This study assesses the determinants of forest land allocation to households in the forest tenure reforms in China in the period 1980-2005 using data from three provinces in Southern China; Fujian, Jiang Xi and Yunnan. Furthermore, it assesses the current level of tenure security on forest land and how this tenure security is affected by past and more recent policy changes.

Local governance has become increasingly significant as devolution from central and provincial levels is being attempted in India as a result of the enactment of the 73rd and 74th Amendment of the Constitution in 1993. The essence of local self governance is to enable a small community to maintain access and control over their natural and physical resources, to take collective decisions in the common public good and to provide resources in priority developmental actions. Another dimension of local self governance is to demand accountability from people in public positions.

A recommendation: Indonesia should repeal its export tax on crude palm oil and discontinue buffer stock operations and directed sales from public estates. It is time for Indonesia to complete the evolution from public interventions in the palm oil market to private sector initiative in response to international price signals.Debate on Indonesia's palm oil policy was stimulated by a sharp increase in cooking oil prices in 1994-95 and a resulting increase in the export tax rate on crude palm oil. Palm oil has been one of the fastest growing subsectors in Indonesia.

Previous studies of land contracts have focused more on efficiency questions than on determinants of access to land and dynamics of access. By looking closely at the question of access to land, the authors conclude:land rental contracts more friendly to the poor than land sales markets to access land.

The paper considers: the question of whether the process of population ageing affects the ways in which land is passed on between members of different generationsthe likely implications of ageing-related changes in intergenerational transfers for food production in developing countriesThe paper concentrates primarily on rural population ageing in contexts where the individual ownership of land or natural resources is a predominant socio-economic phenomenon, although it also considers communal ownership situations.The authors conclude that: the need to conceptualize the elderly as a neces

This Bostwana government report examines the linkages between land rights and both rural and urban poverty in Botswana, which constitute a strong element of the Bostwana PRSP. Its basis for this arises out of a need to adjust the land policy and land laws, administration and management to the changes being brought about by economic development and associated urbanisation in Botswana.

The objective of this technical paper is to shed insights on ways of reversing the spiraling decline of the land and the economy in rural Rwanda, with focus on the forces behind productivity decline in the Rwandan agricultural sector. The results are based on collaborative research between the Rwandan Ministry of Agriculture and Michigan State University.Among the key findings are that Rwandan farmers need to sustain and intensify their farming by pro-tecting the soil against erosion.

This paper is a report on anthropological fieldwork on the civil society movements in northeastern Thailand. The case of Kok Hin Khao land rights conflicts in the district of Nam Phong of Khon Kaen province was thoroughly examined to understand the current dynamics of civil society in the Northeast.It is argued that the discrepancy between the government's development rhetoric and what actually happened at the grassroots level has laid the ground for the emergence of contemporary civil society to protect its own interests.

The violence which followed the contested December 2007 Kenyan election was, arguably, an opportunity for historical grievances to be settled. This paper focuses on the land issue in regards to Kenya, asserting that land is a primary cause of conflcit in the country as it has been the crux of economic, cultural and socio-economic change.

Paper systematically evaluates the political economy of Zimbabwe's emerging land policy in the 1990s in the context of other land reform programmes in Southern Africa.

This paper examines the fundamentals of Mozambican land policy from a livelihoods perspective and identifies considerable potential for improving the sustainability of rural livelihoods and the flexibility and cost effectiveness of policy instruments aimed at increasing security of tenure.The paper examines the impact of the cancellation of private land applications in one province, and argues that, notwithstanding the apparent official reluctance to implement this element of the policy, the impact has been almost wholly beneficial for local community groups.Challenges to land policy framew

It has been argued that many of the poverty reduction strategy papers pay insufficient attetion to the role of land access and land distribution in rural poverty. Redressing the inequalities between small-scale and large-scale farming sectots is likely to be an important element of an effective rural poverty reduction strategy in countries such as Zimbabwe and Kenya.