Land reforms have played a central role in the political economy of many countries and have been subject to massive disagreements between different political interest groups and ideologies. In a new research project EfD aims to draw lessons from land reforms in several Asian and African countries. The findings will be presented in a book edited by Professors Stein Holden and Keijiro Otsuka and titled "Land Reforms in Asia and Africa - Impacts on Poverty and Natural Resource Management". The first book workshop was held on Jan 24-25, 2010, at Peking University.
The first land tenure workshop was hosted by Professor Jintao Xu, Peking University, and the objectives were to identify researchable topics, good research questions, testable hypotheses, and make a realistic plan for preparing the book chapters.
The research will focus on a range of impacts including welfare and natural resource management impacts. Potential research questions include: What are the poverty reduction effects of alternative land reform approaches? To what extent have the reforms enhanced growth and been pro-poor, e.g. benefited the landless, low-caste, and women? How can more socially optimal property rights regimes be defined for agricultural and forest land resources?
Countries to be studied are China, Vietnam, India, Nepal, The Philippines, Ethiopia, Malawi, Uganda, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.
Professor Jintao Xu participated in the workshop together with Senior Economist Simon McCoy, University of Copenhagen, Dr Gunnar Köhlin, University of Gothenburg and the two book editors Professors Keijiro Otsuka, Foundation for Advanced Studies on International Development (FASID)/National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) and Stein Holden, Norwegian University of Life Sciences.
The workshop was funded by the EfD initiative.Read the full Book Concept Note
By Karin Backteman