Using land records as financial infrastructure: the Punjab Land Records Authority's experience and plans

Can LRMIS-backed micro-loans for small farmers be a bridge to formal credit?

How SMART2 can build on LRMIS to foster diversification through the CM Punjab Kissan Card

Abstract

An introduction to the State Agrarian Registry (SAR) of Ukraine

What banks need to use the PCG for smallholder lending

Prozorro.Sale - Land eAuctions: challenges encountered in implementing

Opportunities for research and analysis

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Access to finance is a significant barrier for agricultural progress in low-income & fragile settings, due to high risks, weak borrower verification, and fragmented information systems. Ethiopia’s partnership with the World Bank through the Ethiopia Strategic Investment Framework for SLM such as CALM highlights how long-term investments in land administration can become key economic & financial infrastructure. The transition from large-scale land registration to the National Rural Land Administration Information System (NRLAIS) has established a digital, parcel-based registry, improving tenure security and facilitating agricultural finance by narrowing information gaps and reducing verification costs. The integration of NRLAIS with farmer registries, digital National IDs (Fayda), and financial platforms forms a “Land–Farmer–Finance” digital public infrastructure. This system allows scalable access to credit & insurance with digitally verifiable land rights, eliminating the need for land certificates as collateral, and provides a model for linking land governance to inclusive agricultural finance, jobs and growth.

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Using digital processes and interoperability to modernize and protect Social Property

Benefits for access to finance by linking to a digital registry

Can subsidies help to establish a portable digital farmer identity?

The World Bank’s Digital Program: Opportunities for Land Data Integration & Revenue Generation

The plan for data integration and improvement of federal environmental and territorial management systems

Harmonizing Environmental and Land Records using the Pre-filled CAR Module.

Integrating the cadaster, land and environmental regularization and registration of rural producers.

Opportunities for engagement.

Can market design be used to improve agricultural rental markets and facilitate welfare-enhancing trades? To explore this question, we map ownership of agriculture land in Uganda and identify rental swaps that can consolidate agricultural land. We elicit the prices at which farmers are willing to participate in these swaps using an incentive compatible trading mechanism that, in some cases, induces real trades. We find that on average, farmers are willing to pay 8.5% of the rental price to farm consolidated plots. Further, we find a positive expected surplus in 40% of the swaps that we offer. Our results suggest that small-cycle swaps can improve welfare outcomes in locations where land is fragmented, and we use our data to evaluate potential larger market redesigns. Simple matching algorithms that use fixed prices can capture 52% of the surplus identified, while more complicated designs that incorporate farmer-reported prices can capture about 70%.

By registering land in villages’ habitation (abadi) area using drone imagery and issuing property cards (PCs), India’s SVAMITVA aims to improve local planning, land market activity, and credit access. Data for all mutations and charges registered in more than 40,000 Madhya Pradesh villages during 2018-25 and heterogeneity-robust dynamic DID estimators are used to assess if these objectives were achieved. We show that PC issuance, but not drone survey, triggered significant increases in residential but not in (unaffected) agricultural land and mortgage market activity. Credit effects materialized even in villages far from banks, plausibly due to digital connectivity, but were muted in scheduled areas where lack of regulatory clarity on the scope for transferring PC created friction. SVAMITVA’s demonstrated impact on credit supply suggests it provides a basis for improving economic conditions and local self-governance in India’s rural areas. ways to build on these foundations are discussed.

As land demand rises in developing economies, reallocating land across uses often requires subdividing existing parcels into smaller units that can be separately transferred, developed, or occupied. We study land subdivision and its institutional determinants using granular administrative land registry data from Uganda, combined with high-resolution satellite imagery. We first document that subdivision is widespread and increasing over time. We then use event-study designs to trace how land use evolves around subdivision events, showing sharp shifts away from crop cultivation and toward built-up land. Additional analysis suggests that ownership change---rather than the reduction in parcel size---is a key driver of these dynamics. Leveraging the coexistence of multiple tenure systems within narrowly defined geographic areas, we show that subdivision rates differ systematically across tenure regimes, with higher rates under dual ownership and occupancy rights than under single-owner title systems.

When active, agricultural factor markets in developing countries should reduce misallocation, but do not; factor trade must be between the “wrong” farmers. We use a novel transaction-level panel dataset to examine who trades with whom in Rwandan villages. Within villages, physical distance and social connections are more important than productivity in predicting factor trade. We develop and estimate a model of factor trade in networks to characterize the frictions resolved by physical and social distance. We find social connections increase the elasticity of land rentals by reducing the cost of sustaining productive trades, and 39% of efficiency gains from land rentals are attributable to this effect. Evidence from an RCT suggests the land market frictions alleviated by social connections are not easily resolved through policy.

This paper develops a growth model with two social classes—capitalists, who invest in productive assets and housing, and workers, who supply labor and invest only in housing—while distinguishing residential land, residential structures, and productive capital. The model shows that the relative price of land grows with GDP in the long run, while the quantity and price of housing services rise more slowly. The results indicate that shifting taxation toward land property increases long-run GDP growth and produces more egalitarian income and wealth distributions. Allowing a larger share of residential investment to be tax deductible reduces inequality, whereas giving greater utility weight to housing services leads to long-run distributions more favorable to capitalists. Policies or preference shifts that increase investment in residential rather than productive assets generate balanced-growth paths with higher wealth-income ratios. Finally, endogenous fluctuations may arise along the equilibrium path to balanced growth in a model driven solely by fundamentals.

As artificial intelligence accelerates demand for data centers, digital transformation is becoming a land, grid, and governance problem. This paper examines whether countries’ ability to accumulate data-center-related infrastructure depends on land and property governance, infrastructure reliability, and middle-income structural positioning. Using a country-year panel from UN Comtrade, World Development Indicators, Worldwide Governance Indicators, and the World Bank Doing Business historical archive, the analysis distinguishes two layers of digital infrastructure: hardware-related inflows, proxied by HS 847150 imports, and hosting-related footprint, proxied by secure internet servers. Fixed-effects models show that property registration cost and grid loss are negatively associated with hardware-related inflows, while hosting footprint is more closely tied to broader development level. Middle-income countries face weaker baseline land, grid, and governance conditions, but weaker marginal responsiveness to property-cost changes. The paper proposes infrastructural poverty as a conceptual frame for understanding digital infrastructure absorption constraints in structural transformation.

This study examines the impact of agricultural productivity and governance on structural transformation in selected Sub-Saharan African economies from 2000 to 2023. Using a balanced macro-panel of 12 countries and fixed-effects models with Driscoll–Kraay standard errors, the analysis assesses how productivity gains and institutional quality affect the shares of agricultural employment. Descriptive patterns indicate a steady decline in agricultural employment, accompanied by modest increases in cereal yields, food production, and governance indicators. Empirical results show that higher agricultural productivity, particularly in food production, significantly reduces agricultural employment, consistent with the theory of structural transformation. Governance exerts a negative effect on agricultural labor shares once cross-sectional dependence is accounted for, suggesting that stronger institutions facilitate labor movement out of agriculture by improving incentives and market functioning. The findings highlight the importance of productivity improvements and governance reforms in accelerating structural transformation and supporting policies that strengthen land governance and economic opportunities.

Creating socially and economically developed societies is the ultimate aim of socioeconomic policy, and for nearly 70 years European countries have promoted social innovation (SI) as a primary means of achieving it. Yet whether this investment translates into economic growth remains an open empirical question, largely due to the absence of a proper macroeconomic conceptualization. We address this gap through three contributions. First, we develop a macro SI conceptual framework grounded in Sen and Nussbaum's capabilities approach. Second, we construct a Social Innovation Capabilities Index for 78 countries over 2009–2018 using a Bayesian spatial factor model. Third, using System GMM and sequential G-estimation, we show that SI capabilities drive sustained economic growth — measured by economic complexity — rather than short-run income. We further identify inclusive human capital accumulation as the key mechanism. SI's path to sustained growth is a matter of inclusion and technique, and persists across diverse spatiotemporal contexts.

Indigenous peoples worldwide experience substantially poorer mental health than non-Indigenous populations, yet the causal mechanisms behind this disparity remain poorly understood. This paper provides the first causal evidence that large-scale land-use change—specifically, deforestation driven by oil palm expansion—adversely affects the mental health of Indigenous peoples through spiritual–cultural displacement. Focusing on the Dayak of Borneo, whose cultural identity and spiritual practices are deeply tied to primary rainforest, we combine quasi-experimental variation in village-level exposure to deforestation with a lab-in-the-field experiment involving 2,700 individuals in rural Indonesia. We find that greater exposure to forest loss significantly increases anxiety and depression among Dayak respondents, but not among non-Indigenous groups. Complementary priming experiments show that reminders of rapid environmental change temporarily heighten distress, particularly for Dayaks in highly exposed villages. Our findings highlight the overlooked psychological costs of tropical deforestation and the centrality of land in Indigenous well-being.

Bolivia has undertaken one of the world’s most extensive land titling and regularization efforts, significantly reshaping the institutional foundations of rural land governance. Despite the scale and policy significance of these reforms, their effects have not been systematically evaluated. In addition to its sheer scale, a key feature of Bolivia’s titling program is its dual approach: the simultaneous implementation of private titling for individual citizens and agribusiness firms, and collective titling for Indigenous and campesino communities. These two modalities correspond to fundamentally different land-governance structures and, as a result, may influence economic behavior through distinct mechanisms. We investigate the impact of Bolivia’s large-scale land governance reform on several dimensions of local economic development, distinguishing between the effects of collective and private titling efforts, and assessing the heterogeneous impacts these programs may have across different types of households and individuals.

This paper evaluates a centrally-planned resettlement policy in rural Laos intended to modernize livelihoods and reduce poverty among ethnic groups traditionally practicing swidden agriculture. By relocating villages from mountain slopes to valleys, the policy aimed to transition societies toward wet-rice cultivation, considered more technologically advanced and environmentally sustainable. Using staggered treatment timing, I find the policy reduced village swidden plots by 30–40% five to ten years post-resettlement. However, ethnographic studies reveal how swidden practices are deeply interwoven with kinship ties and ethnic identities. Using a triple-difference strategy comparing swidden and wet-rice societies across regions with varying treatment intensity, I find evidence of decreased well-being among those impacted: lower schooling attainment, increased child mortality, lower child health outcomes, and reduced household wealth. Exploring mechanisms, I find the policy had negligible impact on the share of farmers practicing swidden agriculture, suggesting it only reduced plots without generating structural change, thus lowering per-capita inputs.

Agroforestry improves agricultural productivity and climate adaptation while also potentially boosting farmer incomes and resilience. However, obtaining widespread adoption among vulnerable populations has been a persisting challenge. Strengthening farmers’ tenure security is commonly hypothesized to lower barriers, particularly in customary land systems, but evidence of its effectiveness is limited. This nexus has considerable import in Zambia where climate variability exacerbates yield-gaps and food insecurity, and land reforms seek to harmonize customary and state systems and strengthen tenure security for sustainable development. We draw on panel household survey and qualitative data to report longer-term results from a cluster-randomized control trial of a USAID initiative that piloted customary land certification and agroforestry support in Zambia. We report positive tenure security, land governance and agroforestry impacts, with some caveats, seven years on. Results also explore landholder context associated with uptake and tree survival, refine impact pathways and timeframes, and highlight ongoing challenges.

Women and vulnerable groups across Africa face persistent barriers to securing legal land titles due to cultural norms, high costs, limited credit access, and unclear land-administration processes. Without formal rights, they are less able to invest in climate-resilient agriculture or participate in economic development. Medici Land addresses these challenges through systematic land titling programs that integrate technology, community engagement, and gender-inclusive practices. MLG trains female data collectors, conducts participatory verification, and works closely with governments to ensure transparent, multi-step adjudication and approval. Results in Zambia show significant gains in women’s land ownership, with female or joint ownership rising from 22% to 58% in some districts. Remaining barriers particularly the inability to pay title fees still prevent many from securing final rights. Addressing this gap would unlock economic opportunities, expand financial inclusion, and strengthen climate resilience across Africa.

The inheritance is the first cause of co-ownership in Morocco. The needs to exploit land and to have financial incomes pushes to claim separation between co-owners. Faced with this situation, ending co-ownership remains the solution to resolving disputes arising from inheritance. The Judicial resolution is chosen by co-owners to end this situation. This study aims to analyse how the share solution and distribution method resulting from judicial resolution process of inheritance land disputes in registered land, allows co-owners to meet their economic needs and overcome legal and social constraints in the Gharb region of Morocco. The methodological approach consists on a documentary analysis, data collection and analysis of 114 cases of inheritance land disputes during the period 2023-2024 and the collection of expert opinions. The judicial resolution much with economic needs of financial income in 96% and in 12 % of cases the legal restrictions limited the fragmentation of land.

In Ethiopia we assume 50 million land parcels are existed in the high land part of the country of which above 32 million of them have registered and certified with cadastral maps in Second-level Land Certification (SLLC). The National Rural Land Information system (NRLAIS) is one of the largest governance focused information system and the largest LIS in Ethiopia.(lunched in January 2018) the focus is on support administration of rural land holdings through digital record keeping and computerized process of land holding related transactions. From 32 million certified parcels already managed to have about 31 million land records in the cadastral data base from 1000 districts in the country we able to roll out the system in to 516 Districts due to shortage of resources. The study shows the importance of land transaction using second level land certification on economic empowerment and livelihood improvement in the rural land holders particularly women.

Women in Senegal constitute 70% of the agricultural labor force yet own less than 7% of farmland, a disparity that heightens their vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. Using administrative data from 2010–2023, satellite imagery (Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2), and field evidence from 89 participants across Fatick, Tambacounda, and Matam, this study quantifies how institutional and ecological factors interact to constrain women’s land rights. Results show that over 72% of land allocations still occur under customary systems, with only 18% formally documented for women. Spatial analysis reveals that 64% of women’s plots lie in degraded or saline zones, where vegetation cover declined by 23% over the past decade. Conversely, regions with gender-inclusive land commissions record 28% higher documentation rates and 22% fewer disputes. The findings underscore that gender-responsive governance and climate-informed land-use planning are critical to Senegal’s National Land Policy (2026–2035).

This paper examines the fiscal and extra-fiscal effects of decentralizing the collection of Brazil’s rural land tax from the federal level to local governments. Using a difference-in-differences research design, we assess the impact of local tax enforcement on revenue, land use, and environmental outcomes. Decentralization led to sustained revenue gains, increased agricultural production, expanded reported environmental protection areas, and slightly decreased land concentration. Our findings highlight the role of property taxation as a policy instrument for environmental conservation and sustainable development.

We study whether strengthening the link between property taxes and public service delivery improves tax compliance and citizen perceptions of the state. In many low-capacity settings, a weak social compact—where citizens neither trust the state nor see taxes as funding services—constrains development. We test three interventions in a RCT with 100,000 property taxpayers in Pakistan. In the first (“Local Allocation”), property tax revenues are earmarked for neighborhood services. In the second (“Voice”), tax collectors solicit citizen preferences for local services during tax collection. The third (“Voice-based Local Allocation”) combines both approaches. The interventions were repeated over five years, supported by information campaigns, and evaluated using administrative and survey data. We find positive effects on tax compliance in the early years of Local Allocation. Earmarking revenue, delivering services, and informing taxpayers had a greater impact on compliance than pairing service provision with participatory preference elicitation.

This paper examines the introduction of progressive property taxation in a large Congolese city through a citywide field experiment. Neighborhoods were randomly assigned to one of three systems: a progressive schedule, a proportional schedule, or the status quo flat fee. The progressive system increased revenue by 55% compared to both alternatives, with gains observed across the property value distribution. At the top end, higher statutory rates outweighed modest compliance losses, while at the bottom, lower rates drove substantial compliance improvements. Cross-randomized information treatments reveal that taxpayers responded primarily to their own rates rather than perceptions of fairness. We also analyze how statutory progressivity translates into effective tax rates (ETRs), finding that ETRs decline with property value under all systems, steepest under the progressive schedule. An enforcement intervention targeting high-value properties mitigated this regressivity, highlighting the role of enforcement capacity in aligning statutory and effective progressivity.

Stamp duty is a significant yet often underexamined factor influencing land market performance in developing countries. In Uganda, it constitutes a major transaction cost in formal land transfers and may affect both property valuation and the volume of registered transactions. Leveraging newly digitized records from the Uganda National Land Information System (UgNLIS) and the Land Valuation Management Information System (LaVMIS), this study analyzes the economic effects of stamp duty using high-resolution administrative data on payments, title transfers, and valuation reports. Through descriptive statistics, elasticity modeling, hedonic pricing, and spatial analysis, the study evaluates how varying stamp duty levels influence market liquidity, valuation outcomes, and transaction efficiency. Findings aim to clarify whether high stamp duty discourages formalization, suppresses transfer activity, or contributes to valuation distortions. Results will support policy reforms to optimize stamp duty, enhance revenue generation, and strengthen the transparency and performance of Uganda’s land market.

Fertility rates remain high in sub-Saharan Africa, and men usually desire more children than women and have greater bargaining power. Strengthening women’s property rights can shift intrahousehold bargaining, giving women control over reproductive choices. We analyze the effect of the Rural Land Governance project- a gender neutral land documentation reform- on fertility outcomes in Burkina Faso. We leverage the randomized rollout of land offices across 47 matched commune pairs, merging treatment with 2021 Demographic and Health Survey clusters to estimate the causal impact on fertility. We find that while men report higher landownership, women report significantly less. Consistent with strategic responses to safeguard access to land, women in treated areas have more births, particularly after the program is fully implemented. Men's ideal number of children is lower, although women's does not change. We find women are more likely to use modern contraception, suggesting spacing children rather than limiting fertility.

This paper aims at investigating how the difference types of polygamy present in Nigeria (Muslim polygamy versus Christian polygamy) shape households’ choices when it comes to the intergenerational transmission of assets and investments in human capital of children in complex household structures. Using detailed information of resident, non-resident and passed away female spouses, allows us to shed a light on the distribution of resources, fertility patterns, and relative say of women in polygamous households. Understanding better how informal institutions and the economic environment shape intra-household resource allocation will contribute to design better policies aiming at reducing inequality between genders (such as, inheritance reforms and land titling programs) and provide more equal opportunities for women and children within the household.

We estimate the causal impact of the 2005 Hindu Succession Amendment Act on daughters’ agricultural land ownership in India using a difference-in-differences design that exploits variation in the law’s applicability across religious groups. The reform granted equal inheritance rights to Hindu, Sikh, and Jain women, while Muslims and Christians were unaffected. We analyze 1.36 million digitized land records from Haryana spanning 2001–2023, using natural language processing to infer landowners’ gender and religion and to match siblings. We find that the reform increased daughters’ inclusion on land records, but the effects were modest and fell short of parity. The number of sisters per plot rose by 0.18 (142% from a 0.131 baseline), and the probability of any sister ownership increased by 1.4 percentage points (13%). However, proportional ownership gains were limited, suggesting strategic compliance without meaningful redistribution of land control.

De jure reforms to improve women’s legal rights are often not enforced in practice. In this study, we examine the effects of a land records reform in Punjab, Pakistan on de facto land rights of females, who are legally entitled to a share of parental land. This reform digitized and centralized land records and created a biometric verification requirement. Exploiting the staggered rollout of the reform across Punjab as well as the quasi-random timing of father/husband deaths, we find that it significantly increased the probability of female inheritance from 13% to 22%. However, we also find evidence of unintended consequences for younger women, potentially due to intrahousehold resource reallocation away from daughters in response to a forced inheritance transfer.

This paper examines the impact of Zimbabwe’s Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) using granular geospatial and household data spanning the pre- and post-reform period. Using a difference-in-difference framework, we compare outcomes on resettled A1/A2 land with communal areas that remained outside the scope of the reform. We also compare Zimbabwe’s agricultural outcomes with those of Zambia, a neighbouring country that shares a similar colonial history, climate, and agro-ecological conditions but did not implement large-scale land reforms during this period. Our results show substantial declines in agricultural performance for most major crops, a slight decline in the household wealth index, and an increase in the share of stunted children. Together, these results suggest that the land reform worsened agricultural productivity and did not deliver the anticipated benefits of improved welfare.

Uganda’s refugee policy is among the most progressive globally, granting new arrivals access to services, freedom of movement, and, when available, small plots of cultivable land intended to foster self-reliance. Yet little empirical evidence exists on whether these land allocations actually improve refugee livelihoods. Using four waves (2017–2021) of the representative RIMA panel, covering refugee and host households across 12 settlements, we estimate the causal impact of initial land allocation on welfare and production outcomes. To address endogeneity in settlement parcel assignments, we implement a leave-one-out instrument based on cohort-level average allocations. Our results show that households with larger initial allocations substantially improve food security, increase agricultural earnings, and raise the share of production sold. Effects are consistently larger in IV than OLS estimates, suggesting that households granted more land may be less prepared to utilize it—consistent with qualitative interviews documenting feelings of limited agricultural experience among new arrivals.

We examine how land ownership shapes educational mobility in rural India. Using full-count rural census microdata, we document a robust step-function pattern across the land distribution: educational mobility rises sharply from the landless to marginal landholders and then plateaus. Exploiting historical variation in British-era land-tenure regimes, we demonstrate a causal link between higher landlessness and lower educational mobility. To unpack mechanisms, we develop a model where parents allocate children’s time between school and work under a subsistence constraint. With little or no land, the constraint binds, increasing child labour and suppressing schooling; a small rise in land relaxes it, producing a sharp drop in child labour and a jump in schooling and upward mobility. The framework endogenously generates the step-function, matches the core facts, rationalizes heterogeneities, and yields testable predictions that we validate.

This study examines the drivers and consequences of household transitions from farm to non-farm livelihoods in Rwanda. Using nationally representative EICV data, we apply Random Forest with SHAP values to identify key determinants of livelihood choice and a Multinomial Endogenous Treatment Effects model to assess impacts on poverty, productivity, and diversification. Results show that households specializing solely in non-farm activities see modest poverty reductions but no significant productivity gains. In contrast, those combining farm and non-farm work achieve higher labor productivity but only marginal poverty reduction. These findings suggest that non-farm work alone does not ensure escape from multidimensional poverty without improvements in job quality and earnings. Meanwhile, diversification enhances resilience but not income per hour. Policy should focus on improving non-farm job quality, supporting mixed livelihood strategies through credit and skills development, and fostering synergies between sectors to ensure productivity gains lead to inclusive rural development.

This paper examines how water resources mediate the relationship between climate shocks and violence. Combining high-resolution data on temperature, hydrology, and conflict events across Africa from 1997 to 2023, we show that high-temperature shocks increase conflict in nearby water-rich areas. The results are driven by shocks originating in downstream locations, consistent with groups seeking to secure access to upstream water sources that confer greater control over river flow. The effect is stronger for persistent temperature shocks and in regions experiencing long-run decline in water availability. These findings highlight a mechanism through which climate change may increase conflict risk, as rising temperatures and shifts in the distribution of surface water intensify competition over water resources.

Climate change is increasingly driving land‑based conflicts in drought‑prone regions where environmental stress intersects with fragile governance systems. This study examines land governance solutions in Ethiopia’s Somali Region, particularly Harshin district, where climate stress, mobility, and contested authority converge. Findings show that addressing climate‑induced conflicts requires more than environmental interventions, it also requires a transformation in we govern land. The study highlights key land governance solutions such as securing tenure rights for pastoralists and agro‑pastoralists, legally recognizing migration corridors and dry‑season reserves, and embedding climate risk into land‑use planning. More importantly, hybrid governance mechanisms that combine customary dispute resolution with statutory enforcement are found to be essential for legitimacy and effectiveness. Ultimately, effective land governance solutions for climate induced conflicts require secure tenure systems, stronger local institutions, and the integration of climate adaptation into resource management.

Violence and population displacement during conflicts can severely disrupt agricultural systems, particularly in countries with limited arable land. These disruptions not only threaten food security and rural livelihoods but also deepen the broader socioeconomic consequences of war. Despite the significance of this issue, empirical evidence on the causal impact of conflict on agricultural land use remains scarce, primarily due to data limitations and endogeneity concerns between agricultural land use and conflict. We examine how the Syrian civil war (2011–2024) affected land use using a spatial regression discontinuity design along the Syria–Türkiye border. We show that the conflict resulted in a loss of cropland mass and cultivation intensity in Syria relative to Türkiye. We provide evidence that cropland loss likely resulted from destruction of irrigation infrastructure and institutions that made Syria more vulnerable to droughts, as well as from cultivation disruption in the context of territorial fight between armed groups.

Women’s housing, land, and property (HLP) rights in Sub-Saharan Africa remain profoundly unequal despite significant regional policy commitments. This paper argues that these rights constitute a missing but essential pillar of the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda. Drawing on regional evidence and case studies from fragile and climate-affected contexts, the paper demonstrates how unequal land governance perpetuates gendered vulnerability during conflict, displacement, and recovery, while secure HLP rights generate measurable peace and resilience dividends. Using a feminist political economy lens, it analyzes the institutional gaps between continental land frameworks and WPS implementation, highlighting how current policy silos weaken both agendas. The paper proposes strategic pathways for integrating women’s HLP rights into World Bank diagnostics, land reforms, climate programs, and FCV operations. It concludes that strengthening women’s tenure security is foundational to achieving structural peace, inclusive growth, and the next generation of gender-responsive development policy.

The Nexus Pilot Project in Ethiopia’s Lake Chamo watershed examined how legal recognition of communal land tenure can support forest landscape restoration and strengthen local governance. Implemented between 2020 and 2023, the pilot certified more than 1,500 hectares of communal forest across five kebeles and established legally registered forest user cooperatives to manage these areas. Using a retrospective case study approach, the analysis draws on project documentation, participatory mapping, legal records, and field observations. Results show reduced encroachment, early signs of vegetation recovery, and improved cooperation between communities and local administrations. The findings align with global evidence on the links between tenure security, environmental stewardship, and procedural justice. The case demonstrates how participatory communal land titling can operationalize national land laws, reinforce local governance, and contribute to broader agendas of equity, climate resilience, and reparative land policy. It provides a practical, scalable model for communal tenure reform in African contexts.

The relationship between Investor State Dispute Settlement (“ISDS”) and the indigenous peoples’ land rights has been turning abstruse over the years, raising critical questions about the adequacy of ISDS mechanisms in safeguarding those rights. Foreign investment projects, often pursued in the name of development, have frequently been reported to infringe upon indigenous peoples’ land rights and other fundamental freedoms. The paper examines the extent to which the decisions of ISDS tribunals impact indigenous peoples’ land rights in Asian and Africa countries, critically questioning whether and how the perspectives of indigenous peoples are incorporated into the resolution of international investment disputes. The research methodology applied is a combination of doctrinal and qualitative methodologies to analyse the existing texts and legal instruments on international investment disputes in Asia and Africa and explore the real-world examples on various relevant ISDS decisions made in Asian and African countries.

One key rationale for implementing public works programs (PWPs) is that the assets they create can yield lasting benefits, yet evidence on such “asset channel” effects remain limited. This paper examines how assets generated through Malawi’s Climate-Smart Enhanced Public Works Program (CS-PWP), implemented by the government with World Bank support, strengthen household resilience to climate shocks such as droughts and floods. Using a case study approach, the analysis combines primary qualitative data collected in 2024 with site visits and quantitative asset quality assessments. Findings show that well-designed CS-PWPs create durable, community-maintained assets that enhance households’ ability to cope with and adapt to climate risks. Land-based assets in particular provide multiple benefits at both household and community levels, while forest-based interventions show promise for delivering similar long-term gains, though additional research is needed to confirm their sustained impacts. Strengthening design and implementation through participatory planning is critical to program effectiveness.

On-farm conservation of agrobiodiversity paves way for natural evolution and adaptation which produces novel genes for breeding hardy varieties and new traits for improved farm resilience under climate change. By evaluating climate change perception and determinants of perception of 280 smallholder farmers cultivating paddy landraces in the climate vulnerable district of Palghar in India, the present study reveals the effect of collective response to climate change and land governance by farmers on agrobiodiversity conservation, agricultural resilience, food and livelihood security, and poverty mitigation. Further, it shows the role of strong social networks and local institutions in raising climate awareness, shaping climate change perception and influencing adaptation. Given the heterogeneity of climate effects, farming systems and farmer experiences, policies for agrobiodiversity conservation and climate resilience should factor in regional differences, local land governance systems and institutions, be aligned with farmers’ perception of climate change, and thus be informed by field-based evidence.

The Integrated Administration and Control System (IACS) is the technical framework used by the 27 Member States of the European Union (EU) to implement the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The CAP channels €35 billion to farmers each year, supporting farm continuity, food security, environmental protection and rural development. IACS records the extent, location and agricultural activities of more than 90 million agricultural parcels declared by farmers for CAP support (around 90% of all EU agricultural land). Farmer claims are monitored and verified mainly using Earth observation data, particularly Copernicus Sentinel. Although not a cadastral register, IACS provides a reliable spatial picture of European agricultural land and its dynamics. IACS is planned to evolve into a European Land Management System with broader scope and data that can potentially contribute to the European Observatory on Agricultural Land, a new system that is in its pilot phase to help monitor agricultural land transactions.

As Ukraine advances toward EU accession, establishing an EU-compliant Land Parcel Identification System (LPIS) is critical for its Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The EU standard requires 0.5m aerial ortho-imagery, which is currently unavailable. This study presents findings from a pilot forced to use VHR satellite imagery as a substitute to test delineation methodologies. The core of our research is a rigorous comparative analysis of two satellite datasets: 0.3m Vantor (formerly Maxar) and 0.7m Satellogic. We compared a 100 km² dataset from 0.3m imagery against a dataset from 0.7m imagery delineated by an independent team. We will present quantitative (area, count) and qualitative (feature capture) analysis to compare the two datasets. This study highlight the opportunities and limitations of current satellite imagery for LPIS.

The Land Parcel Identification System (LPIS) relies on labor-intensive manual delineation, creating a major bottleneck for countries lacking operational systems. This work presents DelAny, a deep learning model based on YOLO11 combined with a multi-stage post-processing pipeline for automated parcel segmentation. The approach is resolution-agnostic and integrates morphological operations with land cover–based filtering and classification to assign LPIS categories. The pipeline was evaluated on 11 pilot sites across Ukraine within the World Bank/EU funded LPIS Pilot 2024–2025 project, using both Sentinel-2 and very high-resolution imagery MAXAR. Results demonstrate good agreement with manual LPIS delineations, achieving high coverage and improved detection of small fields while maintaining consistency for large parcels. Comparisons with existing products show that the proposed method consistently performs better across multiple metrics. The approach enables scalable LPIS automation and can serve as a proxy in regions where LPIS is absent, supporting land administration and agricultural monitoring.

Smallholder farmers in low- and middle-income countries often lack formal collateral and verifiable production records, limiting their access to agricultural credit and increasing lending risk for financial institutions. This research explores whether satellite-based Earth Observation (EO) data could improve agricultural credit governance by validating declared cultivated areas, identifying crop types, and monitoring seasonal crop development. The work is theoretical and conducted ex-post, assessing whether access to parcel-level time series (Sentinel-1/2 imagery, NDVI/EVI trajectories, and climate anomaly indicators) could have reduced loan defaults in past lending cycles. Using field boundary mapping, crop classification, and vegetation anomaly detection, the study will generate a Geo-Credit Alert Index and simulate counterfactual lending decisions using econometric techniques. The anticipated outcome is evidence that EO-enabled screening and monitoring could reduce portfolio risk while expanding financial inclusion. Findings will inform policy design and future implementation models for scalable EO-assisted agricultural lending systems.

Welcome Remarks

Introduction

Key messages with emphasis on agrifood systems and the impact of non-tariff measures

Making standards work - operations investments and partnerships

Making standards work - operations investments and partnerships

Making standards work - operations investments and partnerships

Making standards work - operations investments and partnerships

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Property transfer and land administration are central to how firms access and transact land, yet the quality of underlying systems varies enormously across economies. While registries and cadastres are nearly universal, their coverage, transparency, and interoperability remain highly uneven. This presentation draws on indicators — spanning regulatory quality, public services, and operational efficiency — from 101 economies in B-READY 2025. The data show that registry coverage is the strongest predictor of firm-reported land access constraints, with gaps particularly pronounced in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the majority of economies have less than half their land nationally registered. Additional findings highlight widespread gaps in online transaction platforms, property tax value integration into cadastral systems, and public availability of sex-disaggregated land ownership data. Together, these indicators offer a comparable, cross-country lens for understanding how differences in regulatory frameworks, service delivery, and implementation shape business access to land.

Property registries are a pillar of state capacity essential for private investment and job creation. While registry establishment and maintenance were traditionally costly and difficult, digital technology can reduce delivery cost and increase quality and usefulness of land records if appropriate regulations and institutional arrangements are in place. We develop indicators–of digital coverage, interoperability, and public land management and land value capture–for effective registry operation. By highlighting vast differences and significant advances across regions, data from 85 countries show that such indicators can help provide strategic direction, share experience, and measure progress towards realizing property registries’ potential in terms of (i) empowering private right holders to invest and create the basis for land, mortgage and insurance markets; (ii) providing the information needed to transparently regulate markets and use of land; and (iii) foster effective decentralization in management of public land and land value capture for public good provision.

India's Central Government has invested approximately US$1 billion across three programmes covering agricultural, habitation, and urban land, recognising land records as foundational digital infrastructure. Progress is substantial: 95% of rural records across 625,000 villages have been computerised, unique identifiers assigned to 230 million parcels, and 89% of Sub-Registrar Offices integrated with land records. However, realising full returns is complicated by land being a state subject under the Constitution, with responsibility historically fragmented across institutions, resulting in wide variation in record quality and interoperability. SVAMITVA has extended titling to 329,000 villages, with evidence of credit market activation where titles are digitally integrated. NAKSHA applies the same precision-survey approach to urban areas, linking parcels to property tax records, with US$600 million earmarked for national rollout. Benchmarking states on data integration and regulatory readiness could accelerate scheme management and sustain accomplishments.

Ukraine's war-driven digital transformation of agricultural land governance is a model with few global precedents. Following the elimination of a longstanding ban on land sales, and despite Russia's invasion, Ukraine built a State Agrarian Registry fully interoperable with the State Land Cadaster and the Registry of Real Property Rights from scratch — achieving in two years what peacetime reform had failed to deliver in decades. This created a verified digital profile of every registered farmer, underpinning a complete overhaul of public agricultural support, with all subsidies and grants now flowing through the SAR with minimal mis-targeting. Integration with annual Sentinel-2 satellite crop maps, co-developed with a local university, the World Bank, and the EU's Joint Research Centre, enables parcel-level cultivation tracking. The resulting verifiable cultivation history supports EU compliance, digital traceability, private credit and insurance provision, land valuation, and local property tax collection.

Costa Rica has one of Latin America's most digitally mature land administration systems, with the Registro Nacional housing both property registry and national cadaster under a single institutional roof and fully electronic transactions operational since 2010. The IGN is on track to complete cadastral coverage across all 492 districts by 2026. Five second-generation challenges remain: cadaster and registry lack a shared parcel identifier and API access, preventing interoperability; without a permanent legal framework, gains from the 2025 revaluation initiative will erode — a CAMA framework could increase municipal revenues by 40–60% in urban areas; public land boundaries remain fragmented and not fully integrated with the cadastral layer; environmental monitoring systems lack parcel-level linkage to the cadaster; and municipal disaster risk plans do not systematically draw on cadastral data. A single LADM-compliant shared parcel identifier could unlock all five challenges in a country positioned for a world-class land administration system.

Colombia is transforming its land administration system through a nationally mandated Multipurpose Cadaster, driven by the 2016 Peace Accord and supported by a US$100 million World Bank loan. From under 10% cadastral coverage in 2022, over 44 million hectares across 326 municipalities had been updated by early 2026. The program's DLIs are informed by global benchmarking frameworks, and adoption of the LADM/MECR data standard provides the architecture for multi-system interoperability. Three concrete advances stand out: the Catastro Verde has mapped 5.6 million hectares of legally settled national parks; MECR v4.1 establishes the data infrastructure for environmental monitoring; and experience integrating cadastral data with municipal Territorial Organization Plans (POTs) offers a template for national disaster risk zoning requirements. Four gaps remain: cadaster-registry integration, fiscal activation, digital authentication, and operationalizing environmental and disaster risk interoperability. The presentation will discuss how these gaps could be closed with ongoing World Bank support.

South Africa

China has been developing a more comprehensive and unified system for land management and property registration over the past two decades. Shanghai shows how stronger institutional coordination and digitalization can improve the business environment and make investment easier. Responsibilities for planning, land management, property registration, and construction permitting have been brought into a more integrated governance framework, reducing fragmentation and improving coordination. Digitalization has reshaped service delivery, with centralized information platforms and the “All-round, Online and Shared” reform enabling end-to-end online processing and data sharing across agencies. Inter-regional connectivity is also emerging, with cross-provincial property registration services helping to facilitate investment flows across major economic corridors. Looking ahead, priorities include deeper data integration and interoperability across regions and expanding consistent “one stop” online services for a wider range of users. The presentation will highlight Shanghai’s reforms and key initiatives that have enhanced efficiency and improved the business environment.

A colonial legacy from British rule, Uganda's mailo tenure that superimposes freehold-like ownership over legally recognized but unregistered tenant rights is one of the world's most complex tenure systems that has undermined investment and land market operation, especially on high-value land, for generations. Investment in digital data and physical infrastructure that is ready to scale created the preconditions for trying to overcome this bottleneck by ensuring that data on land use that are already collected for traceability can be processed digitally and converted into a legally valid ownership document on customary land or used to register a tenant-owner partnership to access finance for productivity-enhancing investments. If results from planned pilots show promise, such efforts could be expanded quickly to provide a scalable solution not only for Uganda but also for other countries under the World Bank's flagship AgriConnect initiative.

Housing assistance programs are widely used to provide affordable housing to low-income families. We study a large-scale subsidized housing program in Brazil and estimate its effects on adults who received housing and on children who were exposed to it. Adult beneficiaries experience small declines in formal employment. Unlike in other settings, these effects are not driven by spatial isolation, but are instead consistent with modest income effects. In contrast, the impacts on children are large and transformative. Earlier exposure increases educational attainment, makes children more likely to enroll in high school and college, and substantially improves formal employment in adulthood. These gains are concentrated among children of the poorest families and are driven in part by proximity to high-quality schools. Housing assistance can therefore promote intergenerational mobility when it expands children’s access to opportunity.

Does first-time homeownership affect entrepreneurship among low-income households? We address this question by exploiting random assignment from a housing lottery program in Brazil. We link lottery records to matched employer--employee records and Brazil's business registry, tracking formal employment and business formation. Being awarded a house substantially reduces entrepreneurial entry: beneficiaries are 20% less likely to start any business in the year following the lottery, with effects persisting for up to five years post-lottery. The reduction is observed at the microenterprise margin---we find no effects on small or larger firm entry at any horizon. The effect is driven by applicants with no formal occupation at the time of the lottery, spans all major sectors but concentrates within each sector in subsistence-type activities. The reduction is stronger among men and in more economically developed municipalities, where occupational alternatives are ample, and among lower pre-lottery earners, where financial pressure is most acute.

We study a stringent rent control law introduced in 60 municipalities in Catalonia in 2020 and suddenly eliminated in 2022. Using matched rental and sale listings, we find that rents fall by 6-7% after implementation but return to pre-policy levels within a year as rental listings drop by nearly 40%. Sale listings increase by 16-17% and prices decline by 2-3%, with persistent effects after decontrol. Administrative data suggest that landlords reallocate supply from rentals to sales, and rely on contracts exempt from the law or left unregistered. As a result, rent relief is temporary, while losses in property values persist.

We study consumer protection in homeownership markets where buyers pay developers before construction completion. Home ownership is households' largest financial investment, yet protection against developer fraud remains weak. Without oversight, developers delay projects, divert funds, or default, deterring marginal buyers and restricting ownership to wealthier households. Regulatory effects are ambiguous: reduced risk may expand access, but compliance costs may reduce supply. We analyze India's Real Estate Regulation and Development Act, which mandated escrow accounts, completion deadlines, and project disclosures. Using 1.06 million mortgage originations, we find regulation increases mortgage access, particularly for first-time buyers and marginalized groups. Defaults decline. Developer market structure transforms: exits rise alongside new entry, reducing concentration and expanding affordable housing supply. Overall, our findings suggest that consumer protection targeting developers can democratize homeownership.

Literature on the governance of common-pool resources predicts that consensus on resource use rules will promote effective governance of natural resources. However, empirical evidence directly testing this hypothesis is scarce. We investigate how community-level consensus on spatial land use rules is associated with forest conservation using original survey and participatory mapping data from 70 Indigenous communities in the San Martín region of Peru. We conducted an innovative mapping exercise in which community participants independently mapped their understanding of permissible land uses across their territory. We found that (i) areas with higher consensus on forest conservation exhibit significantly lower deforestation rates, while (2) areas with stronger consensus on agricultural use face greater forest loss. Our findings highlight how consensus about the rules governing land use is strongly associated with forest outcomes. This finding suggests that interventions should be deployed to help communities achieve consensus about how to use communal lands.

We provide the first causal evidence on the environmental consequences of secure land property rights by examining the impact of China’s national land titling reform (2009–2019) on biodiversity conservation. Exploiting the staggered rollout of the reform and rich county-level panel data, we implement a difference-in-differences design to identify its effects. We find that land titling significantly improves ecological outcomes, including habitat diversity, bird species richness, crop variety, and ecosystem productivity. Mechanism analyses show that land titling promotes biodiversity by realigning private incentives—through more efficient land use and sustainable investment—and by enhancing community coordination for collaborative conservation activities. By demonstrating how private property rights can help deliver global public goods, our study uncovers a novel institutional channel linking tenure security to environmental sustainability.

Collective land titling in the tropics often reduces deforestation, yet the mechanisms behind this effect remain unclear. Leveraging a unique parcel-level dataset from Bolivia's recent land reform, I show that collective land titles protected forests, especially primary forests, in lowland Bolivia. I investigate four potential mechanisms: low land quality, pre-titling land clearing, restrictive land rights, and collective governance. I find no support for the first two: collective land was in fact more suitable for agriculture than large private land, and collective titles showed no clear pre-trends of deforestation before titling. The evidence instead supports the latter two mechanisms: restrictive land rights appear to limit agricultural expansion in collective titles, and collective titles granted to long-established communities exhibit stronger forest protection compared to those granted to newly formed communities.

This paper examines the impact of the Forest Rights Act (FRA) on the dietary diversity of India's indigenous communities (Schedule Tribes/STs). Historically dependent on forests for subsistence, livelihoods, and cultural identity, STs lacked formal rights until the FRA was enacted in 2008, granting access to forest land and non-timber forest products (NTFPs). Using four rounds of a large-scale consumer expenditure survey and variation in forest cover to capture the potential of the Act, we employ a difference-in-differences strategy. Post-FRA, dietary diversity of ST households increased, driven by an increase in the diversity of vegetables, fruits, and oils consumed. FRA titles data further supports this claim. We document a shift in food sources from subsistence-based collection and cultivation to market purchases. Gains are strongest in areas with larger shares of moderately dense forests that enable NTFP access. Suggestive evidence indicates a shift towards non-agricultural employments potentially facilitated by improved resource access.

Research has shown that ownership of assets, such as land, is strongly correlated with well-being and economic security. To understand this relationship robust measures of ownership are needed. However, standard survey modules on asset ownership often rely on a single respondent and capture only reported or documented ownership. To address this limitation and to better understand ownership and the effects on women’s empowerment, the Measures for Advancing Gender Equality (MAGNET) Initiative developed five survey tools - vignettes and a scale - to address key questions such as: What does ownership entail? Do people share a common understanding of ownership? What are people’s preferences regarding individual versus joint ownership? Each tool was tested in the field in at least two countries per tool covering land and other key assets. This paper validates the tools using a three-phase framework and motivates their inclusion in household surveys.

We investigate the sensitivity of rural land rental market participation statistics, which are based on survey data collected (a) from different household respondents, and (b) under alternative questionnaire design characteristics. Our analysis is based on data from male and female spousal pairs from farming households in rural Zambia. We provide evidence of systematic underreporting of rented-in and rented-out land, which stem from different underlying causes. Underreporting of rented-in land appears to be associated with salience bias in plot roster responses and can be partially addressed through nudges embedded in questionnaires. Underreporting of rented-out land, on the other hand, appears to be associated with self-censoring, possibly reflective of social desirability biases, and stronger for men than women. Interestingly, while male and female respondents indicate similar average rates of rental market participation, we observe household-level discordance in reported rates of tenancy, suggesting gendered biases in responses partly related to intra-household information asymmetry.

Accurate land measurement is critical for agricultural research, yet GPS-based plot data in household surveys are prone to error. Using two rounds of Nigeria’s General Household Survey–Panel Wave 5 (2023–2024), we apply machine learning algorithms to detect and correct anomalies in plot size data, and validate improvements with repeated GPS measurements. We find that 21% of plots were flagged as anomalous in the post-planting round, but re-measurement in the post-harvest round reduced anomalies by over 60%. Environmental factors and surveyor characteristics were significantly associated with changes in anomaly status. Productivity estimates are highly sensitive to plot size definitions: doubling plot size is associated with a 49–58% decrease in output value per unit area, confirming the inverse farm size–productivity relationship. Our findings demonstrate the value of machine learning for survey data quality assurance and highlight the policy importance of reliable land measurement for credible productivity analysis in agricultural and development research.

Mixed-mode data collection strategies, combining phone and in-person interviews, are increasingly used in longitudinal surveys in low- and middle-income countries to reduce costs while maintaining data quality. This paper uses experimental data from Nigeria to assess whether mixed-mode surveys can reduce recall bias in reporting agricultural labor and input use. The findings reveal substantial recall bias in the standard method: plots in the mixed-mode group were 92.6% more likely to report individual labor participation, and the number of household members reported as working increased by 101.5%. Conversely, hours and days worked per person were overreported in the recall survey, with reductions of 29–32% observed under the mixed-mode approach. Non-labor inputs such as fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides were underreported by up to 198% in the recall survey. These results underscore the potential of mixed-mode surveys to dramatically improve the accuracy of agricultural input data and inform more effective policy design.

This study evaluates the Rural Cadastre (CTR) in Brazil from the perspective of the FELA Strategic Pathways, focusing on overcoming challenges to effective land administration. Although Brazil has a legal framework and robust but isolated systems, significant gaps persist. A modernization project led by INCRA applies LADM, Fit-For-Purpose principles, and the SDGs, resulting in an advanced prototype. However, FELA adoption remains limited due to weak coordination, low interoperability, and institutional fragmentation. FELA, adopted by UN-GGIM in 2020, provides leadership, standards, and nine strategic pathways. The study analyzes how implementing the CTR can strengthen FELA by integrating formal and informal rights and simplifying processes. It also examines organizational barriers and proposes evaluating the CTR’s impact on governance, policy, data, interoperability, engagement, and financial sustainability within the FELA framework, advancing the transition from technical achievements to strategic effectiveness.

Money laundering and the financing of terrorism are two of the most serious threats to the credibility, stability and security of the world’s financial markets. With an ever more interlinked world, financial crimes can be cross-border and travel quickly, using legal gaps, lax regulation and tenebrous business structures. Consequently, preventing money laundering and its associated crimes has increasingly become an international problem necessitating coordinated effort among governments, financial institutions, supervisory bodies, and non-financial actors. Among these actors, property and land registries play a critical yet sometimes underestimated role in detecting and preventing illicit activities linked to real estate transactions. Countries such as Spain has a strong regulation on money laundering policies. It is important to highlight the role that the “Colegio de Registradores” play in terms of prevention, helping judicial authorities to fight against money laundering through “CRAB” (Anti-money laundering registry center).

Ethiopia has implemented one of Africa’s largest digital land administration systems through the National Rural Land Administration Information System (NRLAIS), now it operational in over 500 woredas with over 32 million registered parcels and over 10 million landholders. This study examines how Ethiopia achieved national-scale deployment using a Fit-for-Purpose approach, LADM-compliant data structures, and open-source technologies within a decentralized governance framework. The analysis draws on administrative data, spatial datasets, synchronization logs, and system performance indicators to assess impacts on service delivery, data quality, and institutional coordination. Findings show that NRLAIS significantly improves transparency, reduces transaction time, strengthens data integrity, and expands inclusion through offline-first tools. The Ethiopian experience demonstrates that large-scale digital land systems can be successfully implemented in resource-constrained settings and provides globally relevant lessons for building sustainable, scalable, and interoperable land information systems.

Typically measured as housing cost over income. Many factors influence housing affordability, but without doubt the limited supply determines the high sale and rental prices. The lack of availability of housing in the market arises not only from its material scarcity, but also from the use of existing housing for purposes other than meeting the need for permanent housing or a home. This is the case of housing , being used or exploited for tourism purposes. This paper will set out how Spain, through the Property and Moveable Assets Register, controls the use of dwellings intended for short-term rentals, assigning them a registration number ,once the Registrar has verified that they meet the legal requirements, without which they cannot be marketed on the platforms dedicated to this purpose.

Land-use change driven by economic factors has significantly altered ecosystem services in Lampung, Sumatra-Indonesia. This study investigates the key drivers behind the ongoing shift. Data were obtained through structured household surveys, field observations, and institutional records, and supported by literature. The method of Cross-Impact Matrix Multiplication Applied to Classification (MICMAC) was used to identify the variables affecting land-use changes in the study sites. These variables were then classified into four quadrants based on their levels of influence and dependency. The analysis highlights six determinant variables: farmers’ age, education level, presence of farmer groups, palm oil selling price, land suitability, and government policy support. These variables play a pivotal role in shaping land-use dynamics, which provide a foundation for targeted and effective policy interventions. Insights from this study offer important lessons for promoting sustainable oil palm management and enhancing agricultural resilience in one of Indonesia’s high intensity farming regions.

Blockchain technology offers emerging tools for enhancing zero-deforestation supply chains by improving transparency, traceability, and governance. However, not all blockchain systems are created equal, and their environmental and social impacts differ significantly. This review critically evaluates key blockchain systems to assess their potential contributions to zero-deforestation efforts, exploring how these systems could address deforestation challenges, foster smallholder inclusivity, and enable decentralized digital governance. By analyzing blockchain's capabilities and limitations, we aim to provide actionable insights for stakeholders considering its application in sustainable forest supply chains, and identify directions for future research.

This paper examines whether combining tenure documentation with Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) can improve livelihoods and environmental outcomes in Ghana’s cocoa frontier. Using a mixed-methods, quasi-experimental design, we assess a pilot project which offered land and tree documentation, agroforestry training, shade-tree distribution, and PES tied to verified tree survival. Over five years, treatment and comparison communities were tracked through surveys, interviews, administrative data, and field-based carbon measurements. The pilot significantly increased uptake of land and tree documentation, boosted shade-tree planting, and improved food security and off-farm income diversification—especially for sharecroppers. However, perceived tenure security, self-reported land clearing, and measured carbon stocks showed no detectable effects. Imperfect bundling—where many households received PES but not documentation—further limited environmental gains. Overall, integrated “rights + incentives” approaches can strengthen household resilience but are unlikely to deliver forest or carbon benefits without stronger incentives and clearer links between documentation and enforceable rights.

Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) represents a transformative opportunity for the insurance industry to innovate and support the global shift toward nature-positive development. With the global Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework driving commitments worldwide, insurers are uniquely positioned to derisk ongoing nature-based investments. Pemberton will discuss services, opportunities and pitfalls to support insurers, developers, landowners, and conservation bodies by integrating ecological data with insurance systems and risk analytics, and aligning, then translating into frameworks like ORSA, CSRD, ESRS E4, and TNFD. The strategic opportunity lies in creating new insurance products, such as project-specific biodiversity cover or helping monitor for existing professional indemnity for ecologists, and environmental liability policies. By integrating explainable AI through a transparent data pipeline (not a standard AI 'black box') biodiversity measurement and monitoring services to existing and new products, insurers can reduce risk, help unlock capital, support liquidity and sustainable development, and lead innovation in nature-based risk management.

Understanding how crop yields affect deforestation in tropical countries is central to achieving both food security and environmental sustainability. While existing evidence is primarily based on case studies, systematic evidence at broad spatial and temporal scales remains limited. We combine high-resolution (30 × 30 m) satellite data covering the entire tropics annually from 2001 to 2022 to estimate the local effects of crop yield changes on local forest cover (within 10 km). Using a dynamic panel framework, we find modest but statistically significant forest loss following yield gains. Effects are, however, heterogeneous spatially and dynamically. Losses are concentrated in areas with higher initial forest cover and in countries with fewer agri-environmental policies. Importantly, regions with farms below 20 ha as well as those with broad agroforestry adoption do not lose any forest on net in response to crop yield gains.

Global efforts to mitigate climate change include Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+), however, evidence on its effectiveness remains mixed. This study evaluates the effectiveness of collective REDD+ agreements signed by Afro-Colombian communities in curbing both deforestation and coca cultivation. Using satellite data at 30 m × 30 m resolution for forest cover ( 900 m² per pixel) and 1 km × 1 km resolution for coca crops (1 km² per pixel), we find that REDD+ projects significantly reduced deforestation by an average of 33 m² per pixel and coca cultivation by 0.33 ha / km2, which is approximately 9,695 hectares of avoided deforestation and 7,098 hectares of contained coca crop expansion annually. These significant impacts, which stand in contrast to findings from previous REDD+ evaluations, likely stem from the way these collective agreements strengthen local monitoring systems, enhance social cohesion, and generate expectation of improved economic conditions.

We investigate the intensive-margin response of forest outcomes to roads using China’s 2000–2010 expressway rollout as the setting. We construct a unique panel from the National Forest Inventory covering over 18,000 geo-located plots with ground-based measures of standing timber volume, which capture tree-level outcomes that satellite-based measures typically miss. Using long differences and standard instrumental variables, we find that moving 10 km closer to an expressway increases timber volume by approximately 2%, with gains concentrated within 1–20 km of new roads. The implied biomass increase equals 217–552 million tons of CO2, comparable to Canada’s annual emissions at the upper bound. Mechanism evidence and a spatial equilibrium model show that improved downstream market access strengthens incentives for investment and specialization in forestry under strict forest land-use controls, highlighting a role for transport infrastructure in promoting sustainable growth.

This paper studies the impact of the Grain for Green Program, one of the largest Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) programs in the world, on agricultural productivity. We develop a conceptual framework with frictional land markets to analyze how the program affects rural households’ labor and land allocation decisions and the resulting productivity outcomes. Our empirical findings support the model’s predictions. Specifically, the program significantly increased rural households’ efficient labor allocation to off-farm employment, particularly among households with low initial agricultural productivity. The program also corrected land misallocation across households and promoted farm consolidation, especially in villages with more frictional land leasing markets. Through the combined effects of labor sorting, cross-household land reallocation, and land consolidation, the program raised average agricultural productivity in treated villages by approximately 2.6%.

Forests generate important public goods, including carbon storage and habitat for biodiversity, while also contributing to increasing wildfire risks. Private landowners do not fully internalize these benefits and risks, potentially leading to socially inefficient management and undersupply of public goods. Exploiting the historical ‘checkerboard’ land pattern in the American West as an instrument for ownership, we show that public ownership reduces timber harvests and herbicide use in forests, resulting in greater carbon storage, higher biodiversity, and, surprisingly, also lower wildfire risk. These results underscore the role of land ownership in shaping the supply of public goods.

This paper develops a novel empirical framework to quantify the social costs of infrastructure development in India, focusing on displacement from large-scale energy projects—coal, hydro, and solar—over the past 50 years. Combining over 25,000 land acquisition notices with satellite-derived settlement data, I construct the first spatio-temporal estimates of project-affected persons (PAPs). Results show displacement varies sharply across sectors, with coal mining imposing the highest burden, particularly on tribal populations in central and eastern India. Displacement from hydro projects peaked in the 1970s-1990s, while coal-related displacement has surged in recent decades. Solar projects, though less intensive, increasingly threaten common lands. Displacement intensity explains nearly 40% of project cost overruns. This methodology enhances the integration of social costs into infrastructure planning and contributes to debates on equitable energy transitions. Without addressing compensation gaps, legal fragmentation, and grievance failures, energy infrastructure push risks perpetuating displacement and deterring future investments.

The sustainability of global agriculture is fundamentally challenged by a nexus of interconnected crises comprising labor scarcity, environmental degradation, and food security. However, the existing market mechanisms and public policies aimed at addressing these challenges have long been constrained by a fundamental “measurement gap”. On the one hand, as a cornerstone of traditional agricultural economics, farm survey data is of fundamental importance. Yet, this data collection method suffers from several systematic flaws, including recall bias, errors in measuring key variables (such as land area), and infrequent sampling (usually annual). For example, research have found that smallholders often report plot sizes that are up to five times larger than the actual size. Such low-quality data not only distorts our understanding of farm productivity and behavior but also undermines the efficacy of policy interventions.

How do social norms shape the intergenerational transmission of land, particularly regarding gender equity? We combine experimental and administrative data from Senegal with a model of social interactions to study how parental preferences and community norms influence land allocation to sons and daughters. A choice experiment that randomizes land allocations and normative cues reveals that parents are more responsive to community norms when allocating land to daughters—a pattern subsequently borne out in administrative records. Simulations show that this asymmetry generates multiple equilibria in land allocation to daughters but not sons, so even modest shifts in perceived norms can meaningfully reduce gender gaps.

This paper is intended to define the fundamental concepts of the mass appraisal system, based on the ad valorem principle, as well as to analyze the main aspects of its development and the expected outcomes of its implementation. In essence, the work aligns with the modern directions of development adopted by emerging national economies, oriented toward the transition to and implementation of mass appraisal systems for real estate in fiscal purposes. Conventionally, the direct beneficiaries of the concepts and proposals formulated in this paper are countries with emerging economies, currently in the process of establishing, reforming, or developing their own national mass appraisal systems. At the same time, the theoretical and methodological aspects developed herein may serve as a valuable reference for developed economies, by promoting new concepts in the field of mass real estate valuation, adapted to the contemporary economic and institutional context.

This paper examines the use of geographically weighted regression (GWR) for mass appraisal of agricultural land in support of property taxation in Moldova. While prior research has widely applied hedonic and spatial models to residential and commercial properties, there is very limited evidence on agricultural markets and virtually none that evaluates tax equity using industry standards. Using over 15,000 arm’s-length agricultural sales, we estimate a GWR model for the entire country and assess its performance with ratio-study metrics (median ratio, COD, PRD) consistent with international guidance. Results indicate that GWR yields generally acceptable accuracy and uniformity across most regions, but performance deteriorates in and around Chisinauv, suggesting distinct market dynamics and likely omitted variable bias in higher-value, peri-urban areas. We outline ongoing work to improve the model for the capital region, construct confidence intervals for ratio statistics, and reduce vertical inequity as evidenced by the PRD.

This paper reports results from the 2024 China Real Estate Internal Rate of Return (IRR) Survey, commissioned by the China Institute of Real Estate Appraisers and Agents (CIREAA). Using verified transaction data across twenty-five major cities and three property sectors, the survey provides a comparative benchmark of investment performance in China’s property markets. Findings show pronounced regional disparities: first-tier cities maintain moderate IRRs under restrictive policies, emerging inland and southern cities record higher returns linked to industrial diversification and population inflows, while older industrial regions continue to show weak or negative performance. Case studies of Beijing, Shanghai, Xi’an, Nanning, Lanzhou, and Shenzhen highlight the local economic and regulatory factors driving these outcomes. The study concludes that China’s real estate market operates as differentiated submarkets rather than a uniform national system, and underscores the importance of ongoing IRR monitoring for investment planning, valuation transparency, and policy formulation.

Blantyre City Council (BCC) in Malawi is implementing digital billing and payment systems to enhance its revenue collection methods, improve operational efficiency, and increase transparency for its residents. The new systems allow citizens to pay city rates and fees through mobile platforms or over-the-counter services, significantly minimizing the necessity for physical visits to municipal offices. Currently in the pilot phase, this initiative aims to streamline various services including payment of city rates, issuance of bills, handling inquiries, reporting issues such as refuse collection, formalizing property records, and submitting suggestions all achievable from the convenience of residents’ homes via their mobile phones. The overarching goal of BCC's digital transformation is to boost revenue collection, thereby facilitating better service delivery to the community.

This paper examines whether land rights formalization enhances the effectiveness of reforestation programs. Specifically, we ask whether securing a land certificate (i) improves tree growth on reforested plots and (ii) affects associated socioeconomic outcomes. We study the Programme de Lutte Anti-Érosive (PLAE), a smallholder forest restoration initiative implemented in northern and northwestern Madagascar between 2014 and 2019. Using primary household survey data combined with geospatial data, we employ a quasi-experimental strategy that leverages variation in the presence of overlapping historical colonial and post-colonial land titles, which continue to impede land formalization today. We find that successful land certification significantly increases tree growth, both in self-reported and remotely sensed data. Certification also increases reported tree theft but has no detectable effect on perceived overall tenure security, charcoal-related income, or broader welfare outcomes. These findings highlight both the potential and the limitations of land rights formalization in weak institutional and market environments.

Using a Mundlak-Chamberlain control function approach to address selection bias, this study examines how land rental market participation by tenant households in Nigeria affects crop commercialization. In addition, a seemingly unrelated regression model also was used to estimate impacts on household income sources and composition. Results show younger household heads are more likely to rent-in land, enhancing youth access. Land renting increases marketed output, promoting smallholder commercialization by reallocating land to efficient users. Households with farms over 2 ha boost output by US$46. Welfare outcomes include higher farm and crop incomes but reduced livestock and wage earnings, as resources shift toward crop production. Findings underscore land rental markets' role in agricultural transformation, resource allocation, and income strategies. Policies should facilitate land transfers from unproductive to efficient farmers and offer affordable financing to enhance commercialization and household welfare.

Secure land tenure supports efficient farmland markets, yet how formalization shapes market outcomes remains understudied. This study holds that land certification reduces legal risks and transaction costs, driving farmland rental changes. China’s certification strengthens property rights, making risk‑averse tenants more willing to rent and enabling landlords to charge a risk premium, boosting both rental activity and prices. Using 2008–2017 household panel data and a staggered difference-in-differences approach, we find certification increases rental area by 2.5% and rents by 5.9%. Mediation analysis identifies fewer land disputes as the key channel. Effects are larger for risk-averse households and less developed markets, highlighting uneven benefits and the need for context-specific land policies.

This paper builds on the 2024 report co-chaired by the French Development Agency and the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs examining land-use change in the Global South under rapid urbanization. Urban expansion now extends beyond built-up areas, as rural land is subdivided into small plots that leave agriculture yet remain often undeveloped—so-called “latent urban lands.” These plots form a critical but largely overlooked stage of urban growth. Combining spatial analysis and AI-based plot detection (led by IGN–France International) with ethnographic fieldwork and cadastral and land registry analysis (led by IRD – the French National Research Institute), the study qualifies and quantifies this phenomenon. Findings show that current estimates underestimate residential land conversion. Fallow plots reflect both agricultural decline and latent housing potential. Land is increasingly acquired not only for construction but also to store value and secure finance. Recognizing latent urban land is essential for anticipating future urban trajectories.

This study evaluates Ethiopia’s urban land lease policy, designed to enhance market efficiency within a state-owned land system via competitive auctions. Despite nearly thirty years of implementation, the policy has not yielded inclusive or efficient urban land markets in Addis Ababa, the country’s primary city. Using transaction data from 794 leased plots (2016–2018), spatial configuration analysis, and a hedonic price model, the research identifies plot size, bidder count, land use, spatial connectivity, and government benchmark price as key determinants of lease auction prices. The analysis reveals a dramatic 92-fold disparity between government benchmark and market prices, underscoring severe underpricing and substantial land rent capture by private actors. Qualitative findings from interviews and focus groups further highlight governance challenges, including institutional opacity and rent-seeking. The study concludes that without significant reforms to pricing, land value capture mechanisms, supply management, and governance, Ethiopia’s lease system cannot achieve equitable urban development.

Despite Kenya’s constitutional commitment to accessible and adequate housing (Article 43(1)(b)), the housing sector in Kenya continues to face systemic inefficiencies, investor losses, and consumer exploitation. This research paper synthesizes findings from a correlational descriptive study involving a number of stakeholders and offers actionable recommendations to enhance regulatory implementation, oversight, and service quality among property actors. This is a contemporary issue and the paper will provide recommendations to assist in the formulating policy solutions.

Climate change profoundly impacts land degradation and sustainability across Africa, exacerbating soil erosion, desertification, and deforestation. In West Africa, encroaching desertification threatens arable land, while East Africa faces recurring droughts that undermine food security. Central Africa experiences extensive deforestation and habitat loss, and Southern Africa contends with water scarcity. North Africa faces rising temperatures reducing agricultural productivity. These environmental challenges threaten livelihoods, food security, and economic growth, complicating efforts to implement initiatives like the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). Addressing land degradation and climate impacts requires integrated strategies, including sustainable land management, climate-resilient infrastructure, green technologies, and policy reforms. Effective responses must align with regional specificities, promote environmental restoration, and foster resilience to ensure the sustainability of land systems and economic development across Africa.

Securing land ownership can reduce rural poverty in agrarian societies with unequal land ownership by facilitating land rentals from large landholders to landless and smallholders. Based on an agricultural household model, I demonstrate that land ownership security may increase land-attached investments but dampen land rentals when there are non-security barriers to long-term land rental contracts. I also provide supporting evidence from Nicaragua, one of the poorest countries in Latin America. Using spatial variation in credit supply shocks from financial crises, I find that participation in land security improvement programs led large landowners in less-affected districts to significantly increase agricultural credit use, expand land-attached investments, and reduce land rentals.

Agricultural land markets are critical for structural transformation. While operators’ market power may directly or indirectly impede their functioning, it is little studied. This paper uses administrative data for agricultural land transactions from 2021 to 2024 in Ukraine to explore this issue. Tenant fixed effect regressions show that, compared to VCs where it controlled less than 10% of land before a transaction, the same tenant paid 4% or 7.5% ($3.66 or $6.86 per ha and year) less rent and obtained longer lease terms in village councils where it already controlled 10-33 % or more than 33 % of land. A similar pattern emerges in recently opened land sales markets. Non-competitive land market behavior is estimated to impose annual losses of US$ 40 million on landowners with policies to address it being ineffective or even exacerbating such losses.

We explore how resource rights motivate voluntary self-restrictions that increase conservation. While protected-area (PA) costs lead private actors to contest protection, at times they embrace restrictions. Why? As private groups compete for resources, PAs are a welcome 'enemy of my enemy’ when limiting competitors (de jure rights violaters). Rights improvements via PAs can raise welfare even when requiring conservation − and address drivers of PA ‘fortress failures’ (plus PES ‘contracting calamities’, since conditional rights may offer more than typical PES). Incentive compatibility is demonstrated in 24 cases of volunteering away de jure rights for de facto rights that require conservation.

Restrictive land institutions such as size and rent ceilings, while popular for their distributional effects, can also distort land allocation and reduce productivity. I study the impact of the abolition of agricultural land rent controls and the transition to a free land rental market in Egypt on agricultural households’ welfare. I use a difference-in-differences design exploiting the variation in districts’ exposure to the law, measured by the share of rented land prior to its passage. I find that the law increased agricultural households expenditure in higher exposure districts and enhanced the conditions of the poorest decile in the population. The consolidation of very small plots to small plots along with a growing share of land owned by firms suggests a shift towards commercial agriculture among small landholders. There was no evidence of an increase of large agricultural plots or an increase of inequality at the district level.

Land restoration activities (LRA) on private smallholder farms may reduce land and labor productivity contemporaneously, even though both may increase over time. This temporal tradeoff could reduce smallholder well-being contemporaneously, requiring short-term incentives to compensate for these negative effects. We take the case of Ethiopia, which has the largest land restoration program in the world, to examine the impacts of LRA. We use three panels of the LSMS-ISA data between 2011 and 2016, and remotely sensed data between 2011 and 2018. We find that, contemporaneously, LRA reduces land productivity and labor productivity, but improves household consumption expenditure due to LRA-implementing households working in and receiving transfers from social welfare programs. LRA increases land productivity around five years after implementation. As the adoption of LRA can contemporaneously reduce land and labor productivity, providing short-term social protection through food/cash-for-work programs can encourage the adoption of LRA by reducing rural distress.

Carbon markets are expanding into indigenous lands, but the allocation of carbon rights remains unresolved. In the Philippines, the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act recognizes ancestral domains as private community property, yet it is unclear whether carbon value follows that ownership or is shaped by project design. This paper examines how carbon governance is structured in practice and whether it aligns ownership, control, and incentives. Combining doctrinal legal analysis with institutional economics, it analyzes three projects within ancestral domains. The findings show a recurring pattern: despite formal land ownership, control over carbon assets is often exercised through developer-led contractual and registry systems. This separation affects benefit distribution, accountability, and long-term stewardship. Drawing on property rights theory, the paper argues that carbon benefits should presumptively follow ownership and proposes an ownership-based design in which Indigenous communities are default rights holders, and developers operate under delegated authority, strengthening incentives and improving governance outcomes.

Attracting private-sector investment in agriculture is crucial for scaling soil health and climate action, and sustainably transforming food systems. This study assesses how different funding models shape the economic viability and inclusiveness of carbon farming projects. Using evidence from twelve Kenyan projects registered under the voluntary carbon market, four funding models were identified: (1) donor-financed, (2) investor-financed with forward purchase agreements, (3) private-sector led with blended finance, and (4) buyer-led. The donor-financed model enables piloting but risks donor dependence and high costs. Investor financing offers stable funding yet limits future gains. Private-sector models allow marketing flexibility but face financial risks, while buyer-led models centralize power and may weaken equitable benefit-sharing. Four cross-cutting insights arise: investment terms shape risk–reward distribution; early scaling and profit reinvestment support economic viability; fair benefit-sharing builds on transparency in cost accounting; and inclusive governance requires empowerment of local actors and reduced reliance on international intermediaries.

This paper examines the impact of land rights on Land use or investments in Uganda. I used a sample of 3548 households from the 2019/2020 Uganda National Household Survey (UNHS). Analytically I employed maximum likelihood probit techniques. land rights is expressed in three forms: land tenure, selling rights, and ownership of land title certificate.

The study found that; mailo tenure, selling rights, and title ownership encourage coffee cultivation. Freehold and mailo tenure system support the growing of trees for timber. All the three types of land rights encourage investing in permanent houses. Following the above findings, we recommend the need for government to facilitate households acquire title ownership to enhance land investments.

Land recordal systems (often referred to as deeds registration or recording systems) and land registration systems are two primary frameworks for documenting property ownership and rights in land. Both aim to provide evidence of title, facilitate transactions, and prevent fraud or disputes, but they differ fundamentally in their approach, legal protections, and operational mechanics: recordal systems focus on archiving documents, while registration systems certify ownership itself. The core contrast lies in what is recorded and the level of state guarantee provided. These differences stem from historical evolution, with recordal systems emerging from English common law’s emphasis on private deeds, while registration systems, pioneered by Robert Torrens in 1858 in South Australia, prioritize state-verified certainty. This research will adopt a comparative methodology, drawing on reliable secondary sources.

The Constitution of Kenya provides that “Parliament shall revise, consolidate and rationalize all existing land laws”. It is on the basis of this that Land Registration Act (LRA) was enacted to provide harmony, especially in the sector of land registration.The Kenya National Land Policy (Sessional Paper No. 3 of 2009) had also proposed such measures. The LRA provides that all land in Kenya will be registered and titled under one registration system. This provision, as opposed to other provisions for conversion, is mandatory. It also provides that land registration can be automated an aspect not provided for in the repealed laws. This paper examines how effective and efficient LRA is in bringing about modernization in conveyancing in Kenya.

Uganda’s transition to a Digital Land Economy is one of its most ambitious land administration reforms, marked by the implementation of the Land Information System (LIS) and the Land Valuation Information Management System (LAVMIS). Despite these advancements and their integration with national identification, revenue, financial, and judicial systems, 70% of land remains unregistered, hindering tenure security, increasing transaction costs, and limiting economic benefits. This study examines how digital land systems affect socio-economic outcomes, including business costs, land investments, collateral accessibility, real estate development, employment, government revenues, and financial inclusion. Using institutional economics, transaction cost theory, and digital transformation frameworks, the research identifies mixed results, such as reduced processing times but increased transaction costs and persistent legal and institutional barriers. The study provides evidence-based recommendations to enhance institutional coordination, promote inclusive access, and align digital reforms with broader economic strategies, offering actionable insights for sustainable and inclusive socio-economic growth

The global real estate sector is undergoing a fundamental shift as Web3 technology introduces unprecedented efficiency and openness to immovable property market. This paper presents a model end-to-end business process for tokenization of immovable property in Georgia, connecting state-oriented legal certainty and decentralized financial innovation. By integrating the National Agency of Public Registry (NAPR) with a dedicated Web3 platform, the proposed framework establishes an efficient tokenization mechanism for physical assets. Study outlines a practical operational model that transforms the property market into a high-liquidity, globally accessible ecosystem. While tailored to Georgia, the framework is designed for international export, providing model legislative solutions, positioning Georgia as one of pioneers in the Web3-driven tokenized economy.

This paper examines how labor migration shapes land rental market dynamics in rural Nepal using nationally representative NLSS-IV data on 5,780 agricultural landowners. Despite substantial remittance inflows, most households remain inactive in land markets. Migration increases lease-in participation, particularly among smallholders, but has no effect on lease-out behavior, producing a “partial land market freeze.” Migrant households exhibit stronger agricultural engagement through higher cropping intensity, livestock turnover, and land acquisition borrowing, indicating unmet demand for land. Meanwhile, significant land remains idle alongside land-constrained tenant farmers. The findings highlight institutional supply-side barriers rather than financial constraints as the key impediment to efficient land reallocation.

This project sought to re-engineer Zimbabwe’s Cadastral Survey Examination System through strategic digitalization. It focused on developing a prototype web-based platform to replace the slow, paper-based process currently hindered by inefficiencies, inaccuracies, and limited integration with modern technologies. Institutional bureaucracy and rigid legal frameworks further delay evaluation of cadastral records, making digital transformation essential. The prototype introduces a centralized system that automates key procedures such as survey lodgement, examination, status tracking, and secure data management. Integrated GIS tools enable real-time spatial visualization and analysis, while automation minimizes errors and significantly improves processing timelines. Designed collaboratively with land surveyors and the Department of the Surveyor General, the system aligns with user needs and legal requirements. Features such as real-time dashboards, automated notifications, digital signatures, and analytical tools including boundary encroachment detection enhance accuracy, transparency, and accountability. This project demonstrates how digital innovation can modernize land governance and support sustainable development.

The paper will highlight advancements in geomatics education in Ethiopia through two academic partnership projects, aimed at fostering sustainable development and addressing the country’s critical shortage of skilled land administration professionals. Funded by the Austrian Development Cooperation, these initiatives have established academic programs at Debre Markos University, including a Bachelor’s degree in "Land Administration and Surveying" and a Master’s curriculum in "Geomatics," to equip students with technical and leadership skills. The projects emphasize gender inclusivity, promoting female participation in higher education and professional training. Despite challenges such as armed conflict in the Amhara region, innovative solutions like online lectures ensured project continuity. Customized training programs, feasibility studies on UAVs potential for land-related data acquisition, and gender equality in land rights further support Ethiopia’s socio-economic progress. The outcomes provide a replicable model for other nations and contribute to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Rapid urbanisation presents a massive challenge to functioning economies and societies in the Global South. The provision of basic living standards is compromised and the issues should be front and centre of sustainable development. Building attractive local communities would go some way to countering the pull and push factors towards the cities. One means of achieving some positive results in this regard is by adding surveying into the pool of resources and strengthening the offering through the consideration and application of surveying practice. Examples are given of how through the widening and deepening the Surveyor’s input into the development initiatives it can be possible to combat the effects of rapid urbanisation. Community based approaches such as the Rapid Planning Toolkit also yields results. Further strategic use such as available technologies and green leases demonstrate other approaches.

Land is becoming more tenuous than ever as the population is growing rapidly. Both Malawi and Tanzania are countries that are experiencing rapid urbanization, with pressure on land and infrastructure in urban and peri-urban areas including border areas. The land parcels in the cross-border areas are rendering it difficult to be properly adjudicated and demarcated as land falls into two different land tenure systems and there is no legal framework on how such land should be registered to ensure tenure security. The study used both desk research and field research to investigate the best practices of the demarcation and adjudication of land parcel boundaries in border areas. The study reveals that the law is silent on registration of such land. The study also unveiled that others do not know where their land parcel is situated. The study developed a framework that can be used to register such land parcels.

As the concept of soil health gains prominence, it becomes increasingly important to examine how states design and implement soil health policies. We explore soil health governance through an analysis of India’s Soil Health Card (SHC) scheme. The SHC scheme provides every farmer in the country with bi-annual soil test reports, based on the assumption that improved information will encourage more judicious use of fertilizers and pesticides. The assumption reflects a broader emphasis within the agricultural sciences on the importance of quantifying soil health. As an illustrative case, India’s grand SHC scheme shows that quantification alone is insufficient and could even dampen momentum for transformative policy reforms. Effective and durable change lies in pairing efforts to quantify soil health with (a) plural epistemic approaches, (b) participatory knowledge dissemination, and (c) structural reforms.

The present study used a Randomized Controlled Trial conducted with smallholder farmers in southern Malawi to test if access to an area-yield based crop insurance program that pays cash equivalent 7-11% of average baseline income to drought and flood-affected farmers in a geographic region reduces the need for them to rent out their land the subsequent year as a coping strategy to meet consumption needs. In doing so, we link the agricultural insurance literature with the land market literature in sub-Saharan Africa. We found that the insurance payouts did not cause beneficiaries to reduce the amount of land that insurance beneficiaries rented out, the income they earned from renting out land, or the price they received for renting out land. This provides evidence that even relatively large payouts after a drought were not high enough to significantly reduce stress-renting of land in this context.

Nitrogen fertilizer is essential for boosting yields and food production, but subsidies often encourage inefficient use. Scientific evidence shows nitrogen pollution has exceeded safe planetary boundaries, yet the global economic costs of subsidized fertilizer remain poorly understood. I combine global data on subsidy regimes with satellite-derived crop productivity, nitrogen application, water quality, and spatial administrative datasets to estimate the long-run costs of fertilizer use and the role of subsidies. In regions with large input subsidies, nitrogen overapplication reduces productivity returns and increases runoff into waterways, with lasting consequences for human health and labor productivity. Over half of global agricultural output occurs in high-subsidy, high-use areas where the marginal benefit of additional nitrogen is negative. Globally, up to 17% of water nitrogen pollution is linked to inefficient input subsidies, contributing to harmful algal blooms. By contrast, decoupled subsidies not tied to production reduce these spillovers, pointing to a path for reform.

Price-based agricultural support remains central to farm income stabilisation and food security in developing countries, but its effectiveness is constrained by limited state capacity and high logistics costs. While many countries have shifted towards price deficiency payments (PDP), India’s Minimum Support Price (MSP) system continues to rely on physical procurement of a few staple crops. Using crop-wise production, MSP, and wholesale price data for 2024–25, this paper evaluates three policy scenarios: partial procurement, a hybrid MSP–PDP system, and a universal PDP regime. Results show that partial procurement (40% for paddy and wheat; 20% for other crops) generates gross payouts of ₹3.70 lakh crore (1.12% of GDP), but a modest net fiscal burden (0.01–0.07% of GDP). Hybrid systems deliver comparable income support with lower logistics costs, while universal PDP slightly increases fiscal outlays but eliminates stockholding inefficiencies. Hybrid approaches emerge as a pragmatic reform pathway.

Land, labor, and economic development

Land, labor and economic development from a Latin American perspective

An Eastern European view on land, labor, and economic development

An African perspective on how land policies shaped job creation and city growth

How land and labor policies affected economic growth China and East Asia

Inequality among rural households in developing countries is closely tied to the concentration of land ownership, alongside limited access to insurance and credit. We study the equity and efficiency implications of land rights by combining experimental evidence with a unified macroeconomic framework. Using data from a World Bank land titling intervention in the Philippines, we provide causal evidence that formalizing property rights increases land market activity, compresses consumption inequality, and strengthens the insurance role of land, particularly for land-poor households. We develop a model of structural change, featuring incomplete markets, production heterogeneity, and selection across sectors to quantify the aggregate, distributional, and welfare consequences of the land titling reform and other policies. Land operates as an insurance device against income shocks. Land titling policies increase overall welfare and reduce inequality along with improving productivity. Redistributive land reforms, however, may give rise to an efficiency-equity tradeoff when land market frictions persist.

Many countries in the Americas restrict Indigenous land transactions to preserve Indigenous ownership, but these policies may inhibit economic growth. This paper evaluates Chile’s 1993 Indigenous Law, which limits transfers, leases, and mortgages in Mapuche territories, restricting transactions to Mapuche buyers. Using property records and transaction data, we find that the law has slowed Mapuche territorial loss but imposed economic costs, reflected in lower capitalization of urban growth into land values. Its effectiveness has declined over time, coinciding with a reduction in properties registered in the Public Registry of Indigenous Territories (PRIT), a key enforcement tool. Analysis of property sales following owner deaths shows that PRIT-listed properties experience smaller reductions in Indigenous ownership, with no evidence of lower sales rates. We also find no meaningful effects of PRIT on land use or productivity. These results suggest that costs arise from de jure restrictions, while enforcement delivers protection without additional costs.

Redistributive land reforms have affected more than a billion people in more than a third of the world's countries in the last century. However, macro-level research on these reforms is largely lacking. Drawing on a newly developed dataset documenting instances of redistributive land reforms, the amount of agricultural land redistributed, and the property rights granted to recipients, we examine the relationship between redistributive land reforms and agricultural productivity between 1900 and 2010. We show that reform onset is costly for agricultural productivity across all property rights regimes, but that the productivity response to additional redistribution depends sharply on the rights granted. Under full rights, further redistribution raises productivity; under incomplete rights, it compounds losses.

How do boundaries affect property rights and subsequent development outcomes? We leverage the partial destruction of local maps in a 1711 fire to measure the effects of the loss of state-sanctioned property boundaries for local economic development in colonial Ireland. Our research design compares outcomes between localities which featured on the same physical map but varied in their fire damage which, we establish, appear indistinguishable on predetermined covariates. Using a range of newly digitized data sources, we find substantively lower land and building valuations, reduced local investment, and less secure tenure in localities exposed to map fire damage. These effects are conditioned by the prior ownership of land by politically dominant Protestants compared to the marginalized Catholic majority, underscoring variation in the relevance of state-issued information for de jure property rights in stratified contexts.

We explore the effect of historical ethnic borders on contemporary conflict in Africa. We document that the intensive and extensive margins of contemporary conflict are higher close to historical ethnic borders. Exploiting variations across artificial regions within an ethnicity's historical homeland and a theory-based instrumental variable approach, we find that regions crossed by historical ethnic borders have 27 percentage points higher probability of conflict and 7.9 percentage points higher probability of being the initial location of a conflict. We uncover several key underlying mechanisms: competition for agricultural land, population pressure, cultural similarity, and weak property rights.

We examine the relationship between agricultural land potential and conflict across Sub-Saharan Africa, where such conflicts are widespread. To address endogeneity, we construct a plausibly exogenous, crop-specific indicator of agricultural land potential based on a weather-driven suitability model. The indicator leverages variation in weather and soil conditions to capture changes in crop-growing potential. Using a 0.1° grid-cell dataset covering the period 1997–2023 and conflict data from ACLED, we focus on overall crop and climate suitability for 50 crops grown across Africa. We find that long-term increases in agricultural land potential are associated with increases in conflict within countries. By using crop-specific, weather-based suitability measures rather than realized production, we provide new evidence on the climate–agriculture–conflict nexus.

We examine how armed groups and state authorities shape forest governance in a post-conflict setting. Using an original household survey (N = 2,024) and satellite data from the Colombian Amazon, we find that armed groups impose more rules, monitoring, and sanctions than other actors. However, forest loss is higher in areas under their control, indicating that rule proliferation does not improve conservation outcomes. In contrast, subnational governments actively combat deforestation, and their presence is associated with lower forest loss. These effects are strongest among households engaged in illegal activities, particularly coca cultivation and cattle ranching. The findings reveal a central paradox of post-conflict environmental governance: armed groups generate extensive regulatory systems that fail to curb deforestation. Overall, the results clarify the environmental role of armed groups in contexts with strong incentives for illegal production and ongoing competition between state and non-state authorities.

This paper examines how formalizing women’s land rights improves adoption of climate‑smart agricultural practices and strengthens household resilience in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Drawing on mixed‑methods research from a three‑year program implemented by Nature Seed Care Agri‑Organization, I combine household surveys (n=1,200), georeferenced plot data, and 40 qualitative interviews with women farmers, local leaders, and extension agents. Results show that women with legally recognized land use or tenure arrangements are 35% more likely to adopt soil conservation, agroforestry, and diversified cropping systems, and exhibit higher seasonal food security scores. Qualitative evidence highlights barriers to title registration, including administrative costs, customary norms, and limited access to legal services, and identifies community‑led mediation and mobile registration outreach as effective solutions. The paper discusses policy implications for scaling gender‑responsive land formalization, integrating tenure security into climate finance, and designing extension services that accelerate equitable, climate‑resilient agricultural uptake.

This paper builds upon findings from in-depth study of the land laws of Africa’s 55 states. The subject analysed is the legal status of communal lands in the vast community lands sector. While property rights reforms since 1990 have greatly improved individual and family security over houses and farms, their traditionally owned commons have been yet further de-secured. This paper explores the connections between this vulnerability, often the only significant asset of communities, the reluctance of many governments to release these to their rightful owners, the disturbing extent of armed violence and war in so many states. Unjust property norms made worse by forced flight is reaching dangerous levels for fair governance, peace, and justice. More genuinely inclusive economic growth paths are essential to bring the continent back from the brink.

The 'Additions to Reserve process' (ATR) transfers Crown or Fee Simple property to the reserve land status communities in Canada. The past and current processes have resulted in a fifty percent increase in First Nations reserve land title transfers since 1972. These significant new land title transfers rely on modern geomatics land data, which mainly uses land parcel mapping, cadastral land surveying, and geographic information systems (GIS) as the legal parcel evidence for an ATR submission. The historical ATR program transfer metrics and study findings show that ATR geomatics data is key to providing Canada's land transfer approval and enabling new economic transactions for First Nation reserves regarding an undervalued economic policy. Today, the current ATR policy redesign presents opportunities and issues to resolve, with a potential Two-Eyed Seeing (TES) data protocol for a future UNDRIP-based reserve land economic development program in Canada, in new geomatics land challenges and issues.

How are Indigenous communal property rights (ICPR) enforced? In countries with flexible property rights regimes, land tenure is subject to economic rents and the political benefits it provides to the state, producing selective enforcement against groups whose land use is deemed suboptimal and whose population is too small to generate electoral returns. When this enforcement gap is large, states will not enforce ICPR. This is the case for the Garifuna people of Honduras, where the state's non-enforcement of ICPR has led government actors to overlook and at times encourage territorial encroachment. To overcome these domestic enforcement failures, the Garifuna use the OFRANEH to monitor shortcomings, then leverage the OAS Inter-American Court of Human Rights to internationalize enforcement. I present an analysis of three Garifuna communities and their cases before the Court to highlight how indigenous communities use international institutions to secure rights their own states purposefully fail to enforce.

Strengthening land rights can improve a range of development outcomes, leading many African governments to formalize customary land rights. However, women are often excluded from newly formalized rights that privilege primary rights holders. We document the impacts of Burkina Faso’s Rural Land Governance (RLG) project on women’s rights to land, using the 50 treatment and matched control communes in the pilot phase of the program. Using surveys conducted at endline, we find that the RLG program statistically significantly reduced women’s perceived rights to land in treated communes. Both men and women are less likely to report women can access land, make land-related decisions, inherit land, or be added to land documents. This social renegotiation of women’s rights also spills over into other domains of women’s empowerment. In formalizing rights, the program crystallized men’s primary claims and opened contestation over women’s rights, demonstrating the unintended gendered consequences of land formalization.

This work presents how the adoption of the Land Administration Domain Model (LADM) can contribute to advancing Brazil’s Rural Cadastre. A prototype was developed to explore practical applications of the model, focusing on improving data organization, consistency, and interoperability among institutions. The initiative also examined how standardized information structures can facilitate integration with geospatial databases and support more efficient cadastral processes. The results demonstrate that LADM provides a solid conceptual basis to harmonize records, support territorial management, and enhance transparency. The prototype reveals potential benefits for updating procedures, improving data quality, and enabling new services that rely on reliable, well-structured cadastral information.

This research work is concerned with a) increasing our knowledge and understanding of the benefits, and b) developing supporting evidence and arguments for achieving the sustainable financing of land administration. Previous work (WB conference 2024,2025, ALPC 2025) has identified financing of land administration investments and operations as a core constraint in the initial establishment and sustainable operation of land administration systems, especially in developing countries. The work also identified the lack of a conceptual framework that explicitly includes the financial aspects of land governance reform, and the need to consider both supply and demand of land administration services and their role in developing financially sustainable solutions and promoting well-functioning land markets. The work includes a review of literature and current status, problem definition, development of conceptual framework, experience mapping and identification of benefits and arguments to support the reform process, with a final policy brief output for policy makers

Rwanda has established a globally recognized, efficient Land Administration System (LAS), marking a victory in the “battle for efficiency” (Ali, Deininger, & Goldstein, 2014). This paper interrogates whether this technocratic success translates into equitable, inclusive growth. Our analysis, synthesised with comparative evidence, identifies three remediable barriers: prohibitive transaction costs that exclude the poor, as seen in Tanzania where a $13 fee was the primary constraint for 81% of non-payers (Tanzania Demand Study, 2023); a deepening digital divide; and legal awareness gaps that leave women economically invisible. Evidence from Nigeria shows that technological inclusion does not automatically yield equitable benefits (Daudu, 2023). We argue for a pivot to “inclusive efficiency,” proposing a policy framework of pro-poor financial mechanisms, legal empowerment, digital inclusion, and gender-intelligent design to ensure land reform becomes a true catalyst for resilient and shared prosperity.

Land governance in sub-Saharan Africa faces persistent challenges, including limited transparency, fragmented data, and land-use conflicts. This study examines how digital technologies and youth engagement can enhance the inclusivity and effectiveness of land governance systems. Using a mixed-methods approach combining a systematic literature review (35 studies following ROSES criteria) and secondary data analysis, the research highlights key regional trends. Findings show uneven progress in cadastral digitization, with countries such as South Africa, Senegal, Ghana, and Benin performing relatively well, while others lag behind. Community land registration remains a major weakness across all cases. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) emerge as the most widely used tools, alongside participatory mapping, drones, and digital platforms. These technologies improve data accuracy, transparency, and youth participation. However, most studies remain exploratory, limiting evidence on real impacts. This research contributes empirical insights into how digital tools can strengthen inclusive land governance in Africa.

Food insecurity is a growing concern among older adults in India, particularly in rural and agrarian settings where land remains a key household asset. This study investigates the association between land ownership and food insecurity using data from the Longitudinal Ageing Study in India (LASI) 2017–18, complemented by qualitative interviews from Tamil Nadu. The analysis includes 65,568 adults aged 45 years and above. Food insecurity was assessed using a three-item composite measure, and multivariate logistic regression was employed. Results show that landlessness substantially increases the likelihood of food insecurity, with greater vulnerability among those owning non-cultivable or marginal landholdings. Women, poor health, depression, widowhood, living alone, and belonging to socially disadvantaged groups significantly increased vulnerability. Regional disparities were also evident. The findings underscore the importance of secure land rights and strengthened social protection to enhance food security among older adults.

In Ethiopia, land governance is structured by constitutional state ownership of all rural and urban land, with use rights reserved for individuals. The intention was to provide equity to rural populations. This paper examines the land governance framework in Ethiopia and its impact on the livelihood and food security of rural families using both doctrinal analysis and a synthesis of empirical research. The paper identifies a significant gap between the protections provided by the formal legal regime and the outcomes experienced by rural families. In particular, the inadequate compensation, limited procedural protections, and lack of livelihood restitution following expropriation negatively affect agricultural productivity and household food security. In addition, by comparing the Ethiopian experience with South Africa, Brazil, and India, this paper calls for legal and policy reforms that would increase tenure security and connect land governance to sustainable and equitable rural livelihoods.

Groundwater depletion poses a serious challenge across many countries, and its causes extend well beyond climate-related pressures. This study examines how institutional structures established during the colonial era continue to impact present-day groundwater outcomes. Using a panel dataset of 64 countries from 2003 to 2019, we examine how institutional quality—measured through the Property Rights Index and the Democracy Index—impacts groundwater levels. To address potential endogeneity, we apply a two-stage least squares (2SLS) strategy, using colonial legacy variables as historical instruments. The findings indicate a nonlinear relationship: improvements in property rights and democratic accountability lead to better groundwater outcomes, but their marginal effects decline at higher institutional levels. Overall, the results show that groundwater depletion is not just an environmental or climatic challenge but also an institutional one, rooted in historical governance structures.

This study used the Malawi Integrated Household Panel Survey balanced dataset for 2016 to 2019 and sampled 1,147 rural maize farmers to determine agricultural land rent factors and its effect on food security. Renting-in land directly increased food consumption score by 37.9% in the same location and 26.2% in neighboring locations. Notably, self-owned land reduced Food Consumption score by -17.05% in the same location and -10.87% in neighboring locations. Region spatial variations indicated that southern region had the lowest Food Consumption Score, followed by Central region, then Northern region. Renting-in land was positively influenced by rural household head’s education years, landholding size, marital status, hired labour and rainfall, while negatively influencing renting-out land and self-owning land. The findings propose for regional specific interventions that enhance land-labour transactions and food shocks, and education access.

Cette contribution vise à introduire la clause de patrimonialité dans les mécanismes du Land Pooling et du Land Readjustment pour une meilleure efficacité de la composante foncière .Elle présente l'incapacité légale des juridictions à connaître des litiges entre domaine privé de l’État et terres ancestrales en milieu urbain et péri-urbain à Yaoundé et Douala soulève le double problème de la non-résilience et de la non-inclusivité des grandes villes camerounaises.Pour juguler ce problème,le mécanisme Land Pooling (LP) et Land Readjustment (LR) encouragé par la Banque mondiale, présente un réel intérêt en raison de sa flexibilité opérationnelle. Pour la démarche , nous aurons recours à la science anthropologique à travers les techniques d’observation et les récits de vie ; et ensuite nous ferons appel au réalisme praxéologique du droit à travers le raisonnement pratique ordinaire dévolu à l’ethnométhodologie.

Family farming is a major source of income for rural communities in Senegal, yet land insecurity and climate variability make it difficult for farmers to implement sustainable resilience. Limited land tenure security weakens their ability to prepare for or respond to future shocks. This study investigates how land security shapes the resilience and adaptation strategies of family farms. This study identifies the most relevant strategies for reducing climate risks, examines the factors that influence their adoption using a multivariate Probit model, and evaluates the impact of these strategies on farm productivity. The analysis uses data from the 2021 Annual Agricultural Survey conducted on 6,000 households. Results show widespread use of crop diversification, climate-resilient seeds and improved irrigation. However, socio-demographic factors, such as education and gender strongly affect results. Land tenure security encourages long-term investments, whereas insecurity creates conflict and limits adaptation. These findings call for land reform and gender-responsive policies.

Land-use policies shape the spatial allocation of infrastructure, services, and development and thus have direct implications for welfare. This paper examines the effects of Colombia’s municipal territorial plan updates on poverty through the lens of the housing and services channel. Using municipality-level data from 2005 to2023 and quasi-experimental treatment-effects methods, we find that in a matched design with extensive controls, plan updates reduce multidimensional poverty by roughly 1.6 percentage points. The gains are concentrated in smaller and medium-sized municipalities, especially those implementing broader plans (EOTs) and those with mid-range administrative capacity. Channel-specific estimates point to improvements in water access and housing quality. Overall, the findings indicate that the welfare impacts of planning reforms are real but place dependent, highlighting the roles of local capacity and baseline service deficits in determining whether regulatory updates translate into observable improvements.

This paper develops a spatial equilibrium model to assess the economic and social impacts of public housing in China. Our results indicate that for direct beneficiaries, access to public housing delivers immediate financial relief, elevates welfare, and facilitates upward mobility in the housing market. Moreover, the policy induces a filtering effect that mitigates demand pressures, curtails speculative behavior, and improves affordability across the broader housing market. More importantly, affordable housing options stimulate self-investment in human capital and attract high-skilled labor, thereby fostering human capital agglomeration and enhancing total factor productivity for sustained macroeconomic expansion. However, these gains are contingent on fiscal and social capital investments and are accompanied by challenges such as eligibility-induced inequality, sandwich class issues, and labor market distortions. Our counterfactual policy experiments demonstrate that expanding eligibility, particularly by relaxing income thresholds, offers a more cost-effective pathway for fostering collective and distributive growth than adjusting subsidy mechanisms.

Supply-side constraints are important drivers of land and housing market dynamics. I propose a new “regulatory tax” measure to capture different taxes, fees, and costs incurred during real estate development. Based on a spatial equilibrium framework, I show that in response to higher regulatory taxes, developers bid less for land plots and reduce housing construction, leading to higher housing prices. Empirically, I spatially match 13,987 residential projects with the corresponding land transaction records in China, and exploit rich information on house sales, land prices, construction costs, and developer profits to estimate regulatory taxes. I find regulatory tax accounts for, on average, 38% of house price and varies substantially across 281 cities. Exploiting a panel dataset of Chinese cities (2008-2024), I show that regulatory taxes push up housing prices, reduce housing construction, and discourage land supply. Eventually, new homebuyers and local governments would need to bear the costs of excessive regulations.

Cities are increasingly relaxing building height limits to expand housing supply, yet in dense urban areas, redevelopment requires replacing existing buildings and depends on both current incentives and expectations about future policy. This paper examines developer responses to regulatory relaxation under evolving uncertainty, leveraging two major upzoning shocks in Hong Kong driven by innovations in airport operations. Using 30m × 30m grid-level data spanning three decades and a spatial regression discontinuity design, the analysis shows that large-scale relaxation of land-use restrictions can overcome the frictions posed by durable structures and spur substantial redevelopment once uncertainty resolves. However, policy uncertainty -- particularly when it raises expectations of more favorable future changes -- increases the option value of waiting and delays investment. These findings highlight the importance of credible, well-timed, and comprehensive reforms for expanding housing supply in built-out cities, and offer broader lessons for governments designing urban land-use and housing policies.

Using linked property transaction data and credit records, we document group-level differences in financial distress before and after transitioning into homeownership. Black and female borrowers experience larger increases in post-purchase delinquency relative to White and male borrowers, respectively, as measured by 30+ day and 90+ day delinquency rates, even after accounting for stringent controls, credit score, and income-at-purchase. Post-purchase, Black and female borrowers also accumulate more student debt, while credit card balances rise for everyone, but faster for Black borrowers. Understanding disparities in sustaining homeownership informs our assessment of racial and gender disparities in the financial benefits of homeownership.

We identify and quantify a novel gender gap in the housing market for singles in South Asia. Using nationally representative data from India, we document that single women face a housing cost premium of 3-4% relative to men. We leverage detailed data from India's two largest online property listing portals, covering more than 230 cities, we find that shared housing accommodation is listed for rent at a rate that is 6-8% higher for women than for men, after controlling for an extensive set of housing arrangements, amenities, and granular neighborhood fixed effects. We find similar gendered housing premiums in property listings data from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Gaps persist for (gendered) accommodation that is offered within the same building, but vanishes for owners that have listings for both men and women. Variation between cities in this gender gap can be explained by historical gender norms.

Land pooling and readjustment (LR) schemes aim to secure land for public amenities including affordable housing, schools, and healthcare centres while enabling coordinated private development. In Ahmedabad, however, the delivery of public-use plots varies widely: some are fully developed, while others remain vacant or occupied by informal settlements. This study examines why land allocated for public purposes is often not transferred to or developed by the municipal government. Qualitative fieldwork reveals an incentive structure in which officials prioritize smooth private development, leading to the placement of some public-use plots on parcels with disputed or incomplete property rights. Such plots are subsequently difficult for the state to acquire and develop. A citywide quantitative model tests these findings using a stratified sample of public-use plots combined with spatial, administrative, and ownership-conflict data. The study provides new evidence on how institutionalized incentives shape the effectiveness of LR in delivering essential public amenities.

I exploit Delhi's 2014 Floor Area Ratio reform, which raised allowable FAR by 33-60% for residential parcels exceeding 750 square meters, to examine whether relaxing land-use regulations improves housing affordability in developing countries. Using satellite-derived building heights at 4m resolution, administrative parcel boundaries, and proprietary housing data in a sharp regression discontinuity design, I find economically negligible height increases of 0.58-0.74 meters (3-14%) nine years post-reform, with no spillovers to neighboring parcels. Despite 306% nominal price increases, the formal housing market exhibited no significant supply expansion. Peripheral areas showed treatment effects four times larger than central zones, inverting standard bid-rent gradients. I develop a structural model demonstrating that upzoning can fail when developers face convex construction costs, favor horizontal fragmentation, and are forward-looking. These findings suggest relaxing land-use regulations is necessary but insufficient for addressing housing affordability in contexts with coordination failures, institutional frictions, and weak property rights.

Farms throughout Asia are predominantly small. In fact, the average operational farm size was already small in the 1970s, ranging from 1 hectare to 4 hectares. The average farm size declined in subsequent periods in almost all countries in Asia. Many studies found an inverse relationship between farm size and productivity in South Asia, indicating that small farms are more efficient than large farms. Since small farms are endowed with a large amount of family labor relative to land, in contrast to large farms which rely on hired labor, the inverse relationship between farm size and productivity tends to arise. Recently, mechanization has been taking place to replace hired labor with machines. According to recent studies, the inverse relationship has been either weakened or reversed to be positive. To maintain a comparative advantage in agriculture in Asia, farm size must be expanded and mechanization must be promoted to save labor.

Farm size is small in China. Ensuring the land tenure rights, structural transformation, and slowdown rural population growth have facilitated farm size expansion, while agricultural mechanization custom service is a double-edged sword as it has helped smallholders’ mechanization and therefore also affected them to abandon crop production. Relationship between farm size and land productivity (yield) has been debated. Given the limited land and water, appropriate farm size is important for national food security, productivity and employment. We expect that farm size for land-intensive crops such as grain and edible oil crops will continue to rise, while farm size for labor-intensive crops such as vegetables and facility crops will keep small but also rise over time. Facilitating structural transformation and division of the land-intensive grain production and the labor- & capital-intensive crop production are key factors that will drive farm size expansion.

This study examines the relationship between farm size and productivity in China’s grain sector, and explores how institutional reforms mediate this link. The Household Responsibility System (1978–84) spurred growth but entrenched small-scale, fragmented farms (<0.65 ha), limiting mechanization. Using nationwide data (2003–2020), we find an inverse U-shaped relationship: productivity peaks on very small farms (<0.5 ha) but declines with scale. Two key reforms help bridge this gap: land rental markets, which consolidate plots into moderate-scale operations (5–15 ha) and raise yields by 10–20%, and outsourced mechanization services, which boost profits by 12–18% and yields by 15–25%. However, small farms (<1 ha) still face 20–30% lower mechanization rates, risking inequality. China’s “service-led scaling” model underscores that institutional adaptability — not just larger farms — is key to sustaining productivity in land-scarce economies.

Inverse relationship between farm size and productivity has been the most widely debated aspects of Indian agriculture. This paper examines the changes in farm size and productivity over the recent decades across the regions and identify the contributing factors. Other objectives include: i) assess the viability of small holder farms, ii) examine the relative shares of factors of production, and iii) explore the potential policy options for strengthening and sustaining smallholder farms in India. The paper also focuses on the role of economic reforms in the rural sector. These include: increased share of non-farm incomes, shifting of large-holders to urban centres for various socioeconomic reasons, improved socioeconomic conditions of the vulnerable rural communities. All these changes despite the fact that agriculture was only at the periphery of the reforms. It is argued that given the numbers coupled with the nature of growth, the current policies are neither effective nor sustainable.

Singapore’s transformation from a struggling port city to a global metropolis is rooted in its strategic approach to land governance, tightly aligning spatial planning with economic development. Through coordinated policies, robust institutions, and innovative land management tools, Singapore maximized its limited land to support industrialization, job creation, and sustained growth. Key strategies included the development of integrated industrial estates, cluster-based innovation districts, and catalytic infrastructure such as Changi Airport. State-led land ownership and flexible leasehold systems enabled rapid adaptation to evolving economic needs, while regional cooperation with Johor expanded opportunities beyond national borders. Singapore’s experience demonstrates how deliberate land use planning, institutional synergy, and infrastructure investment can drive economic transformation and employment, offering valuable lessons for cities worldwide.

This paper analyzes urban planning and land-use control systems in 11 cities across six countries, using a unified research framework. Case studies reveal that all cities examined require reforms, though the specifics vary by location. In some several case studies, current systems are overly complex, costly, and misaligned with financial and technical capacities. The paper discusses and recommends a series of policy actions from comprehensive overhaul, decentralization and simplification, aligning with market needs and emphasizing capacity building. It also suggests that a streamlined version of Japan’s system could serve as a model for other countries. The paper concludes by proposing steps toward more effective and equitable urban planning governance systems.

This study investigates the enduring effects of work-from-home (WFH) trends on urban structure and property prices in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Region, utilizing novel data sources, combining high-resolution cell phone mobility data with property listings to track changes in work patterns and their impact on the urban structure (2019 to 2023).The analysis reveals a significant flattening of the rent-distance gradient, elasticity decreasing 40 percent due to changes in WFH patterns. Once we include this determinant in the estimations, the role of distance in explaining the variations in rents (adjusted for house characteristics) is significantly diminished. We discuss the implications of these changes in land use and prices for tax policy in local governments.

Participatory and Inclusive Land Readjustment initiatives (PILaR) address social diversity in Egypt.

This study examines intricate issues and novel solutions related to land administration, land tenure security, and urban development in Banha City, Egypt. It emphasises the value of land readjustment as a resource in informal urban settlements and the relationship between governance deficiencies and socioeconomic inequalities. This study assesses land management in Egypt during political turmoil, investigates participatory urban development options, and analyses Egypt's complex governance structures. The study was a partnership between the United Nations Humanitarian Organization (UN-Habitat) and the General Organization of Physical Planning (GOPP) at the Ministry of Housing in late 2013. The study investigates the prospective implementation of Participatory and Inclusive Land Readjustment (PILaR) as a means to address deficiencies in the existing Egyptian planning policy. The study indicates that the accessibility of affordable land in Egyptian cities will impact socio-spatial sustainability transformations.

This paper examines Ethiopia’s evolving land policy and ongoing legal reforms, highlighting their implications for equity, sustainability, and national cohesion. Historically, Ethiopia’s rist and communal tenure systems created fragmentation, inefficiency, and weak accountability. The 1975 Derg reform ended feudalism but replaced private ownership with state control, a model reaffirmed by the 1995 Constitution. While this framework aimed to ensure equitable access, it entrenched tenure insecurity and politicized land governance under ethnic federalism, fueling conflict and displacement. Recent legal initiatives, particularly the Federal Rural Land Administration and Land Use Proclamation No. 1324/202, seek to modernize land administration and enhance tenure security. However, the absence of a comprehensive national land policy, gender inequality, youth landlessness, and environmental degradation remain major challenges. The paper calls for a flexible, inclusive, and climate-resilient land governance framework that integrates human rights, equity, and sustainability to advance Ethiopia’s agricultural transformation and social stability.

This study examines Ethiopia’s emerging Fit-for-Purpose Land Consolidation as a response to land fragmentation that constrains productivity, mechanization, and rural development. Although Ethiopia’s Land Certification programs have strengthened tenure security by registering over 32 million parcels and advancing women’s land rights, they remain grounded in a distributive justice logic that prioritizes equitable parcellation over productive efficiency. The study examines whether land consolidation can facilitate a shift toward an efficiency-oriented land governance model, supporting economies of scale and promoting agricultural transformation. Drawing on three years of empirical research, it applies a theory of change linking voluntary consolidation to improved farm structure, reduced production costs, and higher productivity. Methodologically, it combines desk review with qualitative data from Focus Group Discussions and Interviews. Findings reveal opportunities, including supportive policy frameworks and government commitment, alongside social constraints. The study concludes that land consolidation in Ethiopia requires context-sensitive approaches, balancing efficiency gains with social legitimacy.

Land is a vital resource for rural livelihoods, particularly for women, who have historically faced marginalization in accessing and controlling land in Ethiopia. This study examines the impact of land registration and certification programs on peri-urban women’s land rights in the Amhara National Regional State. Implemented since 2003, the program includes two stages: basic adjudication with paper-based certificates and advanced geo-referenced certification. Findings reveal that second-level certification enhances women’s land tenure security, decision-making power, and access to credit. Women’s involvement in land management decisions, such as crop selection and agricultural input use, has improved, alongside reduced boundary disputes and increased land investments. However, challenges persist, including cultural biases favoring male landholders, limited participation in public meetings, and unequal access to resources. The study recommends policy interventions to address socio-cultural barriers, improve education, and promote gender equality to ensure sustainable empowerment of women in land rights.

Does environmental regulation constrain or catalyze economic development? We study São Paulo's 2002 ban on pre-harvest burning in sugarcane, which forced rapid adoption of mechanical harvesting. Using land slope as an instrument for mechanization costs, we find that regulation-induced technology adoption triggered structural transformation in local labor markets. Mechanization reduced agricultural employment and increased manufacturing employment, accounting for over 75% of observed sectoral shifts between 2000 and 2010. Critically, labor reallocation was selective: employment gains occurred only in agro-linked manufacturing, such as biofuel production and sugar processing, rather than across all industries. This selectivity explains the smooth transition despite the displacement of workers in the agricultural sector. Mechanization also generated economy-wide gains: household incomes rose, unemployment declined, and poverty fell. Our findings demonstrate that environmental regulation can catalyze structural transformation and improve welfare when it forces technology upgrading in contexts with strong agro-industrial linkages.

This paper examines the effects of a climate adaptation policy on production and environmental outcomes in the context of Brazil's semiarid region, the country's poorest and most drought-prone region. The large-scale, low-cost water policy builds rainwater reservoirs designed to boost production and strengthen rural producers' resilience. Using a difference-in-differences approach and linking property-level administrative data to high-resolution satellite data, we find that cistern construction reallocates land toward higher-productivity uses. Results indicate an increase in cropland area by 7.6% and higher-quality pasture area by 14.5%, while lower-quality pasture area decreases by 3.2%. Forest cover increases by 1.1%, consistent with a land-saving effect driven by a reduction of lower-quality pasture. Our cost-benefit analysis reveals a positive aggregate return with each invested monetary unit generating 1.76 units of benefits, indicating that adaptation policies can also advance mitigation goals via forest preservation.

This paper shows that regions with more secure land rights are associated with smaller heat damage to crop yields. After documenting this pattern across countries, we identify this relationship causally using the staggered land registry reform that enhanced land tenure security in Greece. Consistent with our theory, we find that the reform attenuates heat damage because it shifts farmers' adaptation strategies from enlarging croplands to increasing agricultural inputs (capital, labor, and irrigation). Overall, the reform is projected to offset at least two-thirds of Greece's agricultural productivity losses by 2100, underlining the crucial role of institutions in facilitating climate change adaptation.

This paper studies a natural experiment in the usage of satellites for environmental enforcement in India. When the party governing the city of Delhi won power in Punjab, an agricultural state which produces farm fire smoke that causes air pollution in the capital, the new government deployed satellite fire monitoring to put pressure on local bureaucracy to enforce laws against crop burning. Using a border discontinuity design, I show that detected fires fell sharply in Punjab. However, 80 percent of this decline was driven by farmers shifting burn times to evade satellite detection, likely in collusion with local officials. I estimate “hidden fires” using a machine-learning algorithm that imputes the true number of fires from burn scars, which cannot be concealed. A promising technological solution unraveled due to collusive gaming by local bureaucrats and polluters, highlighting Goodhart’s law as a cautionary principle for deploying technology as a tool of government.

In many low to middle income countries, around 70% of land remains undocumented, unmanaged, or unprotected by the state, including in peri-urban and urban areas. The Sustainable Development Goals have established targets to monitor tenure security, prompting the development of initiatives that assess land rights and governance through data collected from experts, practitioners, community representatives, and residents. However, how these toolkits measure land rights and governance—and the extent to which their approaches are comprehensive—remains unclear. This paper provides a systematic critical review of toolkits developed by international organizations and other land rights stakeholders, compiled in the MetRe Library online (at this link). It offers an unprecedented synthesis of empirical approaches to studying de facto land rights and social regulations, while also identifying gaps and proposing improvements. In doing so, the research supports the development of more robust and comprehensive tools to inform both academic inquiry and effective land policy.

Land governance reforms are crucial for inclusive investment and economic resilience, yet data fragmentation and institutional inefficiencies remain major barriers. This study investigates how integrating Financial Technology (FinTech) with administrative land records, survey data, and remote sensing can strengthen land governance in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Using a Sequential Mixed Method design, a quantitative survey of 400+ respondents (analytical sample = 384; Krejcie & Morgan, 1970) is followed by qualitative interviews for explanatory depth. Structured questionnaires measure digital finance usage (independent variables), institutional trust (mediator), and inclusive investment behavior (dependent variable). Administrative cadastral data and satellite imagery spatially anchor transaction and land use patterns. Semi-structured interviews with land administrators, financial providers, and communities explore institutional bottlenecks and FinTech adoption. Econometric modeling, mediation analysis, and spatial diagnostics assess FinTech–investment linkages. The study provides methodological and empirical insights, offering evidence-based strategies for governments and development partners to drive equitable economic transformation.

This first global report on the Status of Land Tenure and Governance brings together tenure- and sex-disaggregated data and analyses from a wide range of sources - including governments, civil society and academia - and across multiple levels, from local to global, with the objective of tracking progress with regards land tenure systems and governance frameworks. It serves policymakers, intergovernmental organizations, civil society, the private sector and academia as a clear and authoritative reference point on land tenure and governance data and analysis. The report supports progress toward numerous SDGs, promotes the uptake of the VGGTs, and contributes to the implementation of other key international frameworks, including the CFS Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems (CFS-RAI) and the Rio Conventions.

Forest-governance effectiveness is increasingly linked to gender inclusion, yet cross-national, project-level quantitative evidence remains limited. This study leverages Large-Language Models (LLMs) to overcome these data constraints and provides new empirical evidence on the role of gender policies in improving forest-governance outcomes. We utilize an LLM-based key information extraction (KIE) framework to extract cross-country, project-level variables by processing World Bank REDD+ project documents. We then assess the effectiveness of gender-inclusion strategies—including design-stage and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) stage—on project performance using a Bayesian linear mixed model. Our findings highlight that gender inclusion at the design stage does not improve subjective or objective outcomes, whereas M&E stages enhance not only governance processes but also project outcomes. This work demonstrates the capacity of LLMs to support quantitative policy and project evaluation and, for the first time, extends their application to outcome-oriented research on gender inclusion policy.

The research presented in this paper is based on a joint activity of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the World Bank, with the objective to provide a novel 4D building dataset for the Global South that helps to better understand how building area and height have developed since 1985. To produce this dataset – the World Settlement Footprint 4D (WSF® 4D) –, information from various state-of-the-art global geo-data collections on building footprints, building height, and spatial expansion of the built-up area are combined. The WSF® 4D offers scientists, planners, and decision makers novel insights into the settlement growth over four decades in a so far unprecedented spatiotemporal detail and coverage. This work therefore contributes to a deeper understanding of the complex patterns of global urbanization and its drivers and impacts.

Locally determined patterns of urbanization and spatial development are key factors to the exposure and vulnerability of people to climatic shocks. Using high-resolution annual data, this study shows that, since 1985, human settlements around the world—from villages to megacities—have expanded continuously and rapidly into present-day flood zones. In many regions, growth in the most hazardous flood zones is outpacing growth in non-exposed zones by a large margin, particularly in East Asia, where high-hazard settlements have expanded 60% faster than flood-safe settlements. These results provide systematic evidence of a divergence in the exposure of countries to flood hazards. Instead of adapting their exposure, many countries continue to actively amplify their exposure to increasingly frequent climatic shocks.

The 21st-century global urbanization wave manifests as metropolization, where urban centers, sub-centers, and peripheral functional zones collectively form highly aggregated forms of regional growth poles—metropolitan areas that aggregate resources and drive development. However, metropolitan areas delineation has persistently lacked a data-driven framework reconciling regional heterogeneity and global applicability. Leveraging multi‑source, multi‑modal datasets, this study first constructs a worldwide “natural‑humanistic base‑zone” map with spatially‑constrained clustering. Within each base‑zone, principal‑component analysis generates a Centrality Index and a Radiation Index to capture central area and radiant area in metropolitan, and change point model identifies the metropolitan area realistic boundary and hierarchical urban-rural gradient structure. Explainable machine learning model Light-GBM with SHAP is applied into revealing the relationship between metropolitan areas’ features and blue-green morphology. This study will offer innovative insights to enhance understanding global metropolitan areas from the “Anthropo-geosphere” viewpoint, holding scientific significance for achieving UN Sustainable Development Goals and fostering human-nature harmony.

This paper examines the process of acquiring agricultural concessions in the Democratic Republic of Congo and highlights the limitations of the current legal framework. While the procedure formally respects legal and customary requirements, most concessionaires stop at the provisional occupation contract, which is easier to obtain than the definitive one. The latter demands actual land development, which is rarely pursued. As a result, provisional contracts often exceed their legal time limits without transitioning to definitive status, leading to underutilized land. Meanwhile, land value increases, benefiting holders without promoting agricultural productivity. Although the land code provides tenure security, it fails to incentivize effective land use. This paper argues that additional policy tools and incentives are needed to ensure that concessions contribute meaningfully to agricultural development, especially in light of the ongoing land reform efforts by the Congolese government.

This article clarifies the land status of agricultural concessions of Mont-Ngafula, in Kinshasa. This area is particular given that it has a hybrid land status which is both urban and rural. This therefore entails the application of the two land tenure systems depending on whether the area concerned is urban or rural. The results of this analysis highlights that since the enactment of the 1973 Land Act, access to agricultural land in this region rarely comply with legal procedure; most land occupants rather transact with various individuals who have customary rights over lands (traditional chiefs and customary landowners) instead meeting the competent services.

Corporate exit has received far less attention than acquisition or operation in debates on responsible land-based investment. Yet as projects close, downsize, or are abandoned, the question of who (re)gains control over land and on what terms becomes a critical governance challenge. This paper frames corporate exit as an emerging frontier of land governance and introduces land return as a practice whereby companies transfer land and assets back to communities. Drawing on three recent cases in Mozambique, Tanzania, and Nicaragua involving private agribusiness and forestry companies, the paper analyses how land return was negotiated and implemented within different legal and institutional systems. The findings show that land return required governance innovation: legal interpretation, participatory processes, and facilitation that bridged gaps in law and policy. Across contexts, land return emerged as a potential mechanism for restoring rights, rebuilding legitimacy, and opening space for more accountable and inclusive forms of land governance.

This study addresses the critical challenge of accurately valuing economic trees and cash crops for compensation during land acquisition in Nigeria by reviewing and updating the 2008 National Technical Development Forum (NTDF) compensation rates. Traditional valuation methods are often inadequate, relying on outdated statutory rates that result in inconsistent and unfair compensation. This study assesses the newly developed harmonised NTDF 2024 compensation rates, formulated under the coordination of the Federal Ministry of Housing and Urban Development with support from the World Bank and Rural Access and Agricultural Marketing Project (RAAMP). Using a multi-stage empirical methodology that incorporates extensive stakeholder engagement and a standardised data collection template across Nigerian states, the study examines key variables such as species-specific yields, production costs, and market dynamics. A price monitoring model was adapted to include macroeconomic factors (inflation and exchange rate fluctuations), to determine prices for crops and economic trees in real-time.

Large-scale land transactions (LSLTs) have expanded rapidly across developing countries. We combine two analyses to study the medium-run effects of LSLTs in Ethiopia. First, we leverage the plausibly exogenous timing of LSLT entry to estimate the effects on local economic and environmental outcomes. Second, we conduct an original survey of households in Gambela region including detailed questions on households’ interactions with LSLTs to shed light on mechanisms. We find modest effects on crop productivity at the national level with no effect on deforestation, and significant reductions in burned area. In Gambela, we also find that LSLTs reduced deforestation and increased tree cover. We observe a 13.7% increase in log wage income for every 1,000 ha of LSLT within 5–10 km. In contrast,households within 0–5 km show no significant benefits. This is consistent with modest positive equilibrium effects that at least partially offset damages to the most exposed households.

This study analyses how land tenure systems constrain the productivity of women smallholder cocoa farmers in the Suhum Cocoa District. Using a mixed-methods approach, it combines interviews with land officials and leaders of the Asetenapa Co-operative Cocoa Farming and Marketing Union Limited with survey data from 100 women farmers. Findings show that customary tenure, under the authority of the Ofori Panin Stool, dominates land access. Over 90% of women do not own the land they farm and depend largely on sharecropping and tenancy arrangements, with limited inheritance-based access. These conditions create tenure insecurity and restrict women’s ability to invest, expand production, and participate in commercial farming. The study calls for gender-responsive land and agricultural policies, improved access to finance, and targeted institutional support through the Ghana Cocoa Board to strengthen women’s land rights and productivity.

This article examines the complexity of land ownership in rural Albania, focusing on the historical evolution of agrarian reforms, changes in the rural landscape, and the persistent challenges farmers face without formal property titles. Using a multidisciplinary approach that combines social sciences, political economy, history, and cultural heritage, it analyses both the legal framework and local perceptions of land. Based on empirical research in two Albanian villages, the study explores how agrarian reforms have shaped agriculture and rural life, raising a central question: in Albania, owning land does not always mean being its rightful owner—so what does ownership truly mean? To clarify this, the article applies the Roman legal principles of usus, fructus, and abusus to understand “de jure” rights and contrasts them with their “de facto” application in everyday practice, offering insights relevant to Albania’s path toward EU accession.

This study examines the impact of secure housing and tenure security by exploring changes in women’s knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding secure housing, property ownership, and financial decision-making in Kailali and Kanchanpur districts in Nepal. Using a mixed-methods design, the research surveyed 366 respondents, 183 project beneficiaries (Treatment Group) and 183 non-beneficiaries (Control Group). To triangulate the findings key informant interviews and 2 focus group discussions with local officials and community members were also conducted. Findings indicate that project beneficiaries demonstrate substantially higher awareness of secure housing and tenure security, stronger support for joint ownership, and greater recognition of property ownership as a pathway to income generation, financial independence, and increased household decision-making power. Project beneficiary women also show higher rates of property ownership and more consistent involvement in household financial and property-related decisions. The interventions appear to contribute positively to enhancing women’s agency, security, and economic participation.

Digital tools to overcome agricultural land market frictions: A hands-on demonstration

platform for organizing smallholder voluntary land swaps

Using panel data from Indonesian, I document that workers switch from agriculture to non-agriculture within rural areas, rather than through migration to urban areas, suggesting that rural-urban migration is not central to structural change. Yet, rural-urban migration places future cohorts of workers in cities, where access to education and non-agricultural demand are higher, thereby contributing to future structural change. I build an overlapping generations model in which workers choose their sector and location of work considering that switching sectors or locations is costly and that locations differ in their access to education. I find that rural-urban migration has limited effects on structural change, as the rural non-agricultural sector is able to absorb most workers leaving agriculture. I also uncover that sectoral switching costs explain most of the variation in the agricultural share across cohorts. Together, these findings imply that frictions limiting migration are not the main barrier to structural change.

This paper uses a unique household panel dataset with plot-level information on soil fertility and land investments to analyze the relationship between land rental, soil health, and farmers’ soil investment decisions in China. The identification strategy exploits within-household comparisons between owned and rented plots cultivated in the same year, using two survey waves. The results show that rented land has slightly poorer soil quality than owned land. Farmers are also less likely to adopt soil conservation practices, such as deep tillage and organic fertilizer application, on rented plots. However, written rental contracts and contracts registered with official institutions mitigate these differences in soil investments between rented and owned land. These findings suggest that promoting the formalization of farmland rental markets could improve soil quality and encourage sustainable agricultural practices.

This project investigates how the spatial allocation of environmental enforcement resources shapes deforestation. We study a reform of the Brazilian environmental agency that closed nearly half of its local offices. Combining rich data on the environmental agency organization, its enforcement activities, and land cover, we leverage regional variation in geographic exposure to the closures for a difference-in-differences design. We investigate the impact on enforcement and deforestation. To understand how presence on the ground interacts with remote monitoring capacity, we leverage variation in the type of environmental offense and on whether deforestation event were flagged by satellite alerts.

Combining administrative data on credit, mortgages, and construction in Rwanda, this paper shows that technology helps overcome imperfections in property rights and foster the development of the mortgage market. Exploiting quasi-experimental variation in 3G internet coverage and a land title reform, we find that mobile connectivity shifts borrowers from microfinance to banks. 3G internet facilitates the distribution of land titles, which borrowers use as collateral for bank loans and mortgages, thus promoting household investment in real estate. A mediation analysis and structural estimation reveal that the property rights channel accounts for 30–37% of the effect of mobile internet on bank lending and 75–80% of the effect on collateralized loans.

Land grabbing in the Colombian Amazon is intricately linked to historical patterns of territorial control and ongoing landscape transformation. Land use change connected with deforestation, conversion to pastures and ultimately land grabbing behaves differently according to historical, social and ecological context. For that purpose, using deforested patches between 2020 and 2021 and the 26 variables related to environmental social, economic, and armed conflict conditions in the Northwestern Arc of the Colombian Amazon, 5 areas were classified using the unsupervised classification algorithm "K-means". In each zone, the similarity between the average values of the variables associated with the patches and their geographic proximity allows for quantitative outputs and geographic representation and facilitates analyzing forest cover loss and local conditions to demonstrate land grabbing in relation to the conversion to pastures and deforestation.

This article analyzes the integration between Brazil’s Rural Environmental Registry (CAR) and the Land Management System (SIGEF) in the Legal Amazon. Employing geospatial similarity (Jaccard Index) and ownership checks using taxpayer identifiers (CPF and CNPJ), it assesses how interoperability can reduce boundary inconsistencies and duplicate records, thus improving environmental enforcement and land governance. The September 2025 national CAR–SIGEF assessment covers nine Legal Amazon states, revealing that 31.57% of CAR registrations are spatially linked to SIGEF parcels, and 91.65% of SIGEF parcels are referenced by a CAR record. The article discusses recent federal initiatives such as the Pre-Filled CAR, PRONAF for Land Regularization, and the Meu Imóvel Rural platform. Recommendations include institutionalizing interoperability standards, increasing support for small producers and traditional communities, and strengthening ongoing validation and monitoring to enhance the integrity and efficiency of land management in the region.

How can weak bureaucracies implement policies? I investigate Brazil’s underresourced land agency as it attempts to formalize property rights for smallholders and traditional communities in Amazonia—a necessary step for sustainable development and halting deforestation. A comparison of neighboring jurisdictions with divergent outcomes reveals counterintuitive conditions under which underresourced organizations can nonetheless function effectively. Ethnography and process tracing show that empowered but fragmented civil society organizations and clashing elites polarized bureaucrats and eroded organizational capacity in one jurisdiction. Conversely, a weak civil society and uninterested elites provided de facto autonomy, enabling moderately partisan bureaucrats to collaborate with clients. Protests and litigation were insufficient to implement policies, while cooperative labor by clients facilitated legibility. Employing a relational political economy approach to analyze state performance, the paper argues that underresourced bureaucracies require shelter from, rather than active support by, elites to operate effectively.

Does industrial activity lead to deforestation and land degradation? Can limited state capacity be overcome to decouple economic activity from environmental degradation? We study these questions in the context of slaughterhouse plant openings in Brazil. Using difference-in-differences, we show that opening a plant increases livestock production while reducing forest cover and degrading pastureland. However, after the introduction of legally-enforceable commitments between slaughterhouses and federal prosecutors that penalize plants for buying livestock from illegally deforested areas, opening a plant leads to higher productivity without increasing deforestation. Our results suggest that incentive-compatible commitments can generate positive economic and environmental outcomes.

The Brazilian Rural Environmental Registry (CAR) is vital for monitoring compliance, but its declaratory nature allows for polygon rectifications that may conceal environmental liabilities. This study develops a spatio-temporal framework to analyze 27,014 properties in the Legal Amazon that underwent boundary modifications. By integrating CAR data with PRODES/INPE deforestation records, embargo databases, and SIGEF land registries, the research identifies patterns of liability evasion. Results reveal significant spatial transformations, including a 50% median area reduction and an 11 km average centroid displacement. A strong correlation exists between rectifications and environmental infractions. Furthermore, findings indicate systematic reclassification of property sizes to influence regulatory thresholds and credit access. Integration with SIGEF distinguishes legitimate corrections from strategic manipulations. These findings highlight critical challenges for CAR’s integrity, emphasizing the need for robust cross-database validation to strengthen environmental governance, financial regulation, and supply chain monitoring in emerging economies.

This research addresses the lack of a standardized, scalable methodology for defining and assessing Land Tenure-Related Risks. Understanding this type of risk can be beneficial for more sustainable and transparent global commodity supply chains, often being linked to Human Rights violations and potential conflict, which can affect corporate reputation and production continuity. The proposed methodology employs a multi-phase approach using a systematic literature review and sophisticated GIS analysis. It presents Land Tenure-Related Risk as an integrated function of three core components: Geospatial certainty, Tenure Recognition/Legal Status, and Compliance with Land-Use Regulations. This conceptual model is applied to Brazil due to its complexity and importance as a commodity exporter. The case study integrates at least 14 distinct, publicly available official datasets within a PostgreSQL spatial database. The results are expected to serve as a vital due diligence tool for companies, an enforcement guide for public administration, and a monitoring instrument for civil society.

This paper explores the historical origins and evolution of land grabbing in Kenya, tracing its roots to the colonial era when policies promoting European settlement disrupted indigenous land tenure systems. These dynamics persisted after independence, enabling widespread illegal and irregular allocations of public land. The executive, particularly the President, became the central custodian of public land, inheriting broad discretionary powers that often-facilitated land grabbing. The National Land Policy and the Constitution of Kenya recognize land grabbing as a historical injustice requiring urgent redress. Using a systematic literature review and case studies, this study highlights the enduring governance gaps that sustain the problem. Situating Kenya’s experience within global trends of large-scale land acquisitions by powerful foreign state and private actors, the paper raises concerns about sovereignty, community rights, and sustainable land governance.