Securing Land Rights
The demand for food is rising. The land resource for food production is increasingly diminishing. Landlessness and land fragmentation are growing worldwide. Land is increasingly being perceived as a commodity. It is rigorously being exploited to generate immediate, short-term gains, at the expense of a long-term impacts on the land resource and the environment.
The pressure on land is rising. While population growth, increasing fragmentation and resource degradation are affecting agriculture, land use conversion and commercial interests are resulting in land being diverted to non-food use.
With multiple demands on land, farmers are losing out on land. Rural poverty, landlessness and insecure land tenures are all linked. Secure land tenure becomes a fundamental building block for the development of sustainable and peaceful societies. Many examples of innovative approaches exist. Some of them are presented in this issue.
December 2011 - Volume 13, no. 4
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