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.

Meeting the Sustainable Development Goals requires drylands sustainability. Treating drylands as global environmental commons enables better tailored governance responses. Key nested governance elements for drylands involve setting goals, monitoring and delivering sanctions across scales. The present global governance system for drylands only partially delivers these elements. Drylands require a particular focus on linking local and global governance.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In recent years, there has been growing attention and effort towards securing the formal, legal recognition of land rights for Indigenous Peoples and local communities. Communities and Indigenous Peoples are estimated to hold as much as 65 percent of the world’s land area under customary systems, yet many governments formally recognize their rights to only a fraction of those lands. This gap—between what is held by communities and what is recognized by governments—is a major driver of conflict, disrupted investments, environmental degradation, climate change, and cultural extinction.

Rangelands provide numerous goods and services that have great economic, social, cultural, and biological value. Inhabitants of rangelands have engineered pastoral, hunter-gatherer, and farming systems that have sustained their livelihoods in these usually dry environments for centuries. Primarily, rangelands are grazing-dependent systems, characterised by dry periods and droughts. However, these characteristics should not be a barrier to development and can be managed through careful planning and management of resources.

The Sustainable Rangeland Management Project (SRMP) aims at securing land and resource rights of pastoralists, agro-pastoralists and crop farmers, while improving land management by supporting village and district land use planning and rangeland management in Kiteto, Bahi, Chamwino and Kondoa Districts in Tanzania. More broadly, it aims at influencing policy formulation and implementation on these issues.

Local and indigenous communities across the world are advancing innovative sustainable development solutions that work for people and for nature. Few publications or case studies tell the full story of how such initiatives evolve, the breadth of their impacts, or how they change over time. Fewer still have undertaken to tell these stories with community practitioners themselves guiding the narrative. The Equator Initiative aims to fill that gap.

Local and indigenous communities across the world are advancing innovative sustainable development solutions that work for people and for nature. Few publications or case studies tell the full story of how such initiatives evolve, the breadth of their impacts, or how they change over time. Fewer still have undertaken to tell these stories with community practitioners themselves guiding the narrative. The Equator Initiative aims to fill that gap.