This publication deals with key issues in land tenure, especially as they relate to food insecurity and rural development situations. Land tenure issues are frequently ignored in rural development interventions, with often long-lasting, negative results. This guide is designed to assist technical officers in governments and civil society in understanding why and how land tenure issues should be considered in rural development projects. It analyses important contexts such as environmental degradation, gender discrimination, and conflicts, where land tenure is currently of critical concern.
This open access book presents a nuanced and accessible synthesis of the relationship between land tenure security and sustainable development. Contributing authors have collectively worked for decades on land tenure as connected with conservation and development across all major regions of the globe. The first section of this volume is intended as a standalone primer on land tenure security and its connections with sustainable development. The book then explores key thematic challenges that interact directly with land tenure security, followed by a section on strategies for addressing tenure insecurity. The book concludes with a section on new frontiers in research, policy, and action. An invaluable reference for researchers in the field and for practitioners looking for a comprehensive overview of this important topic. This is an open access book.
Land is important to all aspects of human life and has a key role in the economic well-being of society therefore, land tenure, land ownership, and real property law is a critical part of any developed nation. Together, the processes of how land parcels are held; how they are defined, measured, and described to allow economic transactions; how they are marked to allow their use and defense; and how they are legally protected have allowed for the orderly possession and use of land. In doing so, these processes have also provided the basis for the advanced economy of most developed nations. Very often, these processes—land tenure, boundary surveying, and cadastral systems—are considered separately. They are very much interrelated, and none of these processes may be completely understood without an understanding of the others. Land Tenure, Boundary Surveys, and Cadastral Systems provides an introduction to land tenure, cadastral systems, and boundary surveying, including an understanding of the interrelationship of these areas and their role in land tenure and real property law. This is especially true considering the advent of georeferenced cadastral maps reflecting the location of land parcels relative to many other components of the physical and legal infrastructure. Although intended as a basic text for college-level surveying courses, this book should also be of significant value to cadastral mappers, real property attorneys, land title professionals, and others involved with land transactions.
Discussions of land tenure in social anthropology have usually been deeply embedded in broader empirical and theoretical explanations of social, economic, legal, and political institutions. In this volume the editors have sought to correct the emphasis of previous studies by focusing our attention directly on land tenure in Oceania, without, it must be added, losing sight of the connections between land tenure principles and general social structure. The editors have deliberately looked for similarities by analyzing each tenure system from the same analytical and conceptual perspective. Chapters 1 and 9 specifically discuss the methodological and theoretical framework that evolved in the course of analyzing the seven tenure systems described in chapters 2 through 8. The difficulties and problems encountered by the contributors in presenting their data in comparable form is reflected by the more than three years of analysis, writing, editing, and rewriting necessary to complete this volume. The seven substantive ethnographic chapters illustrate the range and diversity in the land tenure practices which are found within the vast culture area of Oceania. The similarities in basic tenure principles between all seven systems seem all the more remarkable in light of the varied geographical and cultural settings of the seven societies. In all of these societies we find a complete absence of fee simple ownership and a corresponding presence of entailed family estates. The ethnography reveals tenure principles that detail an impressive number and variety of separate categories of property. Each category, in turn, includes an even greater number of rights and duties that symbolize different forms of proprietorship. The differential allocation of these rights and duties among persons and groups represents the exact point of connection between land tenure and social structure. For example, kinship principles that specify the distribution of authority within age, sex, descent, and status categories converge on such tenure principles as land use, land distribution, succession, and inheritance. Principles of political organization concerning the relative scaling of authority and power within the society have clear parallels in the land tenure system, where corporate and individual tenure privileges are differentiated. Economic principles subtly merge with land tenure principles in social domains, where land as a resource and land as a value intersect.
A strongly interdisciplinary and wide-ranging survey of the environment of life on Earth: the most authoritative and comprehensive source on environmental science to be collected together in a single volume. Unique in presenting both a basic overview and detailed information on environmental topics. Entries are arranged in an encyclopedic A-Z format and contain extensive cross-references to related entries, as well as references to primary and secondary literature. Over 370 separate entries prepared by 228 leading experts from 25 countries. Incorporates 25 substantial in-depth treatments of key areas and also includes biographies of leading scientists and environmentalists. Contains a comprehensive subject index and a citation index of all referenced authors. The Encyclopedia of Environmental Science is a multidisciplinary reference work, which crosses many fields of interest and includes a wide variety of scholarly and authoritative articles on mankind's environment. It provides information on the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and geosphere and is careful to focus on the connections between these realms and the Earth as a whole. Taken as a whole, the Encyclopedia surveys basic environmental science and applied areas of study, and is drawn from the physical sciences, life sciences and social sciences. The 228 authors from 25 different countries, many of whom are the leading authorities in their field, include biologists, ecologists, geographers, geologists, political scientists, soil scientists, hydrologists, climatologists, and representatives of many other disciplines and academic specialties. The work, which is amply referenced and cross-referenced, consists of substantial essays on major topics, medium-sized entries and short definitional entries. The shorter entries include useful biographies of leading scientists and environmentalists. The Encyclopedia will be invaluable to all readers interested in the environment of life on Earth, its past, present and future, and its physical and social dimensions. The text provides a source of well-classified basic information as well as covering the leading theories and important debates in the environmental sciences. In addition, the book also includes assessments of the future prospects for the Earth's environment in the face of pollution, population increases and the accelerating transformation of land, air, water and vegetational systems. The Encyclopedia is unique in presenting both a basic overview and detailed information on environmental topics and is suitable for the general scientific reader and the specialized environmental scientist in academic institutions, research laboratories or private practice.
Land tenure arrangements are intimately linked with the organization of society, the economy, political structures and geography. In the South Pacific Islands the majority of land is held by community groups under 'customary' or 'traditional' forms of tenure. This book argues that land formerly held in common is now often controlled and used exclusively by individuals or nuclear families - it is being privatized. Detailed case studies demonstrate these trends in Western Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu and Fiji. Parallels are noted from Asia, Europe and Africa, where comparable forces of commercialization, individualization and socio-political change have brought comparable results. The denial of these trends by policy makers in the region reflects an interest in maintaining the image of traditionalism and its associated status and power. The divergence between rhetoric and reality creates dilemmas for many Pacific Islanders and their leaders.
