The technical guide on improving the governance of pastoral lands is designed for several audiences including government and non-government actors. It covers specific challenges of pastoral tenure that are unique to pastoralism and considers how these different facets of pastoralist tenure (issues of the commons; free, prior and informed consent (FPIC); gender etc.) can be combined in a coherent approach to securing pastoral lands.

This manual is designed to assist development organizations to respect the right to FPIC when developing and implementing projects affecting Indigenous Peoples. It contains a six-step procedure to facilitate the FPIC process while showing its benefits, as well as provides the regulatory framework to be used when mainstreaming Indigenous Peoples’ rights within organizations’ policies and standards.

The goal of the Rangelands Initiative is increased tenure security of local rangeland users through improved implementation of enabling policy and legislation. By connecting, mobilising and influencing, the Initiative strengthens ILC members’ activities in-country and across its continental platforms.

No.7 issue of the Rangelands Series goes through experiences of joint village land use agreements and planning.

The delineation and protection of transhumance corridors are increasingly seen as critical to maintaining livestock mobility in agropastoral areas of West Africa by allowing passage through areas of increasing cropping pressure. Understanding the local politics surrounding the mapping and protection of transhumance corridors is important for policy formulation. This study reports the findings of group meetings in nine local districts (communautés rurales) in eastern Senegal about recently mapped corridors.

This report provides a synoptic analysis of the legal and governance frameworks that relate to the use and management of mangrove forests globally. It highlights the range of challenges typically encountered in the governance and tenure dimensions of mangrove forest management. This assessment forms part of a broader study that includes national-level assessments in Indonesia and Tanzania. It was carried out under the USAID-funded Tenure and Global Climate Change Program.

This gender-sensitive toolkit enables civil society organisations, women and communities, as well as other actors to assess each country’s current legal framework and tenure governance arrangements in line with the provisions of the VGGTS and the AU F&G.

Kenya is the most recent African state to acknowledge customary tenure as producing lawful property rights, not merely rights of occupation and use on government or public lands. This paper researches this new legal environment. This promises land security for 6 to 10 million Kenyans, most of who are members of pastoral or other poorer rural communities. Analysis is prefaced with substantial background on legal trends continentally, but the focus is on Kenya’s Community Land Act, 2016, as the framework through which customary holdings are to be identified and registered.

Much of the international commons literature reveals a decreased functioning of local traditional institutions that regulate natural resource harvesting. In South Africa, it is believed that the creation of new democratic structures at the end of Apartheid has contributed significantly to the deterioration in traditional resource regulation and this in turn has led to the extensive resource degradation seen in parts of the country. Many of these assertions, though, remain anecdotal in nature.

Peer review is an essential part in the publication process, ensuring that Land maintains high quality standards for its published papers. In 2017, a total of 88 papers were published in the journal.[...]

An evaluation of landscape tradition, in Near and Middle East area, could emphasize a profound past of agricultural experience, as well as of landscape and garden art. In reference to this common past, Byzantine and Arabic landscape and garden art paradigms appear to be geographically and culturally correlated, as proved by a Byzantine 12th century folksong, presenting the construction of a villa, with its surrounding gardens and landscape formations, in the territory of Euphrates River.

Recognition and respect for tenure rights has long been recognized as an important concern for development, conservation, and natural resource governance. This paper discusses why secure tenure rights for local communities, indigenous peoples and women are central to good natural resource governance and important for livelihoods and human rights, as recognized in multiple international conventions. The paper reviews both challenges and opportunities for securing rights in practice and highlights successful cases of tenure reform.