The Malagasy land reform, ongoing since 2005, belongs to the new generation of land reforms. It promotes the legal recognition of existing landholders’ rights (through certification) and the decentralization of land management. Despite the change of paradigm underlying this new wave of reforms, premises and expectations remain unchanged: a) rights legalization is justified by large tenure insecurity and b) rights formalization is a prerequisite to reduce conflicts over land rights, improve access to credit, boost productive investments and stimulate land markets.

This case study focuses on the capacity of local communities to monitor biodiversity and resources in Madagascar, Nicaragua, Philippines and Tanzania. It makes a controlled comparison between local community monitoring and trained scientists’ monitoring and conclude that local and indigenous communities generate similar and equally good outputs as the trained scientists, and are much more cost efficient. The cases suggest that it is fully possible to build a cheap and effective MRV system based on community monitoring of Non-Carbon Benefits

Utaran began work on the Sustainable Access to Land Equality (SALE) project to ensure transparency and accountability in land governance in December 2012, in partnership with CARE Internaional UK and Manusher Jonno Foundaion (MJF). The project engaged communiies in three pilot upazilas - Amtali Upazila of Barguna District, Mohanpur

of Rajshahi, and Sadar of Jamalpur-to raise the awareness of vulnerable landowners about land administraion, and to effect transparent processes for selecing landless people and for khasland setlement.

Communiqué final de l’atelier régional intitulé « Vers une sécurisation foncière du paysan dans la riziculture à grande échelle au Sahel ». L'atelier s’est tenu à Bamako, Mali, les 2 et 3 juin 2014.

This is the Final Communiqué from a regional workshop on the theme: “Towards security of tenure for farmers in large scale irrigated rice schemes in the Sahel” which was held on 2nd and 3rd June 2014 in Bamako, Mali.

A província nortenha de Nampula é rica em recursos naturais, com especial enfoque para os recursos florestais, explorados há vários anos por operadores nacionais e estrangeiros. Ao abrigo do quadro jurídico-legal sobre as florestas, deu-se início, a partir de 2005, a implementação da obrigação de canalização de 20% das taxas de exploração florestal e faunística, para as comunidades locais das áreas de exploração dos recursos naturais.

The Millennium Challenge Corporation's Rick Gaynor discusses how the Voluntary Guidelines for Land Tenure help to strengthen women farmer's claims to land and improve food security around the world.

In Southeast Asia, shifting cultivation is still predominantly practiced by the poorest segment of the population. Around 40 million people living in forest-agricultural lands from the ASEAN countries still depend considerably on shifting cultivation, also referred to as swidden farming and rotational farming, for income and livelihoods. Traditionally considered as a sustainable practice, it is now fast becoming one of the causes of forest degradation.

In Asia “indigenous peoples” as a term is contentious. The fact remains, however, that the individual and collective rights of peoples who self-identify as indigenous peoples are being violated on a daily basis. All too often, their territories are sacrificed and expropriated for state-sponsored development and corporate projects that lead to gross and wide-scale violations of their collective rights, especially regarding their lands, territories, and resources.

The Impact of Traditional Landholding Certificates on Social Differentiation 

2014

Unfolding analysis reveals two types of land disputes prevalent in postwar northern Uganda: cases that involve a legitimate cause of action and those that do not.1 Since mediation and alternative forms of dispute resolution rely on parties’ willingness to negotiate in good faith, cases featuring ‘bad faith’ and land grabbing—where powerful parties intentionally exploit another person’s vulnerability in order to illegally2 claim land—pose a serious challenge for local land dispute mediators. Such mediators must wrestle with whether and how to remain neutral in the face of injustice.