Monitoring reports were prepared in six Asian countries to understand the nature, causes, and impacts of land and resource conflicts, and to highlight the human rights issues intertwined with them. This publication likewise provides an overview of some of the available conflict response and resolution mechanisms in Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Nepal, and the Philippines, and outlines recommended actions for addressing land conflicts.

In 1913, South Africa’s Land Act set aside 87% of the country’s land for exclusive use and ownership by white people, helping to divide the nation into a relatively prosperous white heartland and a cluster of increasingly impoverished black reserves on the periphery and within cities (Walker, 2017). More than a century later, South Africa is still struggling to redress this historical injustice and the inequality it continues to foster. 

Why are the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests important?

The Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGGT) set out internationally-accepted principles and standards for responsible practices, providing a framework for governments, the private sector and civil society to use when developing policies and programmes for improving food security.

The Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of national Food Security (VGGt) represent a new international legal instrument, which was adopted unanimously in 2012 by the United nations Committee on World Food Security (CFS). the Guidelines are a soft law instrument that does not create new, legally binding obligations for states or responsibilities for private actors, but that applies existing governance standards, particularly for human rights, to the management of land.

Mainland Southeast Asia (MSA) has seen sweeping upland land use changes in the past decades, with transition from primarily subsistence shifting cultivation to annual commodity cropping. This transition holds implications for local upland communities and ecosystems. Due to its particular political regime, Myanmar is at the tail of this development.

A checklist for gender-sensitive analysis of land tenure and common property resource systems, with sections on: gender roles, needs, incentives and benefits; project planning; livelihoods context; facilitating participation; and measuring impact.

How has citizen action resulted in national policy change in different parts of the world?

This past week, one of the local dailies ran a story narrating how many county and national government institutions are squatters on what used to be public property, and even face eviction by new owners. It described how in Meru for instance, land meant for the most critical public institutions — police stations, hospitals, government offices, roads, even sensitive installations like the County Commissioner’s residence — has been allocated to individuals. Land grabbing and irregular land allocation is commonplace in Kenya.

WEBSITE INTRODUCTION: In Uneven Development, a classic in its field, Neil Smith offers the first full theory of uneven geographical development, entwining theories of space and nature with a critique of capitalist development. Featuring pathbreaking analyses of the production of nature and the politics of scale, Smith's work anticipated many of the uneven contours that now mark neoliberal globalization. This third edition features an afterword updating the analysis for the present day.

Over the last decade, following the doi moi reforms, the Vietnamese government has formally recognised the household as the basic unit of production and allocated land use rights to households. Under the 1993 Land Law these rights can be transferred, exchanged, leased, inherited, and mortgaged. A land market is emerging in Vietnam but is still constrained for various reasons. Additionally, lack of flexibility of land use is an issue.

BACK COVER: This book is a case study of Vietnam’s efforts to fight poverty using market-oriented land reforms. In the 1980s and 1990s, the country undertook major institutional reforms, and an impressive reduction in poverty followed. But what role did the reforms play? Did the efficiency gains from reform come at a cost to equity? Were there both winners and losers? Was rising rural landlessness in the wake of reforms a sign of success or failure?