South Africans assumed on 27 April 1994 that their vote for freedom would erase the ethnic enclaves known as ‘Bantustans’ or ‘homelands’ and guarantee a common citizenship with equal rights under one law. Officially, the 10 homelands were dismantled under the interim constitution that introduced democracy in 1994, paving the way for the reversal of the dispossession that had been entrenched by the 1913 and 1936 land acts. Instead, 20 years later, a series of laws, bills and policies proposes a separate legal regime for people within the boundaries of those former Bantustans.

Using the Khanasser Valley in Syria as an example, this paper looks at Integrated Natural Resource management (INRM) as an approach to tackle land degradation. The authors argue that INRM is a better approach because of its comprehensive nature and simplification of the inherently complex socio-ecological systems. One of the greatest challenges currently facing humankind is the alleviation of poverty while maintaining life support systems. Many people are dependent on natural resources that are often unsustainably used by poor people themselves or by other powerful stakeholders.

This report details the findings of a round table discussion on land reform and agricultural development in South Africa convened by The Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE) in October 2007.

Planning and education are needed on options for numbers of animals. land use in Chad to ensure that development considers the proper use, maintenance, and enhancement

This paper examines the cost of implementing redistributive land reform in the Philippines. Land redistribution has become the core feature of land reform in the country since 1972 with the approval of PD 27. The coverage of the program was expanded to all agricultural lands under RA 6657 or CARL of 1988. Consequently, funding for land reform increased significantly as government chose to fully subsidize land acquisition, distribution, and transfers. From 1972 to 2008, the cost to implement the program has been rising in real terms both in absolute and relative values.

This study examines the land acquisition and distribution process of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) by analyzing the nature and extent of participation of the various government agencies. Attempts are also made in identifying the areas where land reform can be hastened. While there are opportunities for change, the paper concludes that the overall impact of these changes on land reform may not be as large in terms of area coverage.

The current framework of economic growth and development includes a general trend towards the privatization of land rights and a collapse of collective structures in agriculture as well as a move towards reliance on land markets as the means of peasant access to participation in the development process. Despite the removal of land reform as an explicit part of the policy agenda, it is clear that the situations which led to the activation of land reforms in past decades are still in place.

Land governance and administration are critical for achieving economic growth and development in any country. It is within this context that the World Bank introduced the Land Governance Assessment Framework (LGAF) for identifying specific areas for land reform while also providing a means for monitoring.

The ultimately disappointing results of past redistributive reforms caused contemporary policy-makers in Latin America to search for alternatives. In recent years, the issue of transforming tenure structure through the market mechanism has moved into the spotlight. This paper argues that it is extremely helpful to approach the topic from an institutional perspective. The institution of property rights is central to the discussion. New questions emerge: How are transactions actually being carried out in the rural setting?

Understanding land accumulation dynamics is relevant for policymakers interested in the economic effects of land inequality in developing country agriculture. This Working Paper explores and simultaneously tests the leading theories of microlevel land accumulation dynamics using unique panel data from Paraguay. The results suggest that farm growth varies systematically with farm size – a formal rejection of stochastic growth theories (that is, Gibrat's Law) – and that titled land area may have considerable infuence on land accumulation.

The primary purpose of this paper is to make a contribution towards extending the coverage of this cropland tenure literature to China's extensive grasslands, which comprise some 40% of its territory.The article finds that:there are two unique characteristics of grassland tenure in this territory: group tenure arrangements and 'fuzzy' boundariesin conventional microeconomic analysis, both of these characteristics raise efficiency concernsthese concerns are only partly justified.

During the 1990s, powerful development institutions like the World Bank came to see the social networks and norms of the rural poor in developing countries as 'assets' to be tapped for poverty alleviation. Defined by Robert Putnam (1995:67) as 'features of social organisation such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit', social capital was proclaimed the 'missing link' in development (Grooetaert 1997).