This compendium provides an improved understanding of the complex issues concerning gender and land. It draws on research commissioned by FAO. The authors argue that hunger and poverty are, in general, consequences of inadequate and restricted access to land and other resources, such as capital, inputs and technology; women are among those with less access to land, while accounting for a large share in small-scale food production.Rights to land, especially women’s rights to land, are determined by a complex interaction between the institutions, and underlying power relations, of a society.

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. The complexity of land revenue administration in Orissa is partly the legacy of distinctly different systems, which produced more or less complete and accurate land records.

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.

The paper presents case studies from Kenya, Lesotho and South Africa in order to examine the impact of HIV/AIDS upon land, and present preliminary policy recommendations.

Today, many rural poor Filipinos are using state law to try to claim land rights. In spite of the availability of a much stronger set of legal resources than ever before, claiming legal land rights remains difficult. Some argue these difficulties are a reason to turn away from state-led land reform and toward a market-assisted land reform (MALR) model.

Indonesia’s forests have been disappearing rapidly since the 1980s: 1.8 million hectares per year are estimated to have been deforested between 1985 and 1997. Consequently, there is a possibility that in some areas, the forests will cease to function as a viable resource base in the near future.This paper examines the role of economic incentives in causing deforestation, focussing on policies that distort prices and create the conditions for unsustainable harvesting.

Assesses the process to establish a system of land registration and improve land tenure security, and its outcomes for poor and marginalised groups in Amhara, Ethiopia .The registration process is found to be generating conflict at the local level, due to illegal land grabbing, encroachments into common lands and land sales.

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). They claim that in Peru they "have formalized over 150,000 properties much more quickly, and at dramatically less costs, than traditional titling and registration programs" in three-and-a-half years during the early 1990s.

Summarizes recent research (to 1991) on rural land markets in the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region and on the relationship between this research and broader land tenure issues. The purpose of the project that prompted this paper was to carry out cross-country and longitudinal research on land tenure issues in the LAC region so as to provide an instructive and informative analysis of how tenure patterns affect economic, rural development, and environmental issues.

Many countries receiving migrants are attempting to manage immigration by discouraging potential migrants through tighter controls and restrictions of benefits. This paper argues that this is not an optimal solution. Rather, the overall goal is to create a world in which migration is unnecessary because sufficient opportunity exists at home. The majority of people do not migrate, and they will only enjoy higher incomes if their countries prosper.

Land tenure reform remains a key policy issue in Africa, given the large proportion of people relying on land and natural resources for their livelihoods. This paper addresses the exclusionary nature of many processes around land, which can lead to social divisions.

This paper examines the current wave of land tenure reform in eastern and southern Africa. It discusses how far tenure reform reflects a shift in powers over property from centre to periphery. A central question is whether tenure reform is designed to deliver to rural smallholders greater security of tenure and greater control over the regulation and transfer of these rights.Policy conclusions include: