Although world food and agricultural production, based on current trends, should be sufficient to meet demand in the decades ahead, the world still faces a serious food crisis that is as dangerous and life-threatening for millions of poor people today as in the past. The main objective of this article is to illuminate the world food situation and to make a critical analysis of the root causes of world food insecurity by identifying the various misconceptions surrounding our understanding of hunger, starvation and poverty.

Studies of the consequences of corruption have mainly focused on economic efficiency. This paper illustrates that corruption can also have distributional consequences. Corruption increases income inequality and poverty through lower economic growth; biased tax systems favoring the rich and well-connected; poor targeting of social programs; use of wealth by the well-to-do to lobby government for favorable policies that perpetuate inequality in asset ownership; lower social spending; unequal access to education; and a higher risk in investment decisions of the poor.

The purpose of this guide is to provide support to those who are assessing and designing appropriate responses to food insecurity and rural development situations. This guide aims to show where and why land tenure is an important issue in food security and sustainable rural livelihoods. The main objective of these guidelines is to provide detailed suggestions for consideration of land tenure issues in rural development policy.

Most land-based livelihoods rely on having secure access to land, a precondition for sustainable agriculture, economic growth and poverty reduction. This working paper examines the state of knowledge with regard to aspects of land reform- redistributive reform, land tenure reform, and the issue of land markets. It also addresses issues that remain unknown in areas of land and social equity, land administration, and land tax.Redistributive land reform aims to bring about an equitable distribution of land and the political power emanating from it.

Most approaches to poverty alleviation focus on income and subsidy measures; however, there is a growing realization that these measures alone are not sufficient. The growing amount of literature on the important role that “social capital” and institutions play in the development process indicates that there is a social-institutional dimension as well. This article focuses on the institutional dimension of rural poverty alleviation and outlines why institution- and capacity-building should be fundamental elements of any strategy aiming at alleviating rural poverty.

Recent years have seen pastoralist communities in Tanzania becoming increasingly impoverished and vulnerable, due to  livestock diseases, drought, fluctuating market prices and unfavourable policies. This paper discusses strategies to address the last of these factors with reference to the Ereto-Ngorongoro Pastoralist Project, which was set up in response to growing concern about the unprecedented and rising levels of poverty among pastoralists in Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA).

Secure land rights are important for development and poverty reduction and the greatest challenges for providing such rights are in urban, peri-urban areas, and the most productive rural areas. This publication updates and revises UN-HABITAT’s 2004 publication ‘Urban Land for All’, and stresses the need for policies that facilitate access to land for all sections of their existing and future populations – particularly those on low or irregular incomes.

The poor adapt and learn to live with poverty in a variety of ways. They also try to cope with shocks from events such as droughts, floods and loss of employment. Environmental resources play a vital role in their survival strategies. As the poor depend on environmental resources, one can expect them to have a stake in their preservation. Much of the damage done to natural resources is by others. Thus deforestation is much more an outcome of commercial logging for timber than fuelwood gathering by the poor.

Since Independence, India’s states have employed several land reform ‘tools,’ including reforming tenancy, imposing land ceilings, distributing government wasteland, and allocating house sites and homestead plots. This article briefly summarises some of these past efforts and attempts to draw broad lessons for informing possible policy paths ahead.To date, the authors argue, the effectiveness of the legislation has been mixed and progress over the last few years has slowed. But the link between rural poverty and landlessness remains.

The move towards decentralisation of resource control and management promises more efficient, equitable and sustainable resource use. Debate centres on what type of institutional arrangement in a given context is most appropriate and will lead to the fulfilment of the above ideal. Aspects of these arrangements include property rights structures as well as organisational structures.

This study examines the use and management of natural resources in an area of South Africa at a time of profound political and social change. It takes as its focus the Mutale River valley, which lies almost entirely within Venda, a former black 'homeland' under the South African system of apartheid, and now part of the Northern Province. Venda is situated in the north-eastern corner of the country, adjacent to the Kruger National Park and the border with Zimbabwe.

In urban areas of Cote d'Ivoire, human capital is the endowment that best explains welfare changes over time. In rural areas, physical capital especially the amount of land and farm equipment owned matters most.Empirical investigations of poverty in developing countries tend to focus on the incidence of poverty at a particular point in time. If the incidence of poverty increases, however, there is no information about how many new poor have joined the existing poor and how many people have escaped poverty.Yet this distinction is of crucial policy importance.