Land tenure issues are becoming increasingly important worldwide. Problems such as high population pressure, increases in resource degradation, food shortages, transformations of political systems and regional and supra-regional resource conflicts have brought the land issue to the public's attention.

Based on the principles of sustainable development and in recognition of land’s centrality to development, these Guidelines are intended to contribute to global and national efforts towards the eradication of hunger and poverty by promoting secure tenure rights and equitable access to land, fisheries and forests.
This technical guide on Governing land for women and men aims to assist implementation of the Guidelines’ principle of gender equality through the achievement of responsible gender-equitable governance of land tenure.

Efficient land governance has long been recognized as a major driver of sustainable and equitable
development. Carried out effectively, it can enable us to address critical challenges such as those of climate
change, urbanization, gender equality, and food security. But the technical complexity of land administration,
together with institutional and political hurdles, often made the governance of land weak and ineffective,
thereby reinforcing deep-seated inequalities and creating inertia, instead of contributing to growth and

Community land, crucial to rural livelihood around the world, is increasingly targeted by commercial interests. Its loss can lead to environmental degradation, increased rural poverty and land disputes that last for years. Without formal legal recognition of their land rights, communities struggle to protect their land from being allocated to outside investors.

Fertile soils are an essential building block for human existence on Earth. The degradation of soils and land, in this regard, poses significant challenges for the well-being and food security of all the people around the world. Moreover, soils provide not only food, fiber, and many types of biomass we use, but also a wide

This Topic Guide covers: the trends in and drivers of large-scale land acquisition, and the associated costs, risks and benefits; the provision of and access to more accurate data on large-scale land acquisitions, and key international and regional initiatives to provide guidelines to enhance security of tenure and promote good quality investment; land reform issues such as land tenure regularisation and land administration systems; and land issues in the context of fragile states, and conflict and post-conflict situations.

Land is a scarce resource increasingly affected by the competition of mutually exclusive uses. Fertile land in rural areas becomes scarcer due to population growth, pollution, erosion and desertification, effects of
climate change, urbanization etc. On the remaining land, local, national and international users with different socioeconomic status and power compete to achieve food security, economic growth, energy supply, nature

The Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (FAO, 2012 – referred to in this guide as ‘the Guidelines’) were unanimously adopted by the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) in 2012, with subsequent broad international recognition and support. Their strength rests on the unique inclusive and participatory process through which they were developed.

The report’s findings suggest that policies and programmes of governments and the development partners could include a stronger focus on the development of peri-urban areas and smaller cities and towns. The rapid pace of change in peri-urban areas throws into relief any underlying issues in land tenure arrangements, land administration/planning and governance, such as overlapping mandates, conflicts in tenure systems, weak land administration/planning capacity and wider political economy issues that can block positive reforms.

Positioning land tenure within LDN: framework, implementation model and monitoring. In order to position tenure rights within the LDN approach, this article first proposes how land tenure, viewed as sets of tools, can be specifically integrated into the LDN framework (Figure 1), implementation model (Figure 2), and monitoring approach (Figure 3). These three figures build upon the schematics established by UNCCD for LDN (UNCCD, 2016a; 2014; 2013b) and used subsequently in examinations regarding how LDN intersects with the variety of topics noted above.

The objective of the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services is to provide Governments, the private sector, and civil society with scientifically credible and independent up-to-date assessments of available knowledge to make informed decisions at the local, regional and international levels.

The Mekong region – Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam – is in the midst of profound social and environmental change. Despite rapid urbanization, the region remains predominantly rural. More than 60 per cent of its population live in rural areas, and the vast majority of these people are engaged in agriculture. Due to rapid growth of its agricultural sector, the Mekong region has become a global centre of production and trade for commodities such as rubber, rice, cassava, wood, sugar cane, and palm oil.