Desertification is defined as land degradation occurring in the global drylands. It is one of the global problems targeted under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 15). The aim of this article is to review the history of desertification and to evaluate the scientific evidence for desertification spread and severity.

Land resources in montane highlands often represent common property prerequisites for the survival and sustenance of the human in communities that are dependent thereof.

Property rights are a cornerstone of economic development and social justice. A fundamental way of understanding the strength of property rights is through citizens' perceptions of them. Yet perceptions of tenure security have never been collected at a global scale.

This report uses household-level data from 33, mostly developing, countries to analyse perceptions of tenure insecurity among women. We test two hypotheses: (1) that women feel more insecure than men; and (2) that increasing statutory protections for women, for instance by issuing joint named titles or making inheritance law more gender equal, increases de facto tenure security.