Links

Making Land Work

This AusAID report was published as an information resource for countries undertaking land policy reform, and draws lessons from international experience, canvasses broad principles and approaches, and seeks to stimulate ideas on policy options in the Pacific.

http://www.ausaid.gov.au/publications/pubout.cfm?ID=3363_9223_6836_1452_8140&Type=

(Added: Thu Jun 19 2008   Modified: Wed Dec 00 0   Hits: 102)

The unresolved land reform debate: Beyond state-led or market-led models

This paper, published by the UNDP in November 2006 looks at the issue of land reform in developing countries. It notes that sharp inequalities in the distribution of land ownership remain a major hurdle to poverty reduction in many countries. The report notes that, historically, neither state nor market led approaches have had a great track record when it comes to overcoming land inequalities. The report then assesses some new land reform strategies.

http://www.sarpn.org.za/documents/d0001674/index.php

(Added: Mon Jan 08 2007   Modified: Fri Jan 12 2007   Hits: 148)

The MST's Difficult Construction of a New World

Visiting a settlement of Brazil's Landless Rural Workers' Movement (MST, for the Portuguese initials), this author finds that the struggle to gain land was only the first of many struggles, some due to the challenges inherent in trying to create community living, and others due to the difficulties in competing with powerful agribusiness. (Raul Zibechi, Nacla News, 27 September 2006)

http://news.nacla.org/2006/09/27/the-msts-difficult-construction-of-a-new-world/

(Added: Fri Sep 29 2006   Hits: 105)

Land and Water Rights in the Sahel: Tenure challenges of improving access to water for agriculture

The study supports a process of policy debate and exchange of experience on how to tackle issues raised by the interface between water and land rights in the Sahel. It involves a range of actors working to improve access to water - policy makers, development practitioners, user and producer associations, community leaders and other civil society actors - and discusses practical ways to take account of land tenure issues in water programmes. Focusing on irrigation and pastoral water points, it also explores issues concerning linkages between rights over water, land and other natural resources in wetlands. The focus is on the Sahel, but relevant material from other Sahelian countries provides additional insights and reference is made to developments in other sub-Saharan African countries. (Lorenzo Catula, IIED, June 2006)

http://www.iied.org/pubs/pdfs/12526IIED.pdf

(Added: Fri Jul 07 2006   Modified: Wed Dec 00 0   Hits: 127)

Privatising Land in the Pacific: A defence of customary tenures

The Australia Institute, edited by Jim Fingleton, June 2005. This paper reflects the growing concern of a number of scholars about the influence of free market ideology on proposals to change land use and land ownership in the Pacific. In a series of papers published by the libertarian think tank, the Centre for Independent Studies, Professor Helen Hughes, an influential figure in the aid debate, has proposed that Australia's aid to Papua New Guinea be made contingent on a farreaching transformation of customary forms of land tenure. These 'reforms' would require land owned and used by traditional groups to be divided up and allocated to individuals who could then buy and sell land in the market. The diverse group of scholars whose views are collected together in this paper argue that such a prescription, far from solving PNG's development problems, would be highly detrimental to the social and economic welfare of that country. When people heard that land reforms along these lines were being proposed in 2001, there were riots in Port Moresby and four people were killed. The authors - who between them have more than 100 years of practical and research experience in the Pacific - argue that Hughes' opinions are informed by an ideological approach rather than an understanding of how land is actually owned and used in PNG and other Pacific countries. They challenge those calling for radical change to land tenure systems in the Pacific to respond to the facts laid out in this paper rather than retreating to free market dogma.

http://www.dev-zone.org/downloads/PrivatisingLandPacific.pdf

(Added: Tue Sep 13 2005   Modified: Thu Jan 12 2006   Hits: 456)

The politics of land reform in Southern Africa [PDF]

By Edward Lahiff (2003). Research paper funded by the UK Department for International Development's Rural Livelihoods Department Policy Research Programme. This report examines the politics of land in Southern Africa and, in particular, current process of land reform in Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe. It argues that despite the considerable attention given to land issues in the region over the past twenty years, fundamental reform that shifts assets and opportunities in favour of the rural poor have yet to be brought about.

http://www.landaction.org/gallery/SoutherAfricaLandReform.pdf

(Added: Mon Jul 25 2005   Hits: 123)

The International Land Coalition

The International Land Coalition is: *an institution of members, working to increase the rural poor's secure access to resources by strengthening the individual and collective capacity of its members and partners; *a global convenor on land issues, using its multistakeholder convening capacity to strengthen networks for collective action; *a mechanism to open spaces for dialogue with policy and decision makers; *an arena for innovation and scaling up of community-based experiences; *an advocate for the participation by partners, in national and global forums on land policy and related operational issues; *a communication network forming a hub for the interchange of ideas, best practices and lessons learnt; and, *a monitor of levels of compliance with programmes for action on land issues embedded in international agreements and summit outcomes.

http://www.landcoalition.org

(Added: Wed Mar 02 2005   Modified: Thu Jun 02 2005   Hits: 147)

Land Research Action Network

The Land Research Action Network (LRAN) is a network of researchers and social movements committed to the promotion and advancement of the fundamental rights of individuals and communities to land, and to equitable access to the resources necessary for life with human dignity.

http://www.landaction.org/

(Added: Tue Aug 03 2004   Modified: Thu Jun 02 2005   Hits: 242)

Oxfam Resource Bank Land Rights in Africa

A resource bank of papers and reports from Oxfam GB and its partner organisations, allies, and land rights specialists.

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what_we_do/issues/livelihoods/landrights/index.htm

(Added: Thu Oct 23 2003   Modified: Tue Dec 20 2005   Hits: 195)

The Land Tenure Center

The Land Tenure Center serves as a global resource institution on issues relating to land ownership, land rights, land access, and land use. Our focus is on the relationship of land to economic development, socio-political organization, and environmental sustainability. LTC's approach to research and training is multi-disciplinary and stresses local collaboration. Since its establishment in 1962, LTC has sought to foster widespread and equitable access to land because of the understanding that this is basic to viable economic, social, political, and environmental systems.

http://www.ies.wisc.edu/ltc/

(Added: Thu Oct 23 2003   Modified: Mon Mar 31 2008   Hits: 256)

Land . . . is the issue!

By John Roughan, Sept. 1 2003. Solomon Islanders are deeply convinced that the land issue lies at the heart of the country's current problems. Our many national difficulties directly link back to the whole sensitive feelings about land. It's at that heart and centre that drove (and continues to drive) the last five years of Social Unrest. But exactly what is it about land that is the problem? Why are land-issues considered so fundamental that people drove former friends, sometimes relatives, away and at times hurt, destroy and even kill them?

http://www.dev-zone.org/kcdocs/6009Roughan.html

(Added: Mon Sep 01 2003   Modified: Mon Dec 05 2005   Hits: 430)

In Brazil, the Poor Stake a Claim on Huge Farms

By Matt Moffett, Wall Street Journal. Presidente Epitacio, Brazil -- Outside of this central cattle town, activists have built a massive squatter camp, with 3,500 families who say they won't leave until the government gives them property. In other places, protesters demanding land have looted food trucks, seized toll roads, and taken over government agricultural offices. Last week, the nation's president convened an emergency meeting with the group's leaders, who refused to halt their protests. The Landless Workers Movement, the largest social movement in Latin America, is agitating for sweeping change in a country with one of the world's most inequitable land distributions. "Nobody wants to break the law," says Antonio Carlos Santos, 38 years old, who moved to the camp with his wife and three children last month, after losing his job at a slaughterhouse. "But we'll do what we must to survive."

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB105778969494920100-H9jeoNhlaB2nJuvbX2Gca6Em5,00.html

(Added: Mon Jul 14 2003   Modified: Fri Jul 21 2006   Hits: 147)

Landless Workers Movement

The Brazilian Landless Workers Movement is the largest social movement in Latin America and one of the most successful grassroots movements in the world. Hundreds of thousands of landless peasants have taken onto themselves the task of carrying out a long-overdue land reform in a country mired by an overly skewed land distribution pattern. Less than 3% of the population owns two-thirds of Brasil's arable land.

http://www.mstbrazil.org/

(Added: Mon Jul 14 2003   Modified: Thu Jun 02 2005   Hits: 183)

Landless, Jobless, But Not Hopeless: A Report From Brazil

by Tom Hayden, The Nation, February 19, 2003. "The day after the World Social Forum dialogues, I visited an encampment of landless people squatting in garbage-wrap tents alongside the road an hour from Porto Alegre. Having tramped through miserable shantytowns from Rio to Manila, I was prepared for hopeless gazes and wrenching odors of decay. Indeed, the flies were thick, the heat a burden and the 200 families suffered the daily deprivations of the poor. But there was a difference. There was purpose and hope."

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030224&s=hayden

(Added: Wed Feb 19 2003   Modified: Tue Dec 20 2005   Hits: 219)

Harare to speed up land seizures

Andrew Meldrum in Harare Thursday September 19, 2002 The Guardian Zimbabwe's parliament last night pushed through a controversial bill that will speed up the seizures of white-owned farms. The amendment to the Land Acquisition Act will permit the government to evict farmers in seven days, as opposed to the 90 days that farmers were given in existing legislation to wind up their businesses and vacate their properties. Parliament suspended ordinary rules and procedures to allow the bill to be rushed through its three readings in one day. Robert Mugabe's government has stated that the seized land will be redistributed to poor blacks, but more than 1,000 farms have gone to cabinet ministers, army officers and others well connected to the ruling Zanu-PF party, according to lists compiled by farmers.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/zimbabwe/article/0,2763,794775,00.html

(Added: Fri Sep 20 2002   Modified: Thu Jun 02 2005   Hits: 214)

Agro-info.net

Information platform for Producer Organisations.

http://www.agro-info.net/

(Added: Tue Aug 13 2002   Modified: Fri Sep 19 2008   Hits: 202)

ANGOC (Flash Website)

ANGOC is the Asian NGO Coalition for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development, based in Manila. 20 years old, it focuses on food security and agrarian reform.

http://www.philonline.com.ph/~angoc/

(Added: Tue Aug 13 2002   Modified: Thu Jun 02 2005   Hits: 188)

Fast Track Land Reform In Zimbabwe

Human Rights Watch Report: March 2002 Vol. 14, No. 1 (A). This report considers the human rights implications of the so-called fast track process of land redistribution in Zimbabwe, under which the government has revised the constitution and amended legislation in order to allow it to acquire commercial farms compulsorily and without compensation, and the land occupations that have accompanied it since early 2000. We focus on the violence that has accompanied the land occupations of the last two years, on the discrimination on political grounds that has accompanied the allocation of new plots, and on adverse effects that the fast track land reform process has had for one of the constituencies which was supposed to benefit: the rural poor.

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/zimbabwe/

(Added: Tue Aug 13 2002   Modified: Tue Dec 13 2005   Hits: 256)

Philippine Peasant Institute

Founded in 1983, the Philippine Peasant Institute (PPI) is a non-government organization that aims to promote and advance the Philippine peasantry's interests for agrarian reform and rural development in partnership with local peasant organizations.

http://www.ppi.org.ph

(Added: Tue Aug 13 2002   Modified: Thu Jun 02 2005   Hits: 222)