This article uses househld panel data spanning the period 2000–2007 to test hypotheses from the literature that secure land tenure, market access and collective action promote accumulation of private capital assets in rural highland Ethiopia. The three natural capital assets analysed in the article, livestock, eucalyptus trees and non-eucalyptus trees on households’ farm plots, make up virtually 100 per cent of privately held disposable assets. Incomes and capital stocks are extremely low and constant and tree assets are at least as important as livestock.

This is a book chapter by EfD China research associate, Priscilla Cooke St. Claire and Mahesh Poudyal in the book entitled 'Forest Tenure Reform in Asia and Africa: Local Control for Improved Livelihoods, Forest Management, and Carbon Sequestration'.

You can read more about the book here.

Forest tenure reforms are occurring in many developing countries around the world. These reforms typically include devolution of forest lands to local people and communities, which has attracted a great deal of attention and interest. While the nature and level of devolution vary by country, all have potentially important implications for resource allocation, local ecosystem services, livelihoods and climate change. 

Land is a scarce resource in the highlands of Ethiopia. Its sustainable use is highly affected by bio-physical and institutional factors. The purpose of this research is to investigate farmers' perceptions about land quality, land fragmentation and tenure systems and their influences on sustainable land management (SLM) investments in the North Western Ethiopian Highlands.

This book is about land tenure policies from an international perspective. It adds on the first book published by Holden and Otsuka entitled The Emergence of Land Markets in Africa: Assessing the Impacts on Poverty, Equity, and Efficiency (2009) in a much deeper way with a stronger and clearer focus on policy issues.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of land rights and tenure types on farmers' investment behavior in Chinese collective forests, using household survey data from Fujian Province.

Design/methodology/approach – In this study, the authors conducted a household survey in Fujian province of 520 randomly selected forest farmers. The authors used a random-effects Tobit model to estimate the impact of land rights and other components on, for example, tenure security and harvest quota, and the impact of tenure types on farmers' investment incentives.

In this study, we analyse effort optimisation in common rights-based joint-stock artisanal fisheries when several objectives are pursued by the authorities and the fleets are heterogeneous. The purpose is to discuss policy options available to the authorities and their implications in terms of trade-offs between goals. We apply a multi-objective programming model to the sardine and anchovy artisanal fisheries in central southern Chile. The results suggest that the regulatory system generates inefficient solutions for profit and employment maximisation goals.

Land conflicts can be detrimental. An important goal of development policy is to help define and instill respect for borders. This is often implemented through mandatory and expensive interventions that rely on the expansion of government land administration institutions.

Using the land tenure system in Ethiopia, where all land is state-owned and only farm households have usufruct rights, as a case study, we assessed the links between land owners’ tenure insecurity, associated behavioral factors, and contract length. In this paper, we analyze these links with survey data of rural households in the Amhara National Regional State of Ethiopia.

Land degradation is a major problem undermining land productivity in the highlands of Ethiopia. This paper analyses the decisions made by individual household to adopt and intensify land conservation investment.