This contribution analyses how indigenous land disputes have taken place within a political process and the political responses to land tenure disputes. It does so by analysing the case of the Comunidad Zona Lacandona (Lacandon Community; Chiapas, Mexico) and the land tenure disputes in which it has been involved during the period 1972–2012.

The dry rangelands of West Asia and North Africa are fragile and severely degraded due to low rainfall and mismanagement of natural resources. Rainwater harvesting (RWH) interventions are used to increase soil moisture content, vegetation cover, and productivity. However, adoption of rainwater harvesting by communities is slow. To understand adoption constraints and to develop options for sustainable integration of rainwater harvesting, a benchmark watershed was established in the dry rangelands of Jordan.

This article explores the gendered experience of monocrop oil-palm expansion in a Hibun Dayak community in Sanggau District, West Kalimantan (Indonesia). It shows how the expanding corporate plantation and contract farming system has undermined the position and livelihood of indigenous women in this already patriarchal community. The shifting of land tenure from the community to the state and the practice of the ‘family head’ system of smallholder plot registration has eroded women's rights to land, and women are becoming a class of plantation labour.

The Northern Forest spans New York and three New England states and contains over 26 million ac, making it the largest contiguous forest east of the Mississippi. Most of the forestland is privately owned and public access to private land is a time-honored tradition in the region. Residents fear this tradition of open access may be threatened by recent acceleration in land tenure change across the region. We surveyed those who own 1,000 ac or more in the four-state region and found that newer owners were not more likely to post their land.

Land tenure and agricultural reforms are essential components of postwar development. The importance of land use and management systems to livelihood stability and economic growth is especially relevant in Rwanda, where eighty per cent of the population depends on subsistence agriculture in a rural system plagued by conflict over holdings and decreasing production.

This paper examines the role of the extended family on investments in children, usingdata from a retrospective survey of three generations in the rural Philippines. Econometricresults show that interactions between grandparent characteristics and child gendersignificantly affect the distribution of proposed land bequests between sons and daughters.However, grandparents significantly affect gender-specific investments in children'seducation only in resource-constrained families.

Elandskloof was the first land restitution case in post-apartheid South Africa in which the government returned land to a community. The communal property association became dysfunctional, and the courts placed it under government administration. In its haste to return land to the community in the aftermath of the apartheid system the state did not set up comprehensive planning and consultative processes within government institutions, the beneficiary community and NGOs before returning the land.