These Country Profiles represent a new edition of a continent-wide set of profiles prepared and published by the Land Tenure Center in 1986. This new volume reflects a decade of intensive work on the continent by LTC and a very considerable deepening of knowledge and understanding of land tenure issues in Africa. It addresses events of the past ten years, which have been substantial in many of the countries covered. Land tenure continues to be a volatile policy domain. The standard topics from the earlier profiles have been revised to take into account new development concerns.

The current level of per capita production of rice in Bangladesh can be sustained only through increased yields of modern rice varieties.The recent growth of food grain (primarily rice) production in Bangladesh has outpaced population growth largely because of the spread of green revolution technology. The transition from being labeled a "basket case" in the early 1970s to the virtual elimination of rice imports in the early 1990s is particularly remarkable considering the severe land constraint in Bangladesh.

Report finds that land rights in Ethiopia are highly insecure, and higher tenure security and transferability could enhance investment and agricultural productivity. Trying to identify and implement measures to increase producers’ tenure security could have a large pay-off in terms of rural productivity and poverty reduction.The authors use a large data set from Ethiopia that differentiates tenure security and transferability to explore determinants of different types of land-related investment and its possible impact on productivity.

Argues for certain basic re-thinking in the policy options for viable watershed management by combining local knowledge with the formal science through rejuvenated or revitalized traditional institutions. Part one reviews the policy environment in the light of some of the recent reports in India which have a major bearing on watershed development programs.

This study provides a concise overview of the information available on the land rights of indigenous peoples, with a focus on those in developing countries and countries with economies in transition. Successive chapters summarise the rights of indigenous peoples in international law and then examine how these rights are being recognised, or not, in Latin America, Africa and the Asia-Pacific.

This article explores the history of notions of land ownership among Mongolian pastoralists in a historical context.In the 1990s the Mongolian state implemented a series of reforms designed to create a competitive market economy based on private property. These included the wholesale privatisation of the pastoral economy and the dissolution of the collective and state farms. The Asian Development Bank and other international development agencies advocated new legislation to allow the private ownership of land.

This paper argues that legal reform of land tenure will not take place fast enough to enable developing countries to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation through REDD+. It highlights that a global agreement on REDD+ is needed by 2020, if the mechanism is to have a significant impact on mitigating climate change. However, legally defensible and enforceable land tenure rights, while a key enabling condition for effective and equitable REDD+, will not be achieved in most forest countries before this date.

Growing populations and economic change resulting from globalisation and climate change are increasing pressure on land, particularly in urbanising countries. This exposes many of those occupying and using land, particularly the poor and women, to risks resulting from tenure insecurity. Customary practices in land management are giving way to market-based statutory systems of land tenure.

This study contends that Zambia cannot develop if it neglects policy for the efficient utilization of its natural resources. One such area has been the absence of land policy for effective management of rural land.While failure in this area has been attributed to a number of factors, notably absence of credit and funding, this paper contends that the base factor is the absence of efficient land management for rural land.This paper attempts to show that rural land in Zambia remains undeveloped for a number of reasons:The absence of an institutional framework to guide land administration.

Those who led southern African states to independence promised to redress the inequalities of settler colonialism by returning the land to the people. A generation later the rural poor are still waiting. Many lack access and full rights to agricultural land and, as developments in Zimbabwe and South Africa show, they are getting angry. Where did post-independence land reform policy go wrong?

Agriculture plays an important role in climate change, both as a contributor emitting greenhouse gasses (GHGs) and as a potential reducer of negative impacts. This paper gives an overview of how current and proposed agricultural practices affect climate change and how the proposed measures for mitigation and adaptation impact agriculture. The paper states that industrial agriculture, as currently practiced with monocultures and agrochemicals in a globalised production system, is a major contributor to climate change.

The objective of the research that this policy brief reports on is to analyse different mechanisms of access to land for the rural poor in an era when redistribution through expropriative land reform is largely inconsistent with the forces of political economy. The roads of access to land which are explored are intra-family transfers, access through community membership, land sales and rental markets, and government programmes including decollectivisation and land-market assisted land reform.