TA Media Release - 99 Years without our Land - Mayibuye I'Afrika!

In pastoral societies women face many challenges. Some describe these as a ‘double burden’ – that is, as pastoralists and as women. However, pastoral women may obtain a significant degree of protection from customary law even if customary institutions are male-dominated. In periods of change (economic, social, political), this protection may be lost, and without protection from statutory laws, women are in danger of “falling between two stools” (Adoko and Levine 2009).

Summarises the literature on the alleged defects of traditional systems of land tenure in Nigeria. Reviews the provisions of the land use decree and their implications for rural land tenure.

Summarises the literature on the alleged defects of traditional systems of land tenure in Nigeria. Reviews the provisions of the land use decree and their implications for rural land tenure.

This report analyzes the influence of agrarian transformations on the feminization of agricultural production in rural Tajikistan. It explores women’s multiple labor relations for meeting basic needs of the household. The evidence shows that households have to depend on more types of agricultural work to secure day-to-day as well as long-term livelihood security. Overall, feminization appears in different types and groupings. The implication is that women in agriculture might not be adequately targeted in policies or integrated within intervention programs.

Over recent decades, there has been a shift in the focus of government irrigation schemes towards groundwater development throughout the Gangetic Plains, especially in the Nepal Tarai-Madhesh. This report explores the impact of landlord-tenant relations on access to groundwater irrigation. Tenant farmers have a reduced incentive to invest in pumping equipment and the boring of tube wells due to the high cost involved, insecure tenure and high rent payments, while landlords themselves have been shown to offer little support.

Land reform is a many-splendoured thing. The term has been used to include not only redistributive reforms of ownership rights but also the establishment of collective or communal forms of farming, state sponsored land colonization schemes in frontier areas, and land tenure reforms, i.e., changes in the contractual arrangements between the landowner and those who cultivate the land. In addition, tax (and credit) measures intended to create incentives for large landowners to sell part of their holding sometimes are described as “market friendly” land reforms.

Research and policy debates over natural resource management in developing countries have largely focused on identifying the set of institutions that best supports resource sustainability and poverty alleviation. We argue that beyond finding the right institutional fit for a social-ecological system, it is equally important to understand how context affects the design and outcomes of institutional reforms. We propose a refined conceptualisation of context, based on a revision of the Institutional Analysis and Development framework.

This exploratory study was designed to capture the main features of agrarian change in the upper part of the basin that depends mostly on anicuts. These anicuts amount to 59 percent of the total basin anicuts in terms of numbers, but to only 43 percent in terms of irrigated area. They are generally very old (the history of some of them goes back to 2000 years; see below) and obviously, many changes have occurred during this time.