This bulletin focuses on land tenure regularisation (LTR), with articles from practitioners to accompany the new LEGEND report Securing land rights at scale: eight lessons and guiding principles on land tenure regularisation.

This article highlights the continued significance of pre-capitalist formations in shaping the trajectory of economic transition in peripheral regions, even in an era of neo-liberal globalisation. There is a tendency for Marxist scholars to assume the inevitable “dominance” of capitalism over older modes of production. Using a case study from Nepal's far eastern Tarai, this paper seeks to understand the reproduction of feudal social relations in a region which is both accessible and integrated into regional and global markets.

Water is absent in the ‘Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of Food Security’ (FAO, 2012). This paper explored whether and how the people-centred approaches and the human rights values that underpin this document can be better applied in the water sector and how more recognition of the land-water interface can support this.

The article analyses the changes of agricultural production development and the demand of rural planning in the post-reform period. The main aim of the research is to identify the problems of land use and the formation of farms as the territorial-production structures in Lithuania as well as to analyse the possibilities of finding solutions to them. Tendencies of the decrease of the number of rural residents and farms were determined, the regulation of which is possible by improving working and living conditions in rural areas by means of public support measures.

Groundwater irrigation for smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa is growing in extent and importance. This growth is primarily driven spontaneously by the farmers themselves, spurred by improved access to low-cost technologies for pumps and drilling services as well as market opportunities for produce. This paper presents a review of the current status and knowledge of the prospects and constraints for sustainable and pro-poor groundwater irrigation in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Recent research on payments for environmental services (PES) has observed that high transaction costs (TCs) are incurred through the implementation of PES schemes and farmer participation. TCs incurred by households are considered to be an obstacle to the participation in and efficiency of PES policies. This study aims to understand transactions related to previous forest plantation programmes and to estimate the actual TCs incurred by farmers who participated in these programmes in a mountainous area of northwestern Vietnam.

Ever since the oil, financial and food crises of 2008, sub-Saharan Africa has witnessed a marked increase in large-scale investment in agricultural land. The drivers of this investment are varied and include growing food, water and energy insecurity as well as social and economic interests of investors and recipient countries. The shape of these investments and their eventual outcomes are equally influenced by the existing land and water governance systems in the host countries.

This study examines the socioeconomic features that underpin the expansion of groundwater-dependent irrigation in Northern State, Sudan. Groundwater development in the region serves as an economic lifeline given the poor Nile-based irrigation infrastructure and future changes in Nile hydrology. Groundwater-dependent irrigation is found to be expanding in previously uncultivated regions increasingly distant from the Nile.

The demand for rice (Oryza sativa) in Ghana is increasing at a rate of 11.8% from 939, 920 t in 2010. Though there has been some increase in production it does not match the increase in consumption. This study seeks to determine the most suitable areas for inland valley rice cultivation using computer based models for selected sites (15km by 15km) in the Brong Ahafo Region (BAR) and Western Region (WR) of Ghana. A sensitivity analysis was carried out by excluding the least contributing parameters and varying their weights to determine highly suitable areas.