This draft paper outlines a strategy for World Bank involvement in land policies. It focuses on property rights to land, land transactions, and socially optimal use of land.

How important is common land to rural people’s livelihoods? Are pooled resources a significant factor in household income? Why has communal land been so undervalued in recent studies?

Those who led southern African states to independence promised to redress the inequalities of settler colonialism by returning the land to the people. A generation later the rural poor are still waiting. Many lack access and full rights to agricultural land and, as developments in Zimbabwe and South Africa show, they are getting angry. Where did post-independence land reform policy go wrong?

This study contends that Zambia cannot develop if it neglects policy for the efficient utilization of its natural resources. One such area has been the absence of land policy for effective management of rural land.While failure in this area has been attributed to a number of factors, notably absence of credit and funding, this paper contends that the base factor is the absence of efficient land management for rural land.This paper attempts to show that rural land in Zambia remains undeveloped for a number of reasons:The absence of an institutional framework to guide land administration.

Tenure reform aims to secure people's land rights. In Southern Africa most so-called 'communal' land, reserved for Africans, is still held by the state. In these areas, land rights are increasingly insecure. Yet, the confirmation of the rights of those who have long occupied and used the land lags behind programmes that aim to transfer white-held land to Africans. Many colonial and apartheid land laws are still in force, particularly those relating to chiefs, who resist any reduction to their power.

Interim report on progress with Zimbabwe's fast track programme of land reform, with recommendations on future policy.Recommendations include: Moratorium on changes in existing laws and regulations until a comprehensive land policy can be developedA major effort is required to promote the improvement and growth of agricultural production and service linkages between industry and agriculture in the context of a restructuring of the rural sector.

This report argues that land reform, both tenancy reform and redistribution of ceiling surplus lands to the landless, is important to poverty alleviation.The paper argues that in addition to production benefits, land reform helps to change the local political structure by giving more voice to the poor. Re-distributive land reform, whether through market-assisted land reform programmes or otherwise, should remain a substantive policy issue for poverty reduction.

This article summarizes the nature of land-related conflicts in the Philippines within the context of the prevailing agrarian situation throughout the country. An analysis of the agrarian institutions and different types of development that have occurred in a number of regions provide a broad representation of the current situation.

ABSTRACTED FROM THE OBJECTIVES: This paper aims to identify, scrutinise and comment upon the quality and adequacy of different existing large data sets (available from government ministries, international organisations, research institutions and so forth) that contain information on land use, tenure and related issues. It then analyses these data to establish linkages between standards of living/poverty and landholding.