The Global Gender Gap Index, introduced by the World Economic Forum in 2006, is a framework for capturing the magnitude and scope of gender-based disparities and tracking their progress. The Index benchmarks gender gaps on economic, political, education and health-based criteria, and provides country rankings that allow for effective comparisons across regions, income groups, and over time. Country profile contain detailed information on performance in 2011, as well as trends fsince 2006

Here it is an important book on Women's Land Rights, published by the International Development Research Centre.

The concept of land consolidation is new in Latvia. Its main tasks are to eliminate land fragmentation and to facilitate farms of optimal size. One of the most important preconditions of land consolidation is forming of optimal size farmland plots in property and use, and land fragmentation, which has a major impact on both the operating conditions and other rural development processes. Land fragmentation affects not only land management, but it also increases transport costs.

Since the year 2000 with the help of the specialists from the Land Consolidation Division of the Danish Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, pilot land consolidation projects have been started. Besides the simple territorial readjustment of land parcels, these projects aimed to encourage local initiatives as well as to develop the land consolidation mechanism as an essential tool for the development of the integrated rural development including environment protection, development of infrastructure together with the creation of competitive farms.

In the paper short data on the results of implementation of pilot land consolidation projects in 6 villages of the Republic of Moldova in 2007-2009 are presented. As a result it became possible to accumulate the experience necessary for extension of these works in scales of all country. Simultaneously a number of difficulties and problems have been identified. It will be difficult to realize these works without elimination of them.

The article summarizes the land relations in the Baltic countries: the features of the land policy, lands' relationships and land use planning in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia in the XVII-XIX centuries.

Land means the basic part of the natural environment, the basic instrument of human life, activity and immovable property, which is being disposed of in the process of land relation. Land should be used when coordinating private and public interests as well as environment protection requirements.

Since the economic recession in Latvia, the national debt in September 2010 amounted to 4.717 billion lats. The study confirms significant impact of downward trends of the economy of Latvia on the national budget performance indicators in 2009. One of the most commonly mentioned and controversial indicator is the real estate tax that has to be imposed also on the land. The aim of this study is to analyse and assess the system of the Land Fund of Latvia and features of tax application.

This report is the culmination of a three-year research project that brought together forty members and partners of ILC to examine the characteristics, drivers and impacts and trends of rapidly increasing commercial pressures on land.The report strongly urges models of investment that do not involve large-scale land acquisitions, but rather work together with local land users, respecting their land rights and the ability of small-scale farmers themselves to play a key role in investing to meet the food and resource demands of the future.The conclusions of the report are based on case studie

Legislative acts of Republic of Latvia define the requirements for development of land survey projects but there are no unified methodology and criteria for applying of these requirements. It is also not determined how to evaluate the priorities of land survey projects in cases when the project is developed in several versions. In legislative acts there are eight criteria nominated for designing of land parcels in land survey projects that is an object of instant research. The task of research is to develop the methodology for comparison of versions of land survey project.

Rural landscape of the southern part of Lithuania as well as its use is analysed in the article. The defects of land reclamation system cause the rise of deserted lands. Dampness and bagged up soils are a large obstacle for the proper use of deserted lands. One more reason is lands of low productivity. The third reason of the rise of deserted lands is the shortage and default of perspective farmers and agricultural companies who are able to lease and cultivate land.

Research hypothesis: research of cadastral assessment models makes scientifically basic for purposeful improvement. Research goal to test the hypothesis: to explore development of cadastral valuation in Latvia, to analyze and to evaluate models of cadastral assessment and give proposals of improvement.