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Indigenous stewardship is essential to the conservation of biocultural diversity, yet conventional conservation models often treat Indigenous territories (ITs) as homogeneous or isolated units. We propose that archipelagos of Indigenous territories (AITs), clusters of ITs that span geographies but are connected through shared cultural or political ties maintained by Indigenous nations, are crucial for understanding and enhancing conservation strategies that recognize the complexity of Indigenous stewardship. We classified 3572 ITs in the Amazon into 4 categories—single or multiple nations with either singular IT or AIT—to assess their spatial heterogeneity, governance, and conservation potential. We then assessed species richness, carbon stocks, and pressures across these different categories. To examine how AITs can enhance biocultural conservation efforts, we conducted a case study of the Cofán Nation in Ecuador. AITs covered 45% of the Amazonian land area and had higher species richness and carbon stocks than single IT configurations. However, AITs faced greater pressures from development and extractive activities. In the case study, the Cofán AIT was shaped by colonization and land titling challenges, but their community‐driven governance, cross‐territorial collaboration, and adaptive responses—such as comanagement agreements and resisting extractive activities—enhanced their ecological and cultural resilience amid growing development pressures. Our findings suggest that AITs facilitate the exchange of resources, knowledge, and cultural practices, which strengthens social connectivity, reinforces governance structures, and enables adaptive management across ITs, thereby enhancing biocultural resilience across discontinuous spaces. This work advocates for a paradigm shift in conservation planning and practice that recognizes the vital role of AITs in sustaining Amazonian ecosystems and Indigenous lifeways, particularly in the face of increasing pressures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The massive expansion of the Auschwitz extermination camp in 1943 involved a panoply of German lawyers and public officials, who laboured diligently at the legal clearance of title to lands belonging to multiple Polish owners so that the German Reich would have complete, legal, and unchallengeable ownership of the death camp site. These bureaucratic actions in pursuit of unspeakable ends, presented here in a historical-political inquiry, reveal fundamental – and much contested – issues of justice and legality, law versus non-law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the moderating role of procedural fairness between land titling programs and agricultural investment. We constructed a theoretical model that introduces perceived security of land tenure and procedural fairness into the traditional "property rights-investment incentives" analytical framework. Moreover, we empirically analyze the impact of land titling and its procedural fairness on agricultural investment using data from the "Thousands of People, Hundreds of Villages" survey held in 2018 among 9596 households in China. The empirical analyses were conducted by using the ordinary least squares (OLS), probit, and instrumental variable methods. Our analysis showed that land titling in China significantly promotes agricultural investment by farm households and that procedural fairness has a significant positive moderating role in the investment incentive effect of land titling as well as significantly improving the institutional credibility of land titling and enhancing farmers' perceived land tenure security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Satellite-based land use monitoring and farm-level traceability offer opportunities for targeted zero-deforestation interventions on private lands. Brazil's Rural Environmental Registry (Cadastro Ambiental Rural, or "CAR"), a land cadaster based on self-declaration of property boundaries, was created to monitor compliance with national forest laws. It has become an important enabling measure for sustainable supply chain initiatives like the Amazon Soy Moratorium. However, CAR enrollment is increasingly used to bolster illegal land claims, putting it at the heart of land grabbing dynamics. Self-declaration of properties in the CAR offers a unique situation to study land conflicts and their impact on land use decisions on a large scale. We quantified competing land claims among 846,420 registrations in the Brazilian Legal Amazon and applied a series of generalized linear mixed-effects models. We determined that CAR overlaps are more prevalent on larger registrations, in more densely settled areas, and in areas with less secure land tenure. We tested how landholders respond to land conflicts, finding significantly more deforestation and declared legal forest reserve on lands with multiple claims. CAR overlap results in an overestimation of forest reserves by up to 9.7 million hectares when considering double-counted and deforested areas of reserves, highlighting an overlooked form of Forest Code noncompliance. While the CAR continues to be used as evidence of land tenure, we conclude that the formalization of land claims through self-declarations is inadequate to decrease conflicts. CAR overlap information provides objective evidence of land conflict that authorities can leverage with field inspection to ensure peaceful occupation before issuing land titles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop a theoretical model to study the effect of the land titling program on land transfer, labor allocation, and agricultural production costs in rural China. To conduct empirical analysis, we employ the difference-in-differences and difference-in-difference-in-differences models and use nationally representative household survey data collected in 2013, 2015, and 2017. Results show that land titling significantly increases the probability of land transfer by approximately 6.36 percentage points. Land titling shifts rural laborers out of the agriculture sector and increases the migrant ratio in rural households. Finally, land titling decreases the per unit cost of agricultural products by about 8.11%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Estado & Comunes, revista de politicas y problemas publicos is the property of Instituto de Altos Estudios Nacionales (IAEN) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

North-central Nigeria is facing a challenging dilemma as displaced farmers struggle to recover agricultural productivity due to land tenure insecurity. This study examines the effect of land rights violation on agricultural output among displaced returnees in the region using descriptive statistics and ordinary least square regression analysis from a sample of 854 respondents. Drawing from the data collected across the selected states affected by farmers-herders conflict in North-central Nigeria, the study reveals that unclear ownership and lack of formal land titles affect returnees' decision to invest in farm land. The results of this study show that when land rights are violated due to conflict or land intrusion, the income and overall productivity of returnees drop. The study also reveals that assistance given as interventions during the period of displacement is found not to significantly affect production and return to economic activities among displaced returnees. Based on these findings, this study suggests strengthening property rights policy on land and resources, especially in rural communities so as to promote agricultural recovery and food security conflict-affected areas like North-central Nigeria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We conduct a discrete choice experiment with leaders of 164 Peruvian Indigenous communities (ICs) to elicit their preferences about and valuation of land titles—to our knowledge, the first use of rigorous stated preference methods to analyze land titling. We find that on average, IC leaders are willing to pay US$35,000–US$45,000 for a title, roughly twice the per community administrative cost of titling; willingness to pay is positively correlated with the value of IC land and the risk of land grabbing; and leaders prefer titling processes that involve Indigenous representatives and titles that encompass land with cultural value. (JEL Q13, Q15) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting with the work of Hernando de Soto in the 1980s, the role of land tenure soon attracted the attention of the international development community as a neoliberal-oriented theory of change rooted in the possession and use of private individual land titles by the poor. One of the central mechanisms proposed by de Soto was a three-step process that involves the poor (1) "securing" their tenure with land titles, (2) using their newly acquired land titles as collateral to leverage large amounts of microcredit to be used to establish a functioning microenterprise, and then (3) escaping from their poverty due to the jobs and income associated with founding and running a microenterprise. This paper explores what I call de Soto's "three steps to heaven" theory of change, a concept that was taken on board with gusto by leading Western governments and virtually all of the main international development institutions, particularly the World Bank. I argue that Cambodia provides the ideal setting for evaluating de Soto's concept because, since around 2020, it has possessed the largest microcredit sector in the world (on a per capita basis), thanks largely to the obligatory use of land titles as the collateral required to obtain microcredit. While the first two of de Soto's "three steps to heaven" have been realized, the evidence shows that the assumptions related to step three have proved to be extremely problematic: the ubiquity of microcredit that was achieved since the early 2010s via steps one and two has not, in general, improved the lives and communities of Cambodia's poor through accelerated microenterprise development. It appears, instead, to have contributed to deeper poverty, insecurity, vulnerability and inequality. I conclude that de Soto's "three steps to heaven" theory reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the real institutional drivers of sustainable local economic development and poverty reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Achieving zero hunger is intricately linked to sustainable agricultural production and the workings of a farming system. With land being the most important resource in smallholder agriculture in developing countries; including Nigeria; the effect of legal land ownership is a sine qua non for the process of achieving zero hunger in Nigeria. This study examined Nigeria's attempt at making agricultural land both accessible and utilizable for smallholders in Nigeria through the Presidential Technical Steering Committee on Land Reforms in 2009. The aim was to explore the extent to which land ownership had become legalized; so that it had positive investment incentives for smallholder farmers to improve their investment portfolio on their holdings. A secondary dataset of 4,032 respondents obtained from the Living Standard Survey Integrated Survey on Agriculture (LSMS/ISA) of the 2018/2019 season, was used for the study. Data analysis included descriptive statistics and a 2-stage least square model. The apriori being that legal land ownership provided a perception of security that would enhance farm-level investment; which would therefore increase production output and hence food security. The findings revealed that although land titling was low (~12%) within the agricultural system; its return on production output was highly significant (5.3; p < 0.05). The possession of land title would also increase per capita food consumption expenditure (0.35; p < 0.05) among the farming households. On average, households with access to land titles had a significantly higher (at p < 0.01) food expenditure (N9, 868.00) than those without land titles (N6171.72). Other farm-level investment variables such as credit use, and mechanization through tractor use were significant in improving food security amidst the security presented by possession of land title. Thus, expediting the implementation and coverage of formal land registration and titling may be a first step to contributing meaningfully to the food security drive of the SDGs in Nigeria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Iberoamericana de Estudios de Desarrollo is the property of Revista Iberoamericana de Estudios de Desarrollo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The need for the adoption of systematic land titling (SLT) in Nigeria cannot be overemphasised. Nonetheless, the problems of speed and cost of geospatial data acquisition, as well as identification of non-surveyed boundaries, remain unresolved, impeding the effectiveness of SLT for non-surveyed boundaries. The integration of language into Artificial Intelligence (AI) has allowed Natural Language Parsing (NLP) to effectively serve as a tool for communication between humans and computer systems. This study presents preliminary results of testing a prototype application that utilises NLP to convert textual descriptions into graphic sketches as a tool towards the production of a-priori sketches that can aid SLT in non-surveyed boundaries. The study determines that NLP alone cannot be used to achieve the required accuracy in geospatial data for SLT; however, the study concludes that NLP can be integrated alongside other ancillary information to enhance SLT in peri-urban regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of COVID-19 have been highly heterogeneous, crucially depending on household livelihoods. In the context of households reliant on agri-food systems, the extent of these effects significantly depends on their position within the value chain. An assessment of the COVID-19 effects along the agri-food value chain and the identification of pivotal factors influencing these outcomes are key for designing appropriate responses and targeting the population most in need should a crisis akin to COVID-19 emerge in the future. Using a longitudinal dataset from Ethiopia, composed of a pre-COVID baseline and six follow-up phone-based surveys, this paper estimates the COVID-19-induced change in household income and job participation, tracing its evolution throughout seven months after the pandemic onset. Applying both longitudinal and cross-sectional econometric models, we show that the COVID-19 shock reduced both employment and income, with increasingly negative impacts over time. Despite initial resilience in the face of restrictive measures, farming eventually emerged as the most affected segment within the agri-food value chain over the medium term. Access to formal institutions such as insurance and credit services, formal contractual arrangements, and secured land ownership title played a key role in mitigating the likelihood of income loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting with the work of Hernando de Soto in the 1980s, the role of land tenure soon attracted the attention of the international development community as a neoliberal-oriented theory of change rooted in the possession and use of private individual land titles by the poor. One of the central mechanisms proposed by de Soto was a three-step process that involves the poor (1) “securing” their tenure with land titles, (2) using their newly acquired land titles as collateral to leverage large amounts of microcredit to be used to establish a functioning microenterprise, and then (3) escaping from their poverty due to the jobs and income associated with founding and running a microenterprise. This paper explores what I call de Soto’s “three steps to heaven” theory of change, a concept that was taken on board with gusto by leading Western governments and virtually all of the main international development institutions, particularly the World Bank. I argue that Cambodia provides the ideal setting for evaluating de Soto’s concept because, since around 2020, it has possessed the largest microcredit sector in the world (on a per capita basis), thanks largely to the obligatory use of land titles as the collateral required to obtain microcredit. While the first two of de Soto’s “three steps to heaven” have been realized, the evidence shows that the assumptions related to step three have proved to be extremely problematic: the ubiquity of microcredit that was achieved since the early 2010s via steps one and two has not, in general, improved the lives and communities of Cambodia’s poor through accelerated microenterprise development. It appears, instead, to have contributed to deeper poverty, insecurity, vulnerability and inequality. I conclude that de Soto’s “three steps to heaven” theory reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the real institutional drivers of sustainable local economic development and poverty reduction.

The manuscript informally known as "Título del barrio de Santa Ana" was created in 1565 in San Cristóbal Verapaz, Guatemala. It is written in the Poqomchi' language (Mayan family, K'iche'ano subgroup) and relates some events during the first decades after the Dominican missionaries arrived. It is a title of ownership, a specific genre of indigenous documents that was elaborated in Mesoamerica with the purpose to obtain a tool to defend the historical rights over certain territories. This paper presents the main characteristics of the "Título del barrio de Santa Ana" and highlights its importance for historical and linguistic studies. Based on a comparative analysis with other indigenous documents written in the Highlands of Guatemala during the colonial period, it is argued that the "Título del barrio de Santa Ana" initiated the Maya-Poqomchi' literary tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is informed by a survey carried out in 2021, which found that the application of the presumption of advancement in New Zealand has been inconsistent, and at times confused, in the past 20 years. Taking the analysis further, this article argues that the doctrine of the presumption of advancement should be abolished in New Zealand for transfers of property by parents to adult children ("parent-child transfers"). The doctrine has become increasingly irrelevant. Most notably, the Land Transfer Act 2017 has implicitly abolished the presumption of advancement as well as the presumption of resulting trust in transfers concerning interests in land. The rationales for the doctrine have also become unconvincing or inapplicable. Parental affection has been a synonym for the parent-child relationship, which was underpinned by the financial status of fathers in a bygone era. In the changed legal and societal context of contemporary New Zealand, the notion that parents owe a moral obligation to provide for able-bodied adult children should not entail legal consequences. Complications with relationship property disputes, protection of the elderly and other considerations also support abolition of the doctrine. This article proposes a presumption of loan instead to give certainty, assist court adjudication and guide public behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indigenous Land law reforms in Paraguay and Cambodia proposed collective land titling to secure land tenure through community ownership. When we look at land formalization through a temporal lens, we see the on-the-ground dynamics of how communal title may or may not be achieved by examining the ethnographic case studies of Guarani and Bunong land titling. We argue that the temporality of land titling processes creates disjointed, shifting timelines mediated by relationships of power and disrupted by fast-tracked private and state concessions. This uneven relationship between time and titling interrupts, undermines and fragments Indigenous land possession with serious ecological and livelihood impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Marcha das Margaridas is a coalition of women and feminism movements, agrarian movements, trade unions, and international organizations that emerged in 2000. Women's organizations that are part of a rural trade federation lead the process. While its initial agenda included gendered class-based demands for the recognition of women's work in food production, access to land titles and labour rights, the Marcha das Margaridas progressively incorporated other topics, such as agroecology and food sovereignty. The article addresses three questions: How did food sovereignty enter their agenda? What is the meaning of food sovereignty for them? How can food sovereignty be understood from a (popular) feminist perspective? Based on an analysis of the political documents, we identified five main themes in the discourse of the Marcha das Margaridas on food sovereignty: 1) food as a right and a common; 2) state support for women's food production; 3) the value of uncommodified food work; 4) environmental recovery through agroecology; 5) violence-free food, produced through respectful social relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction of formal collective property rights to forest lands appears to have improved both environmental and economic outcomes, but there is limited evidence on how these reforms affect cooperative behavior among local resource users. We propose that when national governments issue collective land rights, they strengthen the collective psychological ownership among coowners and produce increased levels of cooperative behavior. Analyzing data from 213 forest user groups in 10 countries, and a framed field experiment in a subset of sites, we find that collective land titling is associated with significantly higher levels of cooperative behavior including increased levels of trust, more frequent interpersonal interactions related to both forestry and nonforestry activities, more self‐governing institutions, and greater equality in resource extraction patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Indonesia, the legal framework has numerous laws and regulations that control the land management and ownership. The laws are associated with the different kind of land titles comes under different terms and conditions. Distinctly, the laws are different for both the natives and the foreigners. The recent amendments in legal frameworks captured the attention of scholars. The research by following the current research trends investigated the different land policies and regulations for the foreigners set by Indonesian Government. The researcher adopted normative juridical research approach to examine the current status, limitations, and opportunities in laws and regulations which impact the land ownership and rights of foreigners. By adopting qualitative research method, the data is collected from both the primary and secondary data. Through the content analysis, the findings are extracted. According to the results, the legal framework poses numerous regulatory barriers for the foreigners which leads to illegal land management and ownership by foreigners. In order to improve the residential and business conditions for foreigners, the facilitations should be enhanced for the improved foreigner land ownership. The study provided in-depth insights into the legal framework and provided recommendations that would prove effective in boosting foreign investments in Indonesia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on a performance titled In the Land of the Gilead, performed in 2012 by Doron Tavori and Yochai Avrahami at the Centre for Digital Art in Israel. The work was performed as a part of the exhibition Le'an (Where To?). Its title is derived from a plan suggested by Laurence Oliphant (a British colonialist bureaucrat, author, and Member of Parliament) in 1881 to settle Jews in the Gilead region east of the Jordan River. The article examines the ways in which Tavori and Avrahami re-enact Oliphant's plan, which was never realised, as well as numerous other historical moments of Oliphant's colonialist endeavours and those of his contemporaries, tying them to the present-day situation in the Middle East and elsewhere. The article also examines the wider contexts and curatorial strategies of the exhibition Le'an, which focused on alternative Zionist histories that challenged Zionism's exclusive focus on the land of Israel. The article suggests that by juxtaposing nuanced and complex re-enactments of numerous and conflicting histories, the work prompts audiences to reconsider their political and national understanding of such colonial and Zionist histories, allowing these complex pasts (which are often celebrated or silenced) to be articulated as integral to contemporary national narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

California's legislature has passed several laws that intervene in local land-use regulation in order to increase desperately needed housing production-particularly affordable housing production. Some of these new laws expand local reporting requirements concerning zoning and planning laws, and the application of those laws apply to proposed housing development. This emphasis on measurement requires the state to develop a housing data strategy to support both enforcement of existing law and effective policymaking in the future. Our Comprehensive Assessment of Land Use Entitlements Study (CALES) predates, but aligns with and supports, this state-led effort to improve local reporting. For the cities that it covers, CALES provides verified and cleaned data indicating how cities apply local and state law. In this symposium contribution, we use the CALES data to illustrate the importance of collecting a range Of precise objective data on how cities apply law, and then offer a simple but sufficiently comprehensive measurement of regulation that can help identify when a local land use regime may be operating to exclude affordable housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land is the key asset in the agricultural sector and hence land policy is one of the key elements that determine whether SDGs are achieved in developing counties or not. In developing countries, land titling programs have been seen as a strategy for addressing SDGs. Even though the government of Ethiopia launched the rural land registration and certification program (LRCP) to secure the land rights of rural households in 1998, currently, there are limited empirical studies to examine the contribution of LRCP in addressing sustainable development goals (SDGs). This study is employed to fill this knowledge gap by assessing how LRCP supports the achievement of the UN SDGs. The research data were collected through key informant interviews, in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and reviewing published and unpublished documents. Content analysis, narrative analysis, and SWOT analysis were applied to examine the research data. The study confirms that LRCP improves tenure security, which greatly contributes to the achievements of SDGs, such as SDG 1 (end poverty), SDG 2 (end hunger), SDG 5 (gender equality), and SDG 15 (life on land). The tenure security of rural societies is a key pathway for the achievement of SDGs in Ethiopia since their livelihood mainly depends on agriculture. Therefore, developing countries should focus on land rights to improve the livelihoods of rural societies in particular and to enable sustainable development in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sociedad y Economia is the property of Universidad del Valle and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article focuses on role of various social actors, political changes, wars and collective violence, transformations and appropriations of natures, as well as facing dispossession of their assets and their almost subsequent exclusion, were for the indigenous peoples of Michoacán, Mexico. It mentions search for the free market, the circulation of goods, the creation of more solid public administrations. It also mentions social homogenization in legal terms.

India continues to urbanise rapidly tinged with sub-standard living conditions of a growing 'slum' population. Improving the living conditions of slum-dwellers remains a gargantuan and intractable challenge requiring solutions at scale grounded on households' real experience of the process. The State of Odisha, in Eastern India, is currently implementing a state-wide land-titling initiative to improve the tenure security of a million slum-dwellers through legal, institutional, and technical innovations based on the Odisha Land Rights to Slum-dwellersAct 2017 (OLRSD). Given the known negative consequences of titling that grants 'full property rights', such as the speculative sale of the titles, the facilitation of elite capture,and disruption of community life and social networks, the OLRSD has fashioned the title as a 'limited instrument' that still assures the possibility to inherit and aims at facilitating mortgage for housing-backed lending. The paper discusses early learnings from Odisha's 'intermediate' aspects of its titling policy in nine settlements researched across three districts. As per people's accounts of their experienced reality, the titling, complemented by slum upgrading, has already facilitated improvements in the housing conditions of households subject to extreme poverty. However, concomitant challenges are surfacing for instance, although the OLRSD formally permits the titles to be used as collateral for housing loans, the non-acceptance of the title by mainstream banks forces the recipients to borrow from spurious private lenders, thus increasing their vulnerability. Understanding such and related challenges is relevant for better addressing the dimension of de jure land tenure security in slums at scale across India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]