Secure land rights are important for development and poverty reduction and the greatest challenges for providing such rights are in urban, peri-urban areas, and the most productive rural areas. This publication updates and revises UN-HABITAT’s 2004 publication ‘Urban Land for All’, and stresses the need for policies that facilitate access to land for all sections of their existing and future populations – particularly those on low or irregular incomes.

At the end of the 1980s, most agriculture in Latin America and the Caribbean shared the following features: an over-protected agricultural sector; strong intervention from the state; excessive regulations and obstacles to interactions with other economic agents; a static land market; and a bimodal type of productive organization, i.e. a few powerful economic units and a large mass of smallholder producers.

Studies of the consequences of corruption have mainly focused on economic efficiency. This paper illustrates that corruption can also have distributional consequences. Corruption increases income inequality and poverty through lower economic growth; biased tax systems favoring the rich and well-connected; poor targeting of social programs; use of wealth by the well-to-do to lobby government for favorable policies that perpetuate inequality in asset ownership; lower social spending; unequal access to education; and a higher risk in investment decisions of the poor.

The caste system is an intricate part of the institutional structure as well as class formation, political instability and conflicts in Nepal. The most severely discriminated group in the caste system is the Dalits, the so-called “untouchables”. Dalits faced religious, occupational and even, territorial discrimination. They were traditionally excluded from receiving education, using public resources, and had no rights to own land.

Working on the premise that in the 21st century there may be two or three times the human population than at the time of writing, this paper explores the concept of sustainable livelihoods. The analysis points to priorities for policy and research, including pricing and taxing policies for the rich that would reduce environmental demand, and further research into small farming systems, local economies and factors influencing migration.
Findings:

Socialist Republic of Viet Nam is undergoing a process of transformation from a centrally planned economy to a market-oriented economy.

Most land-based livelihoods rely on having secure access to land, a precondition for sustainable agriculture, economic growth and poverty reduction. This working paper examines the state of knowledge with regard to aspects of land reform- redistributive reform, land tenure reform, and the issue of land markets. It also addresses issues that remain unknown in areas of land and social equity, land administration, and land tax.Redistributive land reform aims to bring about an equitable distribution of land and the political power emanating from it.

Discusses the debate around structural adjustment and African agriculture, the history of the Tanzanian cotton sector and farming systems in the main cotton growing area of the country before reporting the results of a small survey of cultivators carried out at the end of the 1997/8 seed cotton marketing season. This survey, carried out in the fourth year of market liberalisation, covered crop sales, farming methods, marketing behaviour and perceptions of the marketing system.

Review for sub-Saharan Africa, examines the English-language literature and focuses on four important dimensions of exclusion: (i) exclusion from agricultural land; (ii) exclusion from agricultural livelihood; (iii) exclusion from formal and informal employment; (iv) exclusion from organization and representation.Paper is organized in six sections. The first section discusses concepts of exclusion. The main body of the review examines the four dimensions of exclusion listed above.

Considers the cultural dimension of applying the land information system (LIS) concept to lands held under customary land tenure. The article recognizes that the LIS concept has been developed primarily to serve the needs of countries with a western-style land market where individual land rights are the norm. However, many countries where customary landholdings exist, or predominate, are also interested in establishing LISs to manage their land resources better. The article has three main sections.

This paper explores the dualities in the coexistence within Zimbabwean politics of constitutionalism and legality versus a complex combination of paralegal, supralegal, oppressive and brutal political action, especially as this pertains to elections and land. The analysis is set in the period 1999-2002.

Land has historically been a source of dispute and conflict in Rwanda, compounded by the social unrest which resulted in the 1994 genocide. Up to one million people were killed and three million fled to neighbouring countries, leading to weakened political institutions, infrastructure and human capital. Traditional land allocation systems also suffered.