Jon D Unruh

ABSTRACT Large scale reforestation in the tropics has the potential to sequester large amounts of carbon and to help to mitigate the buildup of atmospheric carbon dioxide. However, unless the causes of deforestation are addressed, reforestation efforts will be in vain. The link between deforestation and reforestation operates within the domain of human intervention on the landscape, and includes the patterns of land resource use and access. This review considers the role that land and tree tenure (resource use and access) of agroforestry can have in reducing both the rate of conversion of forest to agriculture – the largest biotic emission of carbon – and forest degradation; thereby allowing both natural forests and reforestation to participate in carbon uptake. The operational land use and tenure aspects of agroforestry, and the impacts of these on deforestation, and in overcoming the obstacles to large scale reforestation, are presented. Utilisation of marginal lands, and the adoption, growth, and spread of agroforestry systems in the carbon context, are also discussed.

The principal aim of the book is to assess the relative efficiency of indigenous customary land use arrangements and state-imposed individual tenure in promoting agricultural production in Africa. It is based on eight case studies in seven countries. Chapter 1, presents an ...

Efforts to thwart the trafficking of conflict commodities to finance wars constitute an ongoing endeavour. As specific approaches become effective for certain commodities, belligerent actors pursue new forms of exploitation. The trafficking of housing, land and property (HLP) rights in war zones has now reached a pervasiveness, lucrativeness and severity to warrant significant attention on the derivation of countermeasures. This article proposes a set of potential countermeasures to trafficking in HLP rights in war zones by examining five sets of possible mechanisms and how they would work: detection, transnational governance, locallevel countermeasures, public messaging, and targeting non-state armed groups.

The ongoing use of landscape-based conflict commodities-diamonds and other minerals, timber, wildlife, etc.-to finance wars continues to evolve. The success with which such commodities can be transacted to support militaries, militias and insurgencies has led belligerents to innovate with additional commodities. Housing, land and property (HLP) rights within war zones have belatedly joined the list of conflict commodities that are subject to transaction, and to such an extent as to warrant significant concern. However, the use of 'conflict HLP rights' has not yet been operationally described in the way that other conflict commodities have been. This is a necessary first step towards deriving and designing countermeasures. This article makes a preliminary attempt to delineate the exploitation of conflict HLP rights by examining how they are transacted to support belligerent groups in three conflicts: Darfur, Colombia and Syria.

ABSTRACT Land tenure issues are fundamentally important to a peace process and agricultural recovery. Disputes over land resources between participants in formal versus customary tenure systems, and the inability of the two to connect in terms of how such disputes are resolved in ways that are viewed as secure and legitimate (and therefore respected) can have especially serious repercussions in periods of recovery from armed conflict. The lack of legitimate adjudication institutions able to resolve disputes between tenure systems has, as the fundamental problem, the existence of evidence relevant to a claim that is available and legitimate within tenure systems, but not between systems. The present work considers the constraints and opportunities for land tenure dispute resolution for groups belonging to customary and migrant tenure systems and formal tenure systems in critical resource (agronomically endowed) areas of postwar Mozambique. From a social survey carried out on 521 households in two provinces of northern Mozambique, the research focused on aspects of postwar customary tenure systems for potential utility as evidence in land dispute resolution within the formal tenure system. Following a brief discussion of the role of land tenure in a peace process, and the land tenure dynamic following civil conflict, the paper looks at critical resources within the landscape of agricultural recovery, and the role of evidence in land dispute resolution. The analysis examines differences between two critical resource areas, and between these and a control, with regard to: evidence type, evidence response to land conflict, and relationships of conflict resolution. The paper ends with look at policy implications.

Many of the numerous difficult issues facing the world today involve relationships entailing trade‐offs and synergies. This study quantitatively assesses some alternative scenarios using integrated assessment models, and provides several indicators relating to sustainable development and climate change, such as indicators of income (per capita GDP), poverty, water stress, food access, sustainable energy use, energy security, and ocean acidification, with high consistencies among the indicators within a scenario. According to the analyses, economic growth helps improve many of the indicators for sustainable development. On the other hand, climate change will induce some severe impacts such as ocean acidification under a non‐climate intervention scenario (baseline scenario). Deep emission reductions, such as to 2°C above the pre‐industrial level, could cause some sustainable development indicators to worsen. There are complex trade‐offs between climate change mitigation levels and several sustainable development indicators. A delicately balanced approach to economic growth will be necessary for sustainable development and responses to climate change.

The governance of important natural resources in Iraq will play a large role in
recovery of the country’s economy, livelihoods and stability. This article examines
the geography of the governance of two critically important resources in the
country—water and oil. With an initial focus on the description of the resources and
the legal and administrative components of their governance, the paper looks at the
primary problems and challenges to the governance of these resources. The paper
finds that the complexity, magnitude and spatial arrangement of resource gover-
nance problems for water and oil in the country to be a daunting challenge. The
article seeks to contribute to the articulation of this challenge, in order to provide
initial material for deriving ways forward for more effective governance of natural
resources in Iraq and other war-affected countries.

The ongoing HIV/AIDS pandemic in southern Africa continues to manifest itself in
unexpected ways. While the consequences of the disease appear straightforward in some aspects—eg., medical, labor, cost—in other respects the repercussions, while large, are
nonetheless highly nuanced and can be counterintuitive. This paper reports on the
intersection of AIDS, migration, livelihood adaptation, land tenure, and forest
conservation, to outline how adaptation to the pandemic has reworked significant aspects of land tenure to result in increased forest conservation in southern Zambia in the near to medium-term. The research uses a combination of ethnography, case studies, household survey and spatial analyses and finds that HIV/AIDS is used in customary legal settings to enhance land access. We also draw links to practical and theoretical implications of the relationship between AIDS, land tenure, and deforestation in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The severity of the population dislocation and destruction of housing, land and property (HLP) in the Ukraine war has driven efforts for starting reconstruction planning prior to the war's end. This comes with the realization that recovery will entail considerable preparation, including efforts at using seized Russian assets to finance it. Engaging in HLP restitution and compensation will be a primary recovery challenge, with the Ukrainian government moving forward with legislation for facilitating this. However, the government's current approach to processing what will be millions of HLP claims for restitution and compensation faces a daunting challenge. Housing, land and property rights prior to the war comprised a dense tangle of confusion, corruption, and inadequate documentation; such that attempting to untangle each claim on a case‐by‐case basis as currently planned is highly problematic and risks instability. This article describes this tangle as five categories of pr...

Ukraine is poised to transform the process of housing, land and property (HLP) restitution and compensation after wars. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has displaced more than 13.5 million people (UNHCR 2023) and created massive destruction and damage to the country’s HLP. Initial efforts at recovery along with counter-offensives have stabilized large areas of the country and liberated others, to which displaced Ukrainians are now beginning to return (Duggar 2022; Conkling 2022). The Ukrainian government faces the monumental task of getting millions of returnees back to their HLP and facilitating compensation for damage and destruction.

Fallow utilization schemes are becoming increasingly popular in agroforestry designs. However little attention has been given to the fate of valuable fallow plants after the end of the initial fallow cycle, and over successive fallow cycles on a regional or inter-fallow level. Evidence is presented here for the spontaneous long-term community enrichment of an area with valuable plants in a cyclic or iterative fashion, in the context of an existing fallow utilization scheme in the Amazon. Review of the ecological processes which operate at microsite, field and community levels indicate that: Due to valuable plants left uncut in the swidden, seeds from valuable species are better able to survive the burn, and may experience a favored germination and establishment because of reduced competition, enhanced fertility of the young swidden, nutrient input from litterfall, and reduced soil temperatures and soil moisture evaporation. The much greater frequency of suitable germination and establishment sites in and around canopy gaps created by management practices during the fallow cycle interacts with a spatial and temporal distribution of fruit trees which may encourage a specific optimal foraging strategy among large numbers of frugivores. The net effect of this interaction would be to decrease competition for, and increase efficiency of, seed dispersal into the large number of available establishment sites. A greater opportunity for frugivore generated seed shadows exist in managed fallows due to the larger number of trails in and around these sites, which are used as flyways. A presence of the more efficient ‘specialist’ fruit tree seed dispersal strategy in managed fallows — as opposed to the ‘opportunist’ strategy — which produces patterns of seed dispersal more beneficial to the plant, and may have a longer more evenly spread fruiting season; which, along with relatively large numbers of trees would encourage frugivores to ‘camp out’ on the resource, depositing seeds nearby. The existence of ‘relict’ plant species that reflect pre-historic forest management which has led to long term and persistent effects on forest tree species composition.

Land tenure plays a primary role in sustainable development efforts. However armed conflict and its repercussions reconfigure the network of social relations upon which all land tenure systems depend. In post-conflict settings new laws have the opportunity to address tenure issues in the context of what people are already doing ‘on the ground’, with a view to moving from the fluidity of post-conflict situations to a more solidified and peaceful social and legal environment. However there exists a lack of tools to analyze postwar land tenure and the prospects for reconstituting tenure systems to support recovery and development. This paper uses the Sustainable Livelihoods framework to examine postwar land tenure issues in order to draw out latent opportunities within emergent informal smallholder tenure constructs which may have utility in the reconstitution of national tenure systems.

Indigenous resource tenure systems in Africa have evolved to meet the constraints and opportunities of often difficult biophysical environments, while facilitating the operation of complex spatial and temporal land use patterns. Traditional systems provide security of tenure in culturally relevant ways that permit adaptation to new circumstances. On the other hand imposed tenure structures in Africa have often not strengthened individual rights and have often blocked indigenous tenure development and adaption in response to new situations. Pastoralists in Africa have in particular been negatively impacted by the imposition of national tenure systems which in many cases have served to marginalize nomadic populations, with repercussions in land degradation, food security, and instability. In Somalia the transient resource rights and resource use arrangements that are critical to transhumant pastoralism were ignored in the formulation of the national tenure regime which favored crop cultivation. The results were increased land degradation, resource use conflicts, declines in pastoral production, and impacts on Somali clan alliances which in many cases regulate rational resource access and use. Somalia possesses the greatest proportion of pastoralists in Africa. Transhumant pastoralism, as the most widespread agricultural enterprise in the country, will play a critical role in food production for the foreseeable future. However, the relationship between indigenous pastoralist tenure and state imposed tenure has, in many locations decreased the ability of pastoralism to reproduce itself, thereby compromising the rational utilization of very large areas of rangeland interior, which have very few alternative uses.

Increasingly pervasive migration in the developing world is emerging as an important force in global environmental change scenarios (e.g., Amacher et. al., 1998; McGregor, 1994; Southgate, 1990; Myers, 1997; Doos, 1994; Ghimire, 1994; IUCN, 2000). Whether by forced dislocation or self-selected migration, a wide variety of causal factors related to resource conditions, from food insecurity, conflict, and water resources, to political, social and economic disruptions, are increasingly leading to larger scale migrations with significant impacts on the environmental resources needed to sustain livelihoods. Such impacts can then lead to additional dislocation and migration due to resource scarcity and conflict. The impact on natural resources and resource use systems in temporary and permanent destination areas extends beyond direct environmental degradation, leading local (nonmigrant) communities to change resource use arrangements due to the presence of significant migrant populations, and governments to search for appropriate policy and enforcement instruments. Given that a large proportion of migrants in the developing world are rural inhabitants who seek rural destinations (Ghimire, 1994), the environmental impact of migrant presence in destination areas operates within the domain of interaction with land based resources and the local communities who have pre-existing claim and use rights to those resources. In this context rural land resource rights (land tenure) play a primary role in how migrants intersect with destination resources and communities, and the resulting environmental consequences. A great deal of valuable work has contributed much to our understanding of the important role of land tenure with regard to how humans interact with the environment (e.g., Katon, et. al., 2001; Ostrom, et. al., 1999; Amacher, et. al., 1998; Thesihuesen, 1991; Southgate, 1990). And in aggregate land tenure plays a primary role on land cover change at various scales (Unruh, 1995a). In a migration context often the first and most important interaction between migrants, and between migrants and local communities, is over access to resources, and most often, the land resources needed for near term food security (e.g. McGregor, 1994; Unruh1995a, 1993). One of the more important emerging aspects of migration in the developing world is the increasing diversity of those who migrate. (McGregor, 1994; Schmeidl, 1998). McGregor (1994) reviews the literature on migrant and refugee livelihoods, noting that the economic and ecologic changes that take place in destination locations for migrants result in very diverse experiences in different places. Not only are migrants emerging from a wider variety of states and regions within states, but from a wider variety of livelihood systems, religions, ethnic groups, and socioeconomic strata (Schmeidl, 1998). As well, the array of specific reasons for dislocation, and the variety of experiences during migration, add to the diversity of migrant characteristics, and importantly, to the diversity of their approaches to resource access in temporary and permanent destination locations. Diversity in tenurial constructs in a migration context comes about both as migrants carry with them notions about property rights arrangements that are familiar, and seek or are compelled to pursue new constructs in new locations.

In Zambia’s Southern Province, where a history of climatic and political fluctuation have played out in peoples livelihood choices and ecological impacts, the Gwembe Tonga people have learned to respond to uncertainty by expecting the worst. This outlook emerges from at least 50 years of experience. The building of the Kariba Dam on the Middle Zambezi River in the late 1950s resulted in the forced relocation of Gwembe people. Since resettlement in 1958, Gwembe people have lived under conditions of increasing uncertainty, both environmental and sociopolitical, that have enormous implications for environmental change. Understanding environmental change in this region demands an exploration of the social, political and economic context of Gwembe Tonga lives. In looking for broad patterns of adaptation and response, one point emerges clearly. For the Gwembe Tonga, the most recurrent pattern, and most reliable response to living in conditions of extreme uncertainty, is an increasingly opportunistic use of the environment and other resources. This article presents ethnographic data collected over more than 50 years (through the Gwembe Tonga Research Project) in Southern Zambia.

The ongoing HIV/AIDS pandemic in southern Africa continues to manifest itself in unexpected ways. While the consequences of the disease appear straightforward in some aspects—e.g., medical, labor, cost—in other respects the repercussions, while large, are nonetheless highly nuanced and can be counterintuitive. This paper reports on the intersection of HIV/AIDS, migration, livelihood adaptation, land tenure, and forest conservation, to outline how adaptation to the pandemic has reworked significant aspects of land tenure to result in increased forest conservation in southern Zambia in the near to medium-term. The research uses a combination of ethnography, case studies, household survey and spatial analyses and finds that HIV/AIDS is used in customary legal settings to enhance land access. We also draw links to practical and theoretical implications of the relationship between HIV/AIDS, land tenure, and deforestation in Sub-Saharan Africa.

This Special Issue will look at how Housing, land and property (HLP) injustices and the responses to them (both historical and recent) shape transitional justice claims, interventions and conceptual debates. The Special Issue seeks a broad range of contributions: from debates about historical land claims and reparative measures for colonial-era dispossession, to the structure and function of war-affected HLP restitution efforts, the repercussions of HLP in migratory processes, challenges particular to urban HLP transitional justice, HLP reparatory strategies vis-à-vis indigenous land claims and respect for the earth, the peace vs. justice trade-off, as well as issues relating to the broader design questions of how legal frameworks have evolved and been used to influence HLP-related transitional justice debates, policy and practice.