Property rights are inexorably linked to taxes, largely because property taxes are often one of the easiest taxes to collect, particularly in developing markets with significant informal sectors. Indeed property taxes are often levied and paid around the world even when citizens lack deed or title to their property.

In the first week of June, the International Land Coalition (ILC) coordinated a workshop to design a Rangelands Observatory, intended to link a network of organizations that will partner in an effort to collectively monitor land acquisitions in rangeland areas, and promote more participatory decision making in regards to land use.

This study, perhaps the first of its
kind in this region, is based on a study that explores the
practice of casual sex among truck drivers and commercial
sex workers in the border areas of Poland and Lithuania at a
point of time, and uses this evidence to extrapolate the
potential impact on the spread of HIV/AIDS in these
countries. After the Introduction which provides background,
Section 2 reviews similar studies carried out elsewhere in

The present Report is motivated by the
coming together o f three widespread perceptions about
inequality, two somewhat newer and one long-standing. The
two newer ones are; (i) that inequality may matter for the
country's economic development, and (ii) that public
policy can and should do something about it. The old
perception, which is well borne out b y the facts, is that
Brazil occupies a position o f very high inequality in the

This report derives from the importance
of water for irrigation to the question, how will additional
food be produced as competition for scarce land and water
resources increases? The International Water Management
Institute (IWMI), Food and Agriculture Organization of the
United Nations (FAO), and International Food Policy Research
Institute (IFPRI) provide a partial picture of supply and
demand for food supply and irrigation-water by 2025 and

The author uses date from the 1992-93
and 1997-98 Vietnam Living Standards Survey (VLSS) to
describe patterns of money transfers between households.
Rapid economic growth during the 1990s did little to
diminish the importance of private transfers in Vietnam.
Private transfers are large and widespread in both surveys,
and are much larger than public transfers. Private transfers
appear to function like means-tested public transfers,

This Financial Sector Assessment (FSA)
is a summary of some of the findings of the Financial Sector
Assessment Program (FSAP) report for the Russian Federation,
which was prepared jointly by the International Monetary
Fund (IMF) and the Bank in close cooperation with the
Russian authorities. Given the small size of the financial
sector, the effects of a potential financial sector distress
on the macro-economy would be relatively small. However,

Increasingly, companies that depend on forests for their products are recognizing the need to establish environmentally and socially sensitive forest management practices. With government agencies and large corporations demanding paper products that have been certified by a third-party organization, companies have seen that certification generates returns on investments.

From Latin America to Southeast Asia, land rights and resource governance are at the center of many conflicts around the globe. In Colombia, land and rural development are the first agenda items in the ongoing peace negotiations between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). In Burma, the world's longest-running civil war has left over 450,000 people internally displaced, with approximately 215,000 more in refugee camps along the Thai border.

A recent CIFOR paper finds that addressing tenure and property rights issues at the REDD+ project level may be insufficient to achieve REDD+ objectives. REDD+ proponents in several countries are devoting substantial resources to address tenure issues at a project level, but the authors suggest that these efforts may be insufficient to address tenure problems that arise from broader national conditions. These tenure challenges “…have deep roots in history, are national in scope, and have origins that often lie well beyond the boundary of the project site.

During the recent “Open for Growth: Trade, Tax and Transparency” event preceding this week’s G8 summit in Northern Ireland, the United States and Guinea announced a partnership focused on supporting transparency in extractive industries. Transparent management of Guinea’s mining sector – which accounts for 95 percent of the country’s exports - is essential for the nation’s long-term economic growth and sustainable development.

This week marks the 10-year anniversary of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KP), an international certification process that regulates trade in rough diamonds in an effort to prevent conflict diamonds from entering the market and fueling rebel movement.