In a watershed moment for land rights in Liberia and across Africa, President George Weah on Sept. 19 signed into law a land reform bill that extends land rights to millions of rural Liberians.

The Land Rights Act ensures, for the first time, that the land rights of rural Liberians are recognized, protected, and guaranteed by law – an essential ingredient for these communities to achieve secure land rights. Under the previous land tenure system, as much as 80 percent of Liberians lived without legally recognized rights to land.

Kenya’s development context is greatly influenced by land use and ownership. Consequently land holds immense cultural, spiritual and socio-political significance for nearly all communities. However, proper utilization of land has been besmirched by numerous challenges. Vulnerable and marginalized groups such as women, children and youth have borne the brunt of land challenges. The Constitution of Kenya, 2010 in appreciation of these complex dynamics has sought to provide a blue print for the realization of land reforms.

The shortcomings of the current land reforms suggest that voluntary;market-based transactions of land might not be a suitable measure to redistribute land;not to speak of wealth and power. The “policy” of national reconciliation has delivered one-sided benefits. The politics of national reconciliation are used to justify the status quo – an avoidance strategy to address the structural problems in Namibia. A more radical approach must be considered to redistribute land and capital. Only then will formerly disadvantaged people become equal co-owners of Namibia’s land and wealth.

Land and forest tenure systems greatly influence a country’s ability to reduce deforestation and forest degradation. Clear and legitimate tenure rights over forests can provide an incentive to manage forests sustainably and simultaneously reduce deforestation and forest degradation. In fact, communities and stakeholders with secure tenure rights have a strong interest in investing time and resources to maintain and enhance the natural capital under a long-term vision.

This document outlines some pertinent questions regarding urbanization in Namibia, provides central policy recommendations and identifies relevant research gaps to guide the policy debate on urban land reform as part of the 2nd National Land Conference scheduled for 1-5 October 2018.

From the outset, the development of agriculture has been strongly associated with women’s endeavour. In fact, women’s contribution to agriculture goes back to the origins of farming and the domestication of animals when the first human settlements were established more than 6 000 years ago. Over the years, the division of responsibilities and labour within households and communities tended to place farming and nutrition-related tasks under women’s domain. Nowadays, in many societies women continue to be mainly responsible for family food security and nutrition.

This report analyses the land registration system and applicable legal framework in Sierra Leone to determine whether these ensure adequate transparency and accountability, particularly in the context of beneficial ownership.

Nature and Peace in Colombia: The dissolution of the FARC guerrilla in Colombia has made it safe to work in the rainforest again. Now, the region’s biodiversity is vulnerable to development and exploitation of natural resources. Subscribe to Journeyman here: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_c... “Many of the forests in the Andean region were preserved because the peasants and ranchers did not dare to visit their property”, says herpetologist John Lynch.

The Association for Rural Advancement (AFRA) partnered with the Legal Resources Centre (LRC), a South African human rights organisation, to launch a class action lawsuit against the Government of South Africa on behalf of a class of farm dwellers known as labour tenants. Under the 1996 Land Reform (Labour Tenants) Act, labour tenants were granted rights to apply for ownership of the land they occupied. However, the government has failed to implement this law, and 19,000 labour tenant claims remain pending.

We analyze the impact of land fragmentation on production diversification in rural Albania. Albania represents a particularly interesting case for studying land fragmentation as the fragmentation is a direct outcome of land reforms. The results indicate that land fragmentation is an important driver of production diversification of farm households in Albania. We find that land fragmentation stimulates significantly more diversification for subsistence farm households than for market-oriented households.

In March 2018, The South African Cities Network (SACN) hosted its second Urban Land Dialogues Series in the provinces of Gauteng, Eastern Cape and Western Cape. The dialogues took place during a week when land was receiving widespread attention, as all eyes were on the Gordon Institute of Business Science in Illovo where the President had convened a Summit to discuss details of agrarian land expropriation without compensation policy,Under the overarching theme of inclusive urban land transformation, the aim of these dialogues was to build better shared understandings of the many issues that

Over the last 50 years, most Asian countries have gone through a shift from subsistence agricultural systems to industrialized economies. In Indonesia, the major shift came in 1966, when General Suharto successfully staged a military coup. Under his presidency, Indonesia experienced the “New Order”. A key aspect of this regime was trade and industrial expansion. Changes were made to foreign and domestic investment laws to facilitate growth, including the removal of most controls on private investments.