Transition from subsistence to market economy is not easy. In Papua New Guinea most land is still held under traditional systems of common property resource ownership and a growing cash economy can spark conflict concerning management or ownership issues. Research presented at the annual meeting of the UK Development Studies Association (DSA) examines the institutional limitations, during transition, of traditional ownership systems.

This paper examines the effect of climate change on pastoralist conflict in Africa. The rangelands of East Africa is particularly vulnerable to drought, which is associated with climate change. In this respect, the paper focuses its analysis on changes in resource availability contrasting cases of abundance and scarcity. The authors clarify that the role of resources is further contextualised by competing notions of property rights, and the role of the state in defining property and associated rights.

This paper constructs a framework for and reviews studies on property rights reforms in the agricultural and natural resources sector. In the case of agrarian reform, several hypotheses are posited: that agrarian reform will increase the rate of capital accumulation of beneficiaries and improve tenurial security, but may have negative impacts on land access, investments of landowners, and efficiency of land use. For the natural resources sector, the implications of open access and promotion of property rights are surveyed for the Philippine case.

This paper addresses the issue of land security and sustainability. The paper tackles the assumption that, in the case of China, giving farmers more secure land rights would undermine the function of land as a social safety net and, as a consequence, not be sustainable or command broad support.The report draws on data from three provinces, one of which had adopted a policy to increase security of tenure in advance of the others.

This paper identifies key issues and develops guidelines for conducting research on the relationships between property rights and technology adoption in smallholder agriculture.The topics addressed in the paper are: definition of scope and termskey issues pertaining to the relationships between technology adoption and property rights variables data collection and measurement issuesanalyses and interpretation of findings The primary target groups for this paper are researchers and policy analysts wishing to undertake or interpret empirical research

This paper examines the decline of common property resources in the arid zone of Rajasthan in India and the factors underlying the decline.The article concludes that:well-intentioned public programmes like land reformcan deprive a region of its comparative advantage in a key economic activity (in this case livestock farming)privatisation raises the cost of livestock raising and, hence, erodes the the region's comparative advantagethe continuing shrinkage and degradation of common property resources is likely to force further reduction in the size of livestock holdings and changes in their c

This study assesses the determinants of forest land allocation to households in the forest tenure reforms in China in the period 1980-2005 using data from three provinces in Southern China; Fujian, Jiang Xi and Yunnan. Furthermore, it assesses the current level of tenure security on forest land and how this tenure security is affected by past and more recent policy changes.

Better protection of property rights can affect several development outcomes, including better management of natural resources. This bibliography and rapid review is concerned with two principal outcomes:  reduction in investors risk and increase in incentives to invest, and improvements in household welfare.The literature search was completed both in academic journals and aggregator databases, specifically Google Scholar and Scopus, and the DFID database R4D.The outline of the Rapid Review on Property Rights paper:

How Africans access – or ‘own’ – their landholdings is a matter of profound importance for the continent’s future. It touches on social welfare as well as prospects for economic development. This policy briefing provides an overview of the land question, drawing heavily on the Country Review Reports (CRRs) of the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM). It argues that weak property rights are a major problem for Africa, but cautions against an assumption that full titling is an immediate solution.

The ‘war on drugs’ has failed. Despite an increase in law enforcement, production levels of coca – the crop used to make cocaine – have hardly altered in the last decade.A 2017 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found that coca cultivation in Colombia had increased by 52 per cent; thus, there is an urgent need to find alternative policies to counter illicit behaviour.

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.

Explores how the institutions of property rights and collective action play a particularly important role in the application of technologies for agricultural and natural resource management.Technologies with long time frames tend to require tenure security to provide sufficient incentives for adoption, while those that operate on a large spatial scale will require collective action to coordinate.