"This study highlights lessons from recent policy, law and practice to improve and secure access to rural land for poorer groups. It focuses on Africa, Latin America and Asia, while also referring to experience from Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Land is the repository of memory and keeps traces of the past in the absence of a strong written tradition. It is perceived as an open book from which anyone can read and learn about local history: place names, old roads, legends and stories attached to places.

Presumption of a direct causal link between formalisation of property rights
and economic productivity is back on the international development agenda.
Belief in such a direct causal relationship had been abandoned in the early

The twentieth century will go down in history as a century when Africa fulfilled the dismal Hobbesian prediction. Africa has become the one continent in the world where human life is hardly worth living because of the man-made problems of inequality and impoverishment.

Land degradation is caused by removal of vegetation cover and subsequent fertility loss. Frequent
assessment of land use changes and their effects on soil and vegetation in ranches is critical to their