As decentralisation and tenure reform sweeps through the Sahel, doubts remain whether communities can look after commonly owned land. Is privatisation or state control the best means of preventing the degradation of resources? Can local communities forge institutional mechanisms to regulate competing claims on common resources?
Search results
Showing items 1 through 9 of 18.-
Library ResourceJanuary, 2002Burkina Faso, Senegal, Sudan, Niger, Ethiopia, Sub-Saharan Africa
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Library ResourceJanuary, 2002Eswatini, South Africa, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Sub-Saharan Africa
Tenure reform aims to secure people's land rights. In Southern Africa most so-called 'communal' land, reserved for Africans, is still held by the state. In these areas, land rights are increasingly insecure. Yet, the confirmation of the rights of those who have long occupied and used the land lags behind programmes that aim to transfer white-held land to Africans. Many colonial and apartheid land laws are still in force, particularly those relating to chiefs, who resist any reduction to their power.
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Library ResourceJanuary, 2004Equatorial Guinea, Central African Republic, Cameroon, Congo, India, Gabon, Thailand, Oceania, Sub-Saharan Africa, Southern Asia, Eastern Asia
Over ten million people have been displaced from protected areas by conservation projects. Forced displacement in developing countries is a major obstacle to reducing poverty. It should no longer be considered a mainstream strategy for conservation and only applied in extreme cases following international standards.
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Library ResourceJanuary, 2002South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Sub-Saharan Africa
Those who led southern African states to independence promised to redress the inequalities of settler colonialism by returning the land to the people. A generation later the rural poor are still waiting. Many lack access and full rights to agricultural land and, as developments in Zimbabwe and South Africa show, they are getting angry. Where did post-independence land reform policy go wrong?
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Library ResourceJanuary, 2002
Everyone agrees that logging and agriculture can cause deforestation. But does shifting cultivation, or ‘slash and burn’ farming destroy forests particularly? Are local farmers solely to blame? Recent research by Overseas Development Institute (ODI) suggests the role of shifting farming in starting forest fires has been exaggerated. It is not, in fact, a major cause of biodiversity loss. The report finds that the causes of deforestation are many and varied, and that governments and international investors are also responsible.
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Library ResourceJanuary, 2003
Land policies in Africa have often overlooked the interests of certain social groups. In some areas, traditional access and ownership rights for women, migrants and pastoralists have been ignored or reduced. The rise of HIV/AIDS in the region has created new social groups who are vulnerable to discrimination by land policies. As new policies are formed in the region, it is important to consider why these groups have been excluded. This will help to ensure that future policies represent these groups more fairly.
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Library ResourceJanuary, 2003Sub-Saharan Africa
Is the World Bank’s approach to land relations gender insensitive? Is it realistic to pin poverty reduction aspirations on the promotion of credit markets and reliance on women’s unpaid labour? Does the acquisition of secure tenure rights necessarily benefit poor women? How should advocates of women’s rights in Africa respond to the Bank’s land agenda?
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Library ResourceJanuary, 2002
The 21st Century opened with a commitment to involving forest-local communities in the processes of securing and sustaining forests. But what is the relationship between people’s right to land and the manner in which they may be involved in the management of forests?
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Library ResourceJanuary, 2002Mozambique, Ethiopia, Namibia, Sub-Saharan Africa
A University of Leeds collaborative study has probed links between environmental change and famine – two problems perceived to lie at the heart of Africa’s current crisis – in the context of another all too often linked to the continent - warfare and civil unrest. Land hunger and environmental depletion in the aftermath of war are often cited as causes of famine that in turn will lead to further conflict. Is such a chain reaction really at work? Is there an inevitable causal link between environmental degradation and violent conflict?
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Library ResourceJanuary, 2002
How important is common land to rural people’s livelihoods? Are pooled resources a significant factor in household income? Why has communal land been so undervalued in recent studies?
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