This policy brief argues that the time, funding and institutional support required to carry out tenure reform in South Africa have been seriously under-estimated. Reformed tenure rights are ineffective and vulnerable if isolated from other entitlements such as training, finance and integrated development initiatives.

Report finds that land rights in Ethiopia are highly insecure, and higher tenure security and transferability could enhance investment and agricultural productivity. Trying to identify and implement measures to increase producers’ tenure security could have a large pay-off in terms of rural productivity and poverty reduction.The authors use a large data set from Ethiopia that differentiates tenure security and transferability to explore determinants of different types of land-related investment and its possible impact on productivity.

Land-use conflict is not a new phenomenon for pastoralists and farmers in Tanzania with murders, the killing of livestock and the loss of property as a consequence of this conflict featuring in the news for many years now. Various actors, including civil society organisations, have tried to address farmer-pastoralist conflict through mass education programmes, land-use planning, policy reforms and the development of community institutions. However, these efforts have not succeeded in the conflict.

Those who led southern African states to independence promised to redress the inequalities of settler colonialism by returning the land to the people. A generation later the rural poor are still waiting. Many lack access and full rights to agricultural land and, as developments in Zimbabwe and South Africa show, they are getting angry. Where did post-independence land reform policy go wrong?

The objective of the research that this policy brief reports on is to analyse different mechanisms of access to land for the rural poor in an era when redistribution through expropriative land reform is largely inconsistent with the forces of political economy. The roads of access to land which are explored are intra-family transfers, access through community membership, land sales and rental markets, and government programmes including decollectivisation and land-market assisted land reform.

Analyses the range of institutional arrangements being used for gaining access to land and natural resources in two regions of southern Benin.

This paper presents an analysis of the actions and omissions of the Guatemala State in respect to its obligations under the human right to food, and also refers to several paradigmatic cases of violations of the right to food within the context of the indigenous population and land and labour conflicts.

This paper seeks to map out the historical trajectory leading to a series of migrations in and from the erstwhile princely state of Travancore during 1900-70 in order to acquire and bring land under cultivation. It argues that these migrations undertaken with a moralistic and paternal mission of reclaiming ‘empty’ spaces into productive locations were a result of a specific form of economic modernity in Kerala as beckoned by colonialism and appropriated by a resolute local agency through a process of translation.

The Kol tribals of Chitrakoot district live a life of abject poverty, exploitation and almost complete subjugation to the feudal landowners, locally known as Dadus. A local civil society organisation, the Akhil Bhartiya Samaj Sewa Sansthan (ABSSS) has adopted a multi-pronged approach to simultaneously address three sets of issues which it felt were crucial for improving the lot of the Kols.

In developing countries, forest management, sharing and collaboration has encountered major problems as reflected in Southern Cameroon’s forested landscape, which is challenged by differences in power, knowledge gaps, and competing land rights claims. The authors use Cameroon’s forests, as an integral part of research on adaptive collaborative management (ACM) across three continents.

This report analyses evidence linking community forest rights with healthier forests and lower carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.

This report presents a collection of case studies which focus on processes of conflict management and resolution and the different ways and means that conflicts are addressed.