Can land reform have a lasting impact on poverty reduction?

Argues for certain basic re-thinking in the policy options for viable watershed management by combining local knowledge with the formal science through rejuvenated or revitalized traditional institutions. Part one reviews the policy environment in the light of some of the recent reports in India which have a major bearing on watershed development programs.

This article disucsses the effects of the last four decades of change in China in relation to traditional Tibetan pastoral production systems.

Examines—from the perspective of transaction costs—factors that constrain access to land for the rural poor and other socially excluded groups in India. They find that: Land reform has reduced large landholdings since the 1950s. Medium-size farms have gained most. Formidable obstacles still prevent the poor from gaining access to land.

Access to land is deeply important in rural India, where the incidence of poverty is highly correlated with lack of access to land. Mearns provides a framework for assessing alternative approaches to improving access to land by India's rural poor.

Foreign ownership of land has historically been a sensitive political issue,and measures to regulate or restrict the practice in one form or another have figured prominently in national land laws. The study by Hodgson, Cullinan and Campbell provides an overview of the various regulatory approaches that have been devised to deal with this issue.

Examines livelihood diversification as a survival strategy of rural households in developing countries. Although still of central importance, farming on its own is increasingly unable to provide a sufficient means of survival in rural areas.

The Praedial Property Registration system has been presented as an alternative system to traditional registries for the formalization of immovable property. Much of the earlier design and pilot work for the Praedial Property Registration system was done by the Peruvian private organization, Instituto Libertad y Democracia (ILD).

Literature review, focusing on recent and contemporary tenancy structures in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Tenancy for purposes of this review is broadly defined to include different leasing arrangements such sharecropping, labor tenancy, fixed cash rentals, and reverse leasing.

Land and forestry-based activities could in principle play important roles as climate change mitigation strategies. In practice, however, several questions have been raised about their feasibility. Therefore, understanding the processes and determinants of land use changes is critical.

The advance of the agricultural frontier constitutes the biggest source of deforestation in Central America today. This conversion of tropical forests into agricultural land and pasture is the direct result of individual land use decisions.