Property rights to land represent the key institutional asset on which rural people build their livelihoods. In fact, in many countries, landlessness is the best predictor of poverty. The nature of farmers’ property rights to land substantially impacts their willingness and ability to adopt productivity-enhancing inputs and investments.
This paper analyses the Zambian land governance system, the actors and institutions shaping it and its reaction to the new interest in farmland. We draw theories from New Institutional Economics and base our empirical analyses on expert interviews and focus group discussions conducted in Zambia.
Investidores agrícolas estrangeiros estão em conflitos com camponeses locais em Moçambique, num confronto sobre modelos agrícolas e desenvolvimento. Investidores estrangeiros de olho em terra aparentemente vaga, prometem lucros elevados (muitas vezes inflacionados) a investidores e parceiros locais. Alguns esperam capitalizar com créditos de carbono ou produzir biocombustíveis e alegam ser investimentos “verdes” (ecológicos). Todos prometem empregos, escolas e desenvolvimento local.
Foreign agricultural investors are clashing with local peasants in Mozambique, in a confrontation over agricultural and development models. Foreign investors looking a apparently vacant land promise high (often inflated) profits to investors and local partners. Some hope to capitalise on carbon credits or produce biofuels, and claim to be green investments. All promise jobs, schools, and local development. Local backers support the outside investors and their plantations with terms like "progress" and "modernisation".
Stresses the growing body of evidence illustrating the positive correlation between secure land rights and food security and nutrition. Also looks at constraints to secure land rights for women. Enforcement of laws can be challenging. Women’s access to land through the state or the market is often limited.
La pobreza y el hambre en el Ecuador tienen su escenario en la zona rural, pero sobretodo en los hogares agrarios. La falta de acceso a recursos productivos, en especial la tierra, es uno de los factores más influyentes de la pobreza y el hambre, de acuerdo al enfoque de soberanía alimentaria.
Few regions present bigger development challenges than the African drylands – home to nearly 300 million people, and the vast majority of Africa’s poor. Food security and rural welfare in these areas are limited by a range of factors, biophysical, socio-economic and policy-related. And many of the biggest challenges – poverty, drought, land degradation, food insecurity – will be exacerbated by climate change.
In Toungoo District between November 2011 and February 2012 villagers in both Than Daung and Tantabin Townships have faced regular and ongoing demands for forced labour, as well movement and trade restrictions, which consistently undermine their ability to support themselves.
This report includes a situation update submitted to KHRG in February 2012, by a villager describing events occurring in Toungoo District during the period between November 2011 and January 2012. It discusses augmented troop rotations, resupply operations and the sending of bulldozers to construct a new vehicle road between the 20-mile point on the Toungoo – Kler La road and Kler La. It also contains reports of forced labour, specifically the use of villagers to porter military equipment and supplies, to serve as set tha, and the clearing of vegetation by vehicle roads.
This report contains the full transcript of an interview submitted to KHRG in August 2011 by a villager trained by KHRG to monitor human rights conditions in Bu Tho Township, Papun District. The villager interviewed Maung R---, a 31-year-old village head, who described extensive demands for forced labour, specifically for villagers to porter military rations, produce thatch shingles and bamboo poles, and tend to plantations owned by Border Guard soldiers. He also detailed demands for money including mandatory payments in lieu of recruitment for portering duties and arbitrary taxation.
