ABSTRACTED FROM THE OPENING PARAGRAPHS, AND THE BOOK BLURB: The decentralization of control over the vast forests of the world is moving at a rapid pace, with both positive and negative ramifications for people and forests themselves. Th[is] chapter examines LFA from the decentralized forest management perspective. In particular, it examines the process by which the policy was implemented and considers whether it helped build sustainable forest management at the community level. [It] first reviews the history of LFA and the major actors involved.

The Lao Land and Forest Allocation Policy (LFAP) was intended to provide clearer property rights for swidden farmers living in mountainous areas. These lands are legally defined as “State” forests but are under various forms of customary tenure. The policy involves demarcating village territorial boundaries, ecological zoning of lands within village territories, and finally allocating a limited number of individual land parcels to specific households for farming.

The Constitution of Kenya 2010 apportions responsibility of planning to both National and County governments. The County Government Act, 2012 obligates county governments to prepare and implement County Integrated Development Plans (CIDP). The CIDPs are, according to the act, five year plans that will form the basis of annual budgetary allocation by the county governments.

Nairobi River Basin is a complex of several parallel rivers that flow through the City of Nairobi and empty into a larger river and flow to the Indian Ocean. The rivers are polluted with garbage, industrial liquid effluence, agro-chemicals, petro-chemicals among others. This situation has occasioned spread of water-borne diseases, loss of sustainable livelihoods, loss of biodiversity, reduced availability and access to safe potable water, and the insidious effects of toxic substances and heavy metal poisoning which affects human productivity.

The Cadastral system in Kenya was established in 1903 to support land alienation for the white settlers who had come into the country in the early part of the 20th Century. In the last hundred years, the system has remained more or less the same, where land records are kept in paper format and majority of operations are carried out on a manual basis. The lack of a modern cadastral system has contributed to problems in land administration in the country.

Conventional notions of the ‘land parcel’ have been extended: previously unrecognized tenures including customary, nomadic, or communal interests are now incorporated into the concept. Technical tools including the Social Tenure Domain Model (STDM) enable these new understandings to be operationalized in land administration systems. The nomadic pastoralists of Kenya’s dry land regions illustrate where these new approaches can be applied.

The cadastral system in Kenya was established in 1903 to cater for land alienation for the white settlers. Since then, a hundred years later, the structure of the system has remained more or less the same despite major changes in surveying technology. The government of Kenya has realized that the current structure is not conducive to economic demands of the 21st century and is interested in re-organizing the structure in line with the current constitutional dispensation and new paradigms in land management.

The application of computer technology in land administration is touted as one way of ensuring efficient and transparent land administration. Although this true, one major concern is not only how to create a computerized land information system that is interoperable across different government departments responsible for different land administration functions, but also how to ensure interoperability between national and devolved levels of government departments responsible for land administration.

The absence of a clearly defined land use policy in Kenya after years of independence has resulted in a haphazard approach to managing the different land use practices and policy responses. Land use continues to be addressed through many uncoordinated legal and policy frameworks that have done little to unravel the many issues that affect land use management. The Constitution of Kenya 2010, Kenya Vision 2030 and the Sessional Paper No. 3 of 2009 on National Land Policy all call for a clear framework for effectively addressing the challenges related to land use.

In the recent past, high profile cases involving land governance problems have been thrust into the public domain. These include the case involving the grabbing of a playground belonging to Lang’ata Road Primary School in Nairobi and the tussle over a 134 acre piece of land in Karen. Land ownership and use have been a great source of conflict among communities and even families in Kenya, a situation exacerbated by corruption.

O ritmo migratório rural-urbano é frequentemente superior à taxa de crescimento natural dapopulação citadina, em resultado da procura de oportunidades de emprego por parte daspopulações rurais, o que reflecte (e cria novas) pressões sociais e económicas.Ao longo deste texto procura-se compreender os factores que levam as populações de origemrural a migrar para a cidade de Maputo, assim como compreender as dinâmicas de relacionamentodas mesmas, uma vez na cidade, com o seu universo de origem.

Este texto aborda as questões locais do impacto dos mega-projectos de mineração sobre o meio rural e agricultura - as condições de vida das pessoas reassentadas, não havendo alguma abrangência para aspectos de natureza macro. A pesquisa analisa o percurso do El Dorado Tete e a evolução das condições de vida da população reassentada em Cateme nos últimos cinco anos. A principal conclusão é de que o El Dorado Tete implodiu e as condições de vida das pessoas reassentadas em Cateme estão em contínua degradação.