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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.