Report of a Conference at the University of Manchester. Summarises papers by Phil Woodhouse on ‘African Enclosures – the Default Mode of Development’ and Camilla Toulmin on ‘Identifying a Research Agenda for the Reform of Land Tenure’ and the discussions on them. Argued that we cannot assume that poverty reduction or equity will emerge from vesting power over land with local communities and their leaders. Conflicts over resources will be exacerbated by decentralisation. Conflicts between indigenous and outsider communities are now widespread.

Contains an executive summary and 3 main chapters: on national, provincial and policy context; access to land and natural resources in Bie Province; and key issues for CARE programming � the promotion of livelihood security and equity. Within these chapters are sections on the proposed new Land Law; land administration and decentralisation; land use and availability and mechanisms of access to land; land tenure systems in the study sites.

A series of short articles on land deals in West Africa: plenty of information, yet reliable data is scarce; abundant land?; complexity of land tenure systems; local perceptions; are win-win partnerships possible?; a call for international guidelines; regional responses.

Contains the common goal, delivery challenges, six stories and takeaways, frontiers for further investigation and innovation.

The topic of how best to make rangelands secure for local rangeland users is one of ongoing debates. The very nature of rangeland use – the need for landscape level planning incorporating spatially and temporally variable resources, and for recognising the multiple layers of use by multiple actors presents complexity that is not easily accounted for by the often inflexible and simpler land tenure systems that governments prefer to introduce.

Oil palm investments are returning from Southeast Asia to West Africa, where the crop originated. As this interest intensifies, land conflicts are likely to become more prevalent. Our research shows that such disputes can treble the cost of cultivation and cause year-long delays. Despite this, many companies do not mitigate tenure risk because they lack the data and tools necessary to understand their risk exposure and take action.

Land disputes associated with Africa sugar often lead to long and costly delays. Our research finds 46% of disputes last over 10 years – and half of these are still unresolved today. In serious cases, disputes close projects down and severely reduce market access. Companies are failing to mitigate these serious risks because they lack the tools and data to make the business case for action.

The webinar An introduction to Prindex took place on 28 November, 2018. This webinar presented a basic understanding of how Prindex works. The Prindex team presented results of data collected from 15 countries. It focused on pathways for using Prindex to propel policy conversations and movement-building for policy reform with the help of panellists from some of the countries where data was collected.

Panelists were asked to address the following questions: 

In addition to global developments and food policy changes, 2014 also saw important developments with potentially wide repercussions in individual countries and regions. This chapter offers perspectives on major food policy developments in various regions including Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, Central Asia, South Asia, East Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean.

Since the 1970s, federal policies promoting migration and encouraging agricultural development of large farms, logging, and ranching have led to the deforestation of vast areas of the Amazon rainforest.Though these policies have largely been replaced, deforestation continues. What effects do current macroeconomic and regional policies and events have on deforestation and on the well-being of settlers on the agricultural frontier?

This research report examines three questions that are central to IFPRI research: How do property-rights institutions affect efficiency and equity? How are resources allocated within households? Why does this matter from a policy perspective? As part of a larger multicountry study on property rights to land and trees, this study focuses on the evolution from customary land tenure with communal ownership toward individualized rights, and how this shift affects women and men differently.This study’s key contribution is its multilevel econometric analysis of efficiency and equity issues.