The paper examines how derived rights have evolved through settlement, loan, rental or purchase contracts and how these arrangements have developed as a result of national policy and socio-economic history. It goes on to examine how the unique circumstances of "established" and "pioneer" farming areas show differing patterns of change in arrangements over time.

This paper examines how, over the past 10 years, Kyrgyzstan has privatised most of its agricultural land and distributed it to individual households. These households either farm alone or join together and farm cooperatively. This research seeks to examine whether women have been adversely affected in the process of privatisation, asset ownership, or business development.

Since the early 1990s, the dominant consensus in the debate on land rights reform in sub-Saharan Africa has been that external interventions to privatise land rights are usually inappropriate and likely to remain so.

Indonesia's cocoa output, produced mainly by smallholders on the island of Sulawesi, increased a phenomenal 26 percent a year (average, compounded) between 1980 and 1994. The government's hands-off policy was an important factor in this rapid expansion of output.This case study of Sulawesi's cocoa market is a counterpoint to investigations of highly regulated markets --- agricultural and otherwise.

This paper examines the impact of land reform in Vietnam which gives households the power to exchange, transfer, lease, inherit, and mortgage their land-use rights. The authors expect this change to increase the incentives as well as the ability to undertake long-term investments on the part of households.

This paper draws out the key links between land tenure and poverty eradication. The author argues that in countries where land distribution remains highly inequitable, effectively designed and targeted, it could be a key component of anti-poverty strategies, but significant complementary measures, notably agrarian support services, are also required to achieve real impacts, together with investments in employment and economic diversification.

This rapid evidence assessment (REA) investigates how public overseas investments supported by developed country governments respect legitimate land tenure rights, especially in countries without a strong system for protecting existing tenure rights. The REA assesses material from the limited number of studies (20) available about donor-supported investment projects involving land. Most are from African countries, but the evidence also includes cases from Afghanistan, Guatemala and Cambodia.

Rising poverty in rural Uganda is linked to increasing landlessness, as the latter drives land degradation and reduces agricultural productivity. This paper examines the complex relationship between owning land and poverty. It identifies effective strategies and land policy guidance to address this concern.

This paper examines the decline of common property resources in the arid zone of Rajasthan in India and the factors underlying the decline.The article concludes that:well-intentioned public programmes like land reformcan deprive a region of its comparative advantage in a key economic activity (in this case livestock farming)privatisation raises the cost of livestock raising and, hence, erodes the the region's comparative advantagethe continuing shrinkage and degradation of common property resources is likely to force further reduction in the size of livestock holdings and changes in their c

This article suggests that communual rangeland management policies in Botswana and Zimbabwe are based on incorrect technical assumptions about the stability of semiarid rangelands, the nature of rangeland degradation, and the benefits of destocking. Consequently, inappropriate policies, stressing the need to destock and stabilise the rangelands, are pursued.Acknowledgement of the great instability but intrinsic resilience of rangeland would encourage the Governments to more favourable regard the opportunistic stocking strategies of the agro-pastoralists of the Communual Areas.

This study assesses the determinants of forest land allocation to households in the forest tenure reforms in China in the period 1980-2005 using data from three provinces in Southern China; Fujian, Jiang Xi and Yunnan. Furthermore, it assesses the current level of tenure security on forest land and how this tenure security is affected by past and more recent policy changes.

Local governance has become increasingly significant as devolution from central and provincial levels is being attempted in India as a result of the enactment of the 73rd and 74th Amendment of the Constitution in 1993. The essence of local self governance is to enable a small community to maintain access and control over their natural and physical resources, to take collective decisions in the common public good and to provide resources in priority developmental actions. Another dimension of local self governance is to demand accountability from people in public positions.