve the livelihoods of communities and make them more sustainable, study of the vulnerability of livelihoods seems necessary. In this paper, participatory vulnerability analysis was used within a sustainable rural livelihoods framework to assess the sustainability of livelihoods in the agroecosystem of Abesard, Iran. In addition, this paper explored vulnerability contexts that affect livelihood assets. Findings revealed that land use change, climate variability, market fluctuations and higher mechanisation were the main reasons of vulnerability.

Contains a brief review of the land issue in DRC; women’s access to land: secondary land rights; the place guaranteed to women in initiatives to reform the land system; conclusions and recommendations. Women’s access to land must be placed within the context of the complex and pluralistic land crisis and bloody conflicts that continue to destabilise that part of the DRC. Essential resources, such as credit, quality seeds, technology, information and access to markets are cruelly lacking.

In Africa, as elsewhere, land rights have remained a bastion of male power and privilege. Since land is a fundamental resource for improving living conditions and economic empowerment, the lack of land rights for women undermines efforts to promote gender equity and equality within a patriarchal society. The minimal transformation of women’s socio-economic position with regards to access and control of land is, in many cases, due to land reform programmes and related processes whose design or implementation is “gender neutral”.

Scholars point to climate change, often in the form of more frequent and severe drought, as a potential driver of migration in the developing world, particularly for places where populations rely on agriculture for their livelihoods. To date, however, there have been few large-scale, longitudinal studies that explore the relationship between climate change and migration. This study significantly extends current scholarship by evaluating distinctive effects of climatic variation and models these effects on men’s and women’s responsiveness to drought and rainfall.

We have investigated whether joint land certification in Southern Ethiopia has contributed to a strengthening of the perceived land rights of women and an increase in their intra-household involvement in land-related decisions. We use gender-disaggregated household panel data and generate indices for wives’ and husbands’ land rights attitudes and for wives’ involvement in land-related decisions. After controlling for endogeneity of land certification, using a control function approach, we find that receipt of land certificate has strengthened wives’ awareness of their land rights.

In a first study of this kind, International Justice Mission has used mixed methods assessment to portray the depth of widow and orphan property grabbing problem and lack of justice system response in Mukono County, Uganda. The report demonstrates that nearly a third of widows have experienced land grabbing with virtually no criminal justice system response.