Topic Guide: Land
This guide covers issues such as land in fragile and conflict affected states, land reform and policy and land acquistion
Abstract
This Topic Guide is written for DFID staff, but is relevant to all development professionals. It comprises the following sections:
Section 1 - Growing interest in land: large-scale land acquisition
How land is used and governed affects many of the issues on which
Livelihood Advisers work. Access to land is critical for the livelihoods
of many people in countries where DFID works, particularly for poor
people whose livelihoods depend on agriculture and pastoralism. How land
is governed is also important for growth: good land governance is
critical to secure property rights. This section covers trends in and
drivers of large-scale land acquisition; the potential risks, costs and
benefits from large-scale land acquisition and the evidence for these
risks, costs and benefits. The expected and observed impacts, and the
factors affecting the risks, costs and benefits are discussed.
Section 2 - Reactions to rising interest in land at the national and
international level
There have been several reactions to the rising interest in farmland.
There are moves to improve the provision of and access to more accurate
data on large-scale land acquisitions, coupled with national, regional
and international initiatives to provide guidelines to enhance security
of tenure and promote good quality investment that maximises the
benefits of land-based investment and minimises the social risks. A
discussion of the monitoring of the large-scale land acquisitions sector
is followed by information on the following key international and
regional initiatives:
- FAO voluntary guidelines for land governance
- Principles of Responsible Agricultural Investment (PRAI and rai)
- Land Policy Initiative and the African Union (AU) Framework and Guidelines for Land Policy
- G8 land transparency initiative
- Global donor working group on land, created in 2013
- Land Governance Assessment Framework (LGAF)
- Land post-2015
- NGO campaigns on improving land rights
- National initiatives – the case of Mozambique
- Technological innovations for transparency
Section 3 - Land reform and policy: types, impacts and risks
This section focuses on particular land reform issues that are more
central to DFID advisers, such as land tenure regularisation and land
administration systems. It begins with an overview of the shifting
nature of donor interventions in the land sector, then goes on to
discuss land policy, land tenure systems and the role of land titling,
the debate on formal titling, and the gender impacts of land reform.
Section 4 - Land in fragile and conflict-affected states
This section addresses land issues in the context of fragile states,
and conflict and post-conflict situations. It includes discussion of how
donors can best work with the private sector in fragile and
post-conflict states.
Further reading and resources are listed at the end of each section, and there is a long list of references, including links to blogs, websites and conferences, at the end of the guide.
This peer reviewed Topic Guide has been produced by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) with the assistance of the UK Department for International Development (DFID) contracted through the Climate, Environment, Infrastructure and Livelihoods Professional Evidence and Applied Knowledge Services (CEIL PEAKS) programme, jointly managed by HTSPE Limited and IMC Worldwide Limited.
Citation
Locke, A.; Henley, G. Topic Guide: Land. Evidence on Demand, UK (2014) 46 pp. [DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12774/eod_tg.mar2014.lockehenley]
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