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.

In Northern Africa region, land administration and land management systems are characterized by the existence of various institutions and a diversity of land tenures. In order to meet the requirements of the new era, a series of emerging policies has been developed and implemented according to the national needs and to the international regulations. In terms of historical events, we distinguish in the Northern Africa three different groups’ state members: (1) Sudan and Egypt, and (2) Tunisia and Morocco, (3) Algeria and Mauritania.

While the potential contribution of a nationally implemented program for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) to developing countries’ budgets remains as yet obscure, two general concerns are that REDD+ will i) incentivize land grabbing and ii) remain financially uncompetitive against current commercial forest uses.

This report outlines administrative ways to harmonise state and traditional institutions in terms of land justice in Uganda. Customary justice within the traditional clan system in Uganda offers big advantages over the state judicial system in terms of physical access and costs. A significant weakness of the state justice system is the heavy backlog of land related cases in courts. Perception of and experiences of corruption in the state judicial system are rife.

markdownabstractThe aim of the thesis is to understand the impact of large-scale foreign land acquisitions on rural households. The rapid expansion of large-scale land acquisition (LSLA) by foreign investors in developing countries over the past 10 years has precipitated a heated debate over the impacts on rural households in the recipient regions. LSLA brings often much-needed investment to agriculture in developing countries, potentially raising productivity, and creating rental and labour opportunities from which rural households can benefit.

Women's empowerment is considered a ‘prerequisite’ to achieving global food security. Gender systems, however, are diverse and complex. The nature and extent of gender inequity and the conditions necessary to empower women vary across countries, communities and regions. The study of different gender systems is thus fundamental to capture cross-cultural variations in gender specific needs and constraints to effectively address gender gaps.

Based on a theoretical discussion from global perspective the paper describes present rural land administration and management structure in Bangladesh. Bangladesh is a land scarce country with high-density population. As most of the people live in rural areas and depend on agriculture and allied activities, proper rural land management is crucial. The paper presents an overall view of rural land management in Bangladesh and reveals that the current land management system is almost obsolete. Land administration system is conventional and characterised by inefficiency and corruption.

Previously lineal and centralized natural resource management and development paradigms have shifted toward the recognition of complexity and dynamism of social-ecological systems, and toward more adaptive, decentralized, and collaborative models. However, certain messy and surprising dynamics remain under-recognized, including the inherent interplay between conflict, social capital, and governance. In this study we consider the dynamic intersections of these three often (seemingly) disparate phenomena.

Agriculture is the backbone of Pakistan’s economy. It employs 45% of the labor force, contributes 21.4% to the gross domestic product and provides food to more than 180 million people of the country. The required plethoric resources to produce food correspondingly protect the population against food insecurity. This study explores the distribution of land resources, their ranking and relationships with food security in all districts of Punjab province of Pakistan. The Gini Coefficient and multiple linear regression were employed.

Recent large-scale investments in agricultural land that are coupled with irrigation present opportunities for increased food production in sub-Saharan Africa. However, to achieve this objective two management issues must be addressed: efficient water use in the face of a looming water scarcity and equity in the sharing of the resource between large-scale investors and smallholder farmers.

Many retiring farmers will need to use their land equity to provide a retirement income. Based on a present value analysis, retiring farmers may either decide to sell or lease their land. The analysis is needed because taxes, liability issues, and goals of the farmer complicate the decision. retirement, land equity, Consumer/Household Economics, Land Economics/Use,

This paper applies a comprehensive equity framework to compare the priorities and trade-offs of different environmental and social certification schemes. The schemes selected for comparison are the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes (PEFC), the Fairtrade Labelling Organization (FLO), and the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance (CCBA).