Land rights have become highly contested in Vietnam in recent years. Vietnam‟s land endowment is one of the lowest in the world: each agricultural household holds, on average, less than 0.5 hectare. Access to land is critical to social and economic development in the future. The national priority on “industrialization and modernization” has placed new demands on agricultural and forest land for urban-industrial expansion. The high level of public concern over land tenure and its links to political and social stability have led to widespread calls for revision of the 2003 Land Law.

A presentation about wetland conservation in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam and integrated farming systems. The presentation includes aerial photography of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam in different seasons. The presenter then discusses soil formation, hydrology, land uses (including data on rice exports and shrimp demand), and threats to the region. Finally, the presenter discusses integrated farming systems, research and applications.

This sourcebook is intended to be a
ready reference for practitioners (including World Bank
stakeholders, clients in borrowing countries, and World Bank
project leaders) seeking state-of-the-art information about
good land management approaches, innovations for
investments, and close monitoring for potential scaling up.
This sourcebook is divided into three parts: the first part
identifies the need and scope for sustainable land

As in other societies in Southeast Asia
and the Pacific, customary social organization features
strongly in rural Timor-Leste. As well as providing avenues
for conflict resolution, the influence of customary systems
extends to land tenure. As the state, development partners,
private investors, non-governmental organizations (NGOs),
and others seek to promote rural development in Timor-Leste,
they will be forced to engage in some way with customary

Since the early 1980s, the Government of
Niger and its development partners have invested more than
200 billion West African Francs (FCFA) in programs will
promote sustainable land management (SLM) and other
activities to reduce poverty and vulnerability. Overall,
more than 50 programs have promoted SLM in Niger. Despite
large investments in SLM programs, their impacts on land
management, agricultural production, poverty, and other

Declining soil fertility due to
inadequate farming practices, deforestation and overgrazing
are among the primary impediments to increased agricultural
productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa. These causal factors,
driven by social, economic and political forces, manifest
themselves in market, policy and institutional failures,
inappropriate technologies and practices. This is also the
case in Tanzania where over 90 percent of the population is

The objectives of the study are to
assess the impact of operational efforts in farmland
restructuring and sustainable agricultural land management
on vulnerability amongst rural households in Tajikistan; and
to provide context and improve strategies for current
operations in land reform, rural growth and sustainable land
management given the challenges of economic transition,
institutional, economic and environmental fragility, and the

Improving the productivity of
smallholder farms in Sub-Saharan Africa offers the best
chance to reduce poverty among this generation of rural
poor, by building on the limited resources farming
households already possess. It is also the best and shortest
path to meet rising food needs. Using examples from
farmers' maize and rice fields, and comparisons with
Asia, this paper examines why the set of technologies

This review of the on-budget expenditure
of the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation (MALR)
in Egypt describes the broad outline of the MARL's
expenditures and identifies key themes and issues. The
report examines how the context of the agricultural sector
has changed, and the adjustment challenge that such change
poses for the MALR. It explains how the MALR is thinking
about the future, describes the structures of the MALR, and

ABSTRACTED FROM THE INTRODUCTION: This study investigates the impact of a specific legal change to land rights in Vietnam. Land rights are an important issue in Vietnam, where agriculture accounts for nearly a quarter of gross domestic product (GDP) and two-thirds of the workforce is engaged in agricultural activities. Agricultural land in Vietnam was decollectivized in 1988, and land-use rights were granted to households.We focus on the subsequent land law of 1993, which gave house- holds the right to inherit, transfer, exchange, lease, and mortgage their land-use rights.

Stakeholders' perceptions of
opportunities and constraints to sustainable land management
in Ethiopia was assessed through interviews and a review of
secondary data. Stakeholders included farmers as well as
representatives of development agencies, agricultural
organizations, donors, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs),
and agricultural research systems. Stakeholders generally
perceive that the numerous, well-intentioned but piecemeal

This paper reviews past studies on the
costs of land degradation in Ethiopia, with a view to
drawing implications for policies, programs, and future
research on sustainable land management (SLM). Given the
wide range of methods and assumptions used in the studies,
their findings concerning annual costs of land degradation
relative to agricultural gross domestic product (AGDP) are
of remarkably similar magnitude. The minimum estimated