Recording Land Ownership Claims and Land Use Rights information can strengthen land tenure rights, increase land productivity, and prevent future land disputes.

Globally, increased investor interest in land is confronting various types of political mobilisations from communities at the grassroots level. This paper examines the case study of a land occupation movement called Chengara struggle in the largest corporate plantation in southern India. The movement is led by the historically dispossessed scheduled caste and scheduled tribe communities. The objective of the study is to understand the type of institutional transformation of property rights that the movement is calibrating.

We examine collaborations between the state and civil society in the context of land grabbing in Argentina. Land grabbing provokes many governance challenges, which generate new social arrangements. The incentives for, limitations to, and contradictions inherent in these collaborations are examined. We particularly explore how the collaborations between the provincial government of Santiago del Estero and non-government organizations (NGOs) played out. This province has experienced many land grabs, especially for agriculture and livestock production.

The enormity of the world’s dislocated population generated by contemporary conflicts has brought significant attention to a complicated process of returning housing, land and property (HLP) to their rightful occupants once conditions permit. As the complexity of large-scale HLP restitution becomes increasingly apparent, significant obstacles emerge that require examination. This article describes how the ‘evidentiary bind’ is such an obstacle.

Land Registration: Global Practices and Lessons for India has been authored by B. K. Agarwal,  having extensive knowledge and first-hand experience in land administration. It contains a comparative analysis of land registration systems of Germany, UK, Australia, USA, France, and the Netherlands.​ Laws regarding maintenance of land title records in four Indian states Maharashtra, Karnataka, Punjab, and West Bengal have also been analyzed. In the end the author has given his  evidence-based recommendations on reforms required in the Indian land registration system.​

Smallholders worldwide continue to experience processes of displacement from their lands under neoliberal political-economic governance. This displacement is often experienced as “slow”, driven by decades of agricultural policies and land governance regimes that favor input-intensive agricultural and natural resource extraction and export projects at the expense of traditional agrarian practices, markets, and producers. Smallholders struggle to remain viable in the face of these forces, yet they often experience hunger.

Civil war and violence often force large numbers of people to leave their lands. Multiple waves of displacement and (partial) return generate complex overlapping claims that are not easily solved. As people return to their regions of origin—sometimes after decades—they tend to find their land occupied by other settlers, some of whom hold legal entitlements. In the places of arrival, displaced people affect other people’s access as they seek to turn their temporary entitlements into more definite claims.

Date: 13 mai 2019

Source: Foncier & Développement

Par: Gérard Chouquer

Gérard Chouquer publie un nouvel ouvrage aux Presses des Mines : « Le foncier, entre propriété et expertise »

This manual illustrates a monitoring scheme for monitoring large-scale agricultural investments. It aims at providing orientation for establishing a monitoring scheme and implementing monitoring activities in the framework of LSAI with the collaboration of the authorities responsible for leasing out land to agricultural investors and supervising related activities. While focused on Ethiopia, it will be a useful resource for other countries too.

Due to the rapidly growing population in Ethiopia, land is becoming scarce resource. This often results in an increased land use conflicts. Rapid urban expansion, large infrastructure projects in urban as well as in rural areas and an increasing demand for farmland often leads to displacement of the local population. Small holders are expropriated, forced to leave their farms and lose their livelihoods. 

The promotion of commercialized and mechanized agriculture is considered as one possible contribution to the further economic development efforts in Ethiopia. In addition to the traditional farming sector, which is predominantly characterized by smallholders and subsistence farming, large-scale agricultural investments are expected to provide input for the processing industry, bring foreign currency as well as technology transfer to the country.

An estimated 7.7 million people in India are affected by conflict over 2.5 million hectares of land, threatening investments worth $ 200 billion.1 Land disputes clog all levels of courts in India, and account for the largest set of cases in terms of both absolute numbers and judicial pendency.