In West Africa, land questions are rising in importance. As pressures on resources increase, farmers need sufficient tenure security to encourage production and investment in land. The procedures governing access to and control over land are of vital importance in promoting intensification and commercialisation of agriculture, combating poverty, and reducing risks of conflict. At the same time, the process of decentralisation and establishment of new local government structures raise the question of which institutions should be responsible for land management.

According to the U.N. and World Bank, 40 percent of the global population is affected by water scarcity, and by 2030, up to 700 million people could be displaced as a result.
Having spent his youth spent living through a series of droughts and famine, Ibrahim Thiaw is not only a face to these numbers but also on a mission, as Executive Secretary of the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), to ensure that even if the statistics are forgotten, the lands and lives they involve are not.

FOOD SYSTEMS ARE EVOLVING QUICKLY TO MEET GROWING AND CHANGING DEMAND, BUT THEY ARE NOT SERVING EVERYONE’S NEEDS. As we modernize food systems to make them climate-smart, healthy, and sustainable, we must also strive to make them inclusive of smallholders, youth, women, conflict-affected people, and other poor and marginalized people.

Large-scale land acquisitions have increased in scale and pace due to changes in commodity markets, agricultural investment strategies, land prices, and a range of other policy and market forces. The areas most affected are the global “commons” – lands that local people traditionally use collectively — including much of the world’s forests, wetlands, and rangelands. In some cases land acquisition occurs with environmental objectives in sight – including the setting aside of land as protected areas for biodiversity conservation.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the institutional arrangements for gaining access to land and natural resources in southern Benin. This study analyses these practices in two zones, the Allada region and the coastal zone around the city of Ouidah, each of which has particular conditions of access to land.

The Lawra district of the Upper West region was selected as the case study. This study compared crop yields for FMNR and non-FMNR farmers. FMNR farmers are classified as having at least 8 trees per acre, with an average of 13 trees per acre (33 per ha) and a maximum of 40. Non-FMNR farmers are classified as having between 1 and 7 trees per acre, with an average of 5.Qualitative (focus group discussion) and quantitative (household survey) data were collected in April to May 2019. Over 500 households were interviewed in both CIKOD intervention communities and control sites.

The Government of Ethiopia and more specifically, the Rural Land Administration and Use Directorate, (RLAUD) has identified land use planning as an important tool for the sustainable development of the country. Land use planning is vital for optimising the use of the land and for reconciling conflicts between different land uses. Land use planning should be carried out at different levels – from national to regional to local including community: these different levels should support and integrate with each other.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the nature and scope of the linkages between the resource environments, livelihoods and food security of households and individuals. These are analyzed using the livelihood systems framework with the biophysical environment as the entry point. The biophysical and socio-economic environments are investigated as the conditioning and influencing factors that help define the relationships along the production-consumption continuum. The context is spatial, in this case that of fragile areas, where most of the poor and food insecure live and work.

Dust storms are capable of transporting sediment over thousands of kilometers, but due to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region’s proximity to the Sahara Desert, the region is one of the dustiest in the world. While natural sources such as the Sahara are the main contributors to dust storms in MENA, land-use changes and human-induced climate change has added anthropogenic sources as well.

Resilience-building planning in drylands requires a participatory, integrated approach that incorporates issues of scale (often large scale) and the interconnectedness of dryland ecological and social systems. In an often political environment that supports small, “manageable” administrative units and the decentralisation of power and resources to them, planning at large scale is particularly challenging; development agents in particular may find it difficult to work across administrative boundaries and/or collaboratively.

The original entry point for this study was how to optimize long-term rotation strategies for addressing the problem of soil fertility decline in Wenchi, Ghana. However, as the study progressed over time, it was realized that what we initially interpreted as soil fertility management strategies were closely intertwined with wider issues such as cropping systems, livelihood aspirations and land tenure relations.

Influenced by international trends, as well as in response to population, climate, resource and development needs, the standards, norms, mechanisms and incentives in natural resources law at the national level have evolved in recent years. Natural resources laws are influenced by developments in the international arena, either through international treaties that are binding or through ‘soft law’ instruments that are not legally binding but nevertheless have widespread adherence among governments, or that provide principles that guide and shape national legislation.