This chapter uses the recent case of land reform in Scotland (in which large private estates are being transferred to community ownership) to reconsider the role of land reform in rural development and, more broadly, the role of property rights. In contrast to reforms that redistribute land (or...

This chapter offers some suggestions to ensure the effective and long-term management of agrobiodiversity, including its conservation and use. Sections discuss, among others: the origin and ownership of plant genetic resources; the impact of humans on biodiversity; the global outlook towards...

This chapter reviews current trends towards the formalization of land tenure practices and compares the effects of individual or joint agricultural land titling on the position of women in different countries across the globe. It is concluded that titling may strengthen women's right to land,...

This concluding chapter highlights three main points implicitly or explicitly discussed by the authors in this volume: (1) urban cultivation is much more than producing food; (2) urban cultivation should be seen as a normal and accepted livelihood in all urban areas, and that land rights and the...

This chapter examines the processes through which hill slopes customarily used by ethnic communities in Odisha for shifting cultivation were taken over by the state as forest lands or revenue wastelands through deliberate policies aimed at bringing shifting cultivation to an end. The chapter covers ...

The Agro-Biodiversity Initiative of Lao PDR (TABI) has advanced a multi-step strategy and developed concrete approaches and tools to contribute to more evidence-based, realistic, inclusive and effective resource planning and monitoring of forest and land use in the uplands. It is a long-term...

This chapter is based on an anthropological land-governance study and action research conducted among upland communities in northern Chin state (Hakha township) and northern Shan state (Lashio township) in Myanmar in 2013 and 2014, in order to understand the communal tenure of their shifting...

This chapter explains two types of land tenure in traditional shifting cultivation communities. One is a hierarchical system of use rights to individual parcels of land; the other is group or community ownership of a large area of land. Also discussed is the system of ownership of economically...

This chapter analyses the extent to which, and how, the combination of two trends are responsible for the increased tension between different land-use groups that has emerged over the past decade: climate change and the commercialization of rice cultivation. The chapter aims to examine the...

Multiple economic and institutional factors drive change in the mix of agricultural commodities produced over time in any country. We examine grain, fruit and vegetable markets in Ukraine since 2004, with a focus on the evolution of property rights and their impact on planting decisions....