Valuations of tenure rights are required by the State and by the private sector for a wide variety of reasons, often forming and informing the basis of transactions, taxation, compensation and accounting. Value and the valuation process form a part of our everyday lives, and yet these are often shrouded in mystery and are not clearly understood.

This technical guide on Governing land for women and men aims to assist implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (FAO, 2012b) by providing guidance that supports the Guidelines’ principle of gender equality in tenure governance. At the beginning of each module, reference is made to the relevant provisions in the Guidelines.

Decisions about resource tenure – or who can use what resources of the land for how long, and under what conditions – are among the most critical for forests and livelihoods in many contexts.

Resources, including minerals and metals, underpin the world’s economies for almost all sectors, providing crucial raw materials for their industrial processes. Despite efforts to decouple economies from resource use towards a circular economy, demand for extractive resources will continue to grow on the back of emerging economies. The report maps existing international governance frameworks and initiatives which have overlapping subsets that focus on delivering the 2030 Global Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Rangelands cover a surface area of more than 2 million hectares in Cameroon. Despite their relatively unpredictable climate and unproductive nature they provide a wide variety of goods and services including forage for livestock, habitat for wildlife, water and minerals, woody products, recreational services, nature conservation as well as acting as carbon sinks. Rangelands in Cameroon are predominantly grassland savanna with three types distinguishable: the Guinean savanna, Sudan savanna (also known as ‘derived montane grasslands’), and the Sahel savanna.

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.

Transparency is often seen as a means of improving governance and accountability of investment, but its potential to do so is hindered by vague definitions and failures to focus on the needs of key local actors.

After the Doi Moi (‘renovation’) reforms in Vietnam from 1986, land ownership rules were adjusted, effectively terminating former land collectivisation efforts. While land ownership remained fully under the control of the state, a 1993 land law conferred 20-year leaseholds to most farmers. They could now utilize farm land individually, and sell, swap and mortgage the land in a situation similar to private ownership. These leaseholds are now expiring and a new 2013 land law is in the making.

Land governance can be briefly described as how property rights to land, for groups or individuals, are defined, enforced, can be exchanged, and transformed. Land governance is argued to be a key to sustainable development and poverty reduction. In India, as well as in Bihar, land has enormous economic, social, and symbolic relevance. The present paper is an attempt to understand the issue of land governance from different perspective.

Issues relating to land are specifically referred to in five of the United Nations’ (UN) 17 Sustainable Development Goals, and UN-Habitat’s Global Land Tools Network views access to land and tenure security as key to achieving sustainable, inclusive and efficient cities. The African continent is growing in importance, with climate change and population pressure on land. This review explores an interdisciplinary approach, and identifies recent advances in geo-spatial technology relevant to land governance in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

This discussion paper on the “VGGT and National Policies on the Governance of Tenure”3

 has

been commissioned by the Asian NGO Coalition (ANGOC) as a member of the Philippine

Development Forum – Working Group on Sustainable Rural Development (PDF-SRD).4 This

paper examines national policies as embodied in the 1987 Philippine Constitution and the

major land and natural resource laws passed by the Philippine legislature. This research is