This paper explores the phenomenon of land grabbing in Africa, including the key drivers and policy responses.

This brief produced for the Dialogue Initiative on Large-Scale Land Acquisitions and their Alternatives provides an overview of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), the most inclusive international and intergovernmental platform to facilitate and coordinate work to ensure food security and nutrition for all.

You can get involved in the CFS through the Civil Society Mechanism. Check out http://cso4cfs.org/ to connect with your constituency and sub-regional focal points.

 

This lesson brief explores alternative biofuel production schemes in Tanzania and their impacts on rural land rights and local livelihoods.

The position paper provides an updated insight on the role that urban agriculture can play in pursuing the Millennium Development Goals and more specifically MDG 1 and 7, related to poverty reduction, food security, and environmental sustainability. It intends to raise awareness and inform decision makers and planners of the different aspects of urban agriculture, which entails a broad range of activities, related to the food production and distribution chain, within natural resources planning and use including urban and peri-urban forestry.

The United Nations predicts that over the next 25 years nearly all population growth will be in the cities of the developing world. At current rates, 60% of the world’s total population will live in cities by 2030. As the cities grow, so does the number of urban poor. Unemployment, hunger, and malnutrition are commonplace. In the big city, most of any cash income the poor might bring home goes to feeding themselves and staying alive; any food that does not have to be bought is a bonus.

The United Nations predicts that over the next 25 years nearly all population growth will be in the cities of the developing world. At current rates, 60% of the world’s total population will live in cities by 2030. As the cities grow, so does the number of urban poor. Unemployment, hunger, and malnutrition are commonplace. In the big city, most of any cash income the poor might bring home goes to feeding themselves and staying alive; any food that does not have to be bought is a bonus.

The position paper provides an updated insight on the role that urban agriculture can play in pursuing the Millennium Development Goals and more specifically MDG 1 and 7, related to poverty reduction, food security, and environmental sustainability. It intends to raise awareness and inform decision makers and planners of the different aspects of urban agriculture, which entails a broad range of activities, related to the food production and distribution chain, within natural resources planning and use including urban and peri-urban forestry.

Enormous improvements in human welfare have taken place over the past two centuries, but these have been unevenly distributed and have come at a lasting cost of degradation of our natural environment. At the same time, we cannot stop the engines of growth, because much more economic progress is still needed in order for people in developing countries to have a decent living. But using the traditional environmentally irresponsible development paths is no longer defensible.

Environmental change and adaptation
in degraded agro-ecosystems: the case
of highland Madagascar
Jon Unruh*, Bill McConnell** and Joe Rodman†
Area (2010) 42.3, 359–368

This issue brief argues that before ASEAN could engage in
meaningful dialogue with NGOs, it will first have to grapple with
a number of issues, namely, (1) food security for farmers that
likewise promotes poverty eradication and rural development; (2)
property rights as a fundamental human right of farmers; (3)
ensuring justice in poverty eradication and rural development
efforts; and (4) economic growth as a precursor for social
development.

This paper calls attention to the ambiguity of SAARC’s position
on the importance of land rights, as well as to the absence
of an official declaration from SAARC on land rights and issues
as these relate to farmers in the region. Judging by its official
documents, SAARC has no clear profile of the poor in South Asia.
At the minimum, SAARC needs to recognize the interrelatedness
of poverty alleviation, agricultural production, food security and
land rights/access to land. SAARC has yet to implement a program

LAND DISPUTE RESOLUTION IN MOZAMBIQUE:
EVIDENCE AND INSTITUTIONS OF AGROFORESTRY
TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION
Jon Unruh
This paper was also released as CAPRi Working Paper No. 12 and is available at
http://www.capri.cgiar.org/wp/capri.cgiar.org/wp/capriwp12.asp.