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This study assesses the impact of insecure land tenure on sustainable agricultural development in Africa to demonstrate how the economic profitability of agriculture strongly depends on land tenure security. The Republic of Benin is used as the case study following the country’s recent enactment of land law 2013-01 that focuses on reorganizing the land sector, which has suffered from inappropriate management since the colonial era. Through an interview survey among landowners and presumed owners combined with standardized observations in designated rural areas, issues related to the use and management of rural lands in the Republic of Benin are highlighted and discussed. The result demonstrates that agricultural economic profitability strongly depends on land tenure security. The outcome reveals land security as a key factor for sustainable agriculture toward poverty reduction and confirms the unbreakable link between land tenure security, agricultural production, and sustainable development.

Market-oriented transfers of collectively owned rural land in Vietnam are pivotal for advancing rural development, enhancing agricultural productivity, and fostering socioeconomic progress. This study examines the challenges and opportunities associated with these transfers within Vietnam’s unique socio-political context. Despite significant changes since the implementation of the Đổi Mới economic policies in 1986, Vietnam continues to face obstacles such as land tenure insecurity, corruption in land administration, and socioeconomic disparities that limit access to land markets for lower-income farmers. Using a mixed-methods approach, the research integrates quantitative data from land transfer records and economic statistics with qualitative insights from interviews and focus group discussions conducted in the Red River Delta, Mekong Delta, and Central Highlands. Econometric models assess the impacts of land market activities on various economic indicators, while thematic analysis explores governance issues, tenure rights, and the socioeconomic consequences of land use. Econometric analysis revealed that land market activities significantly improved agricultural productivity, increased rural incomes, and stimulated investment, although risks of land concentration and rising rural inequalities persist. Findings indicate that while market-oriented land transfers can enhance agricultural production and stimulate rural investment, issues of land concentration and the potential exacerbation of rural inequalities persist. Environmental concerns, such as the risk of land over-exploitation leading to degradation, are also significant. These results underscore the imperative for Vietnam to implement reforms within its specific context. Comparative experiences from countries like China and Rwanda highlight that land fragmentation and social imbalance can emerge as detrimental consequences if not properly managed. Policy recommendations emphasize strengthening property rights, combating corruption through increased transparency and institutional safeguards, ensuring equitable access to land markets for smallholder farmers, and promoting sustainable land resource utilization. Enhancing institutional capacity and engaging international stakeholders are identified as crucial elements for effective policy implementation. In conclusion, careful and participatory policy formulation, along with effective execution, is essential for Vietnam to leverage the benefits of market-oriented land transfers while mitigating associated risks. Addressing the identified challenges can lead to a robust rural land system that supports agricultural productivity, promotes social equity, and protects the environment, ultimately contributing to the nation’s overall development. Future research should monitor the long-term impacts of these reforms on livelihoods, social dynamics, and the environment to inform ongoing policy refinement.

Insecure land tenure plagues many developing and tropical regions, often where conservation concerns are highest. Conservation organizations have long focused on protected areas as tenure interventions, but are now thinking more comprehensively about whether and how to incorporate other land tenure strategies into their work, and how to more soundly ground such interventions on evidence of both conservation and human benefits. Through a review of the literature on land tenure security as it relates to conservation practice, predominantly in the tropics, we aim to help conservation practitioners consider and incorporate more appropriate land tenure security interventions into conservation strategies. We present a framework that identifies three common ways in which land tenure security can impact human and conservation outcomes, and suggest practical ways to distill tenure and tenure security issues for a given location. We conclude with steps for considering tenure security issues in the context of conservation projects and identify areas for future research.

This paper reviews the scholarly literature discussing the effect(s) of land registration on the relations between land tenure security and agricultural productivity. Using 85 studies, the paper focuses on the regular claim that land registration’s facilitation of formal documents-based land dealings leads to investment in a more productive agriculture. The paper shows that this claim is problematic for three reasons. First, most studies offer no empirical evidence to support the claim on the above-mentioned effect. Second, there are suggestions that land registration can actually threaten ‘de facto’ tenure security or even lead to insecurity of tenure. Third, the gendered realization of land registration and security may lead to uneven distribution of costs and benefits, but these effects are often ignored. Next to suggesting the importance of land information updating and the efficiency of local land management institutions, this paper also finds that more research with a combined locally-set approach is needed to better understand any relation(s) between land tenure security and agricultural productivity.

Cultivated land planting structure is directly related to China’s food security. The Central Rural Work Conference in 2021 pointed out that to ensure food security, attention should be paid to the adjustment of planting structure. Therefore, it is necessary to explore whether land tenure security has an impact on farmers’ cultivated land non-grain behavior. Based on the micro survey data of 550 farmers in the Guanzhong Plain, this paper explores the impact of land tenure security on farmers’ cultivated land non-grain behavior with the help of the OLS model and the Binary Probit model, and further explores its internal transmission mechanism through the mediation effect model. It is found that land tenure security significantly promotes farmers’ cultivated land non-grain behavior. After replacing model estimation, core variables for robustness tests, and solving endogeneity problems, the research conclusion is still valid. The analysis of the influence mechanism shows that land tenure security affects farmers’ cultivated land non-grain behavior by increasing land transfer and agricultural productive investment. Among them, agricultural productive investment has the greatest impact, followed by land transfer. In addition, the study also found that land tenure security can promote their cultivated land non-grain behavior by strengthening their credit availability for farmers with low fragmentation. Heterogeneity analysis results show that off-farm employment and social services can effectively alleviate the impact of land tenure security on farmers’ cultivated land non-grain behavior. This paper provides a new research perspective for analyzing the incentives of cultivated land non-grain from the micro-mechanism. At the same time, it revealed the inner root of the government’s predicament in the governance of cultivated land non-grain. It provided a new reference for the government to formulate new policies for managing non-grained cultivated land.

Land degradation neutrality (LDN), introduced by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, seeks to balance ongoing land degradation with restoration efforts to maintain ecosystem function and productivity. However, achieving LDN targets remains challenging without responsible land tenure governance. Secure and equitable tenure is fundamental to incentivizing sustainable land management, yet governance gaps remain a major barrier. The Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure (VGGT), which provide internationally recognized principles for secure and equitable land tenure, support the realization of LDN by promoting tenure security, especially for marginalized groups, and directly support Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 15.3, which aspires to a land degradation‐neutral world by 2030. Despite these synergies, the relationship between tenure security and sustainable land management for achieving LDN is still underexplored. This study addresses the gap by synthesizing global and regional literature and developing a holistic conceptual framework linking land governance and LDN. A systematic review was conducted using the PRISMA 2020 guidelines, covering publications from 2006 to 2024 and with the literature search carried out from the beginning of March to mid‐April 2025, primarily sourced from Wiley Online Library, Taylor & Francis, Scopus, Web of Science, ScienceDirect, FAO, and other sources. From 98 identified publications, 31 were selected as relevant. Trend analysis shows an increasing focus on tenure security for LDN, particularly from 2017 to 2022, reflecting growing recognition of governance as a critical factor. However, weak institutional capacity and lack of context‐specific policy adaptation continue to undermine progress, especially in developing countries. The proposed framework is structured around three interlinked pillars: legal clarity, institutional capacity, and participatory frameworks that collectively strengthen tenure security and support LDN outcomes. This study contributes to international discourse by linking land governance and environmental sustainability and underscores the need for locally grounded, interdisciplinary approaches to achieve LDN. This research contributes to international knowledge by bridging land governance and environmental sustainability discourses and calls for future efforts to ground policy in local realities and strengthen interdisciplinary collaboration to support effective LDN strategies.

Government is the custodian of the most critical (and limited) factor of production, namely, land. Assuring the security of tenure, arbitrating disputes, and facilitating the transfer or sales of titles renders the land market more efficient and less volatile, attracting investors and promoting sustainable urban development. Land tenure security is also a critical government service that has repercussions on agricultural productivity, housing development, business investment, and the development of urban areas. However, land administration is mired in corruptive practices, elite capture, and inefficient allocation. Globally, only 24% of rural areas are mapped (46 in urban areas), with approximately the same percentage registered, that is, 22%. In Africa, only about 14% of rural land is formally recorded in a public register. Land tenure security can take a variety of forms depending on national regulatory frameworks that allocate land and specify its use. Success stories include transferable user certificates in China and individual land titles in Rwanda. Systematic evaluation of the evidence on tenure programs demonstrates that improved tenure security increases agricultural output (40% on average), increases urban land values (25% on average), and increases household welfare (15% on average). Other observed country-specific benefits include additional years of schooling, better academic performance, access to credit, reforestation, and improved household nutrition. The costs of establishing tenure security in Sub-Saharan Africa include the separate costs of rural (US$ 3 billion) and urban (US$ 2.2 billion) land registration; the cost of digitizing land registries and information to improve efficiency and transparency (US$ 880 million), the cost of strengthening institutions and systems to resolve land disputes and manage expropriations (US$ 960 million) over a ten-year implementation period, and land administration operations and land records maintenance over 30 years (US$ 64 billion). The net present value (8%) of costs is US$ 21.7 billion for rural land tenure and US$ 5.3 billion for urban areas. The benefits of rural land registration were based on the observed 15% household wealth effect noted in the literature. The net present value (8%) of a 30-year benefits stream is US$ 396 billion. The benefit–cost ratio of completing and modernizing land registration and improving land administration coverage and effectiveness in rural Sub-Saharan Africa is 18. The benefits of urban land registration were based on the average 25% increase in property values observed in the literature. Using housing prices for the 20 largest, Sub-Saharan African countries, the net present value (8%) of the benefits over a 30-year period is US$ 237 billion, yielding a benefit–cost ratio of 45 when the average housing price is used. When the population-weighted housing price is used, benefits are valued at US$ 160 billion, yielding a benefit–cost ratio of 30.

The linkage between land tenure security and land quality improvement investment is crucial given that the land tenure security system is a widely applied policy tool for the protection of cultivation land in developing countries. Drawing on the triple land tenure security framework, this paper examines the impact of the de jure and the de facto land tenure security on farming households’ decisions about using organic fertilizer on their plots in China, based on a national survey dataset covering 2308 plots matched with 962 farming households across 8 provinces in China (Shangdong, Shangxi, Jilin, Zhejiang, Henan, Gansu, Hunan, and Sichuan) from January to July 2013. The empirical results show that the de facto land tenure security affected the use of organic fertilizer by the farming households positively. In comparison, the impact of the de jure land tenure security on the use of organic fertilizer by farming households was modest. It is suggested that the government should implement the policies effectively to promote de jure land tenure security and encourage farming households to make sustainable land investment.

The potential of spatial justice to promote land tenure security has not fully been ascertained in the existing literature. Yet, it is argued that spatial justice embeddedness in rules and processes of urban (re)development promotes integration of all urban dwellers in the urban fabric and enhances their security of tenure. This study builds upon this promise to ascertain how the pursuit of spatial justice alongside the urban space (re)development can result in the increased security of tenure for the poor and low-income urban dwellers. Through the meta-synthesis of studies on spatial justice and land tenure security, and the implementation of the inclusive urban (re)development schemes in Recife, Brazil, we derived four aspects of spatial justice: epistemological, ideological, axiological and material. The pursuit of these aspects in the management of Recife city has concomitantly advanced the perceived and de facto tenure security for the poor and low-income urban dwellers who live in the informal settlements (favelas). The axiological and material aspects are directly connected to tenure security which has been spurred by the emancipation movement claiming for changes in urban management. This emancipation movement corresponds to the ideological aspect of spatial justice which influenced the passage of new urban (re)development schemes that recognise the rights to land and housing and basic urban amenities for all categories of urban dwellers. The adoption of these schemes which recognise these rights, the participation of the poor and low-income groups in crafting and implementing the urban (re)development plans, and the integration of the favelas in the city are the main patterns of spatial justice relating to the axiological and material aspects from which tenure security emerged. This study concludes that the pursuit of spatial justice encounters the exclusive urban (re)development rules and processes which threaten security of tenure emerging from conventional approaches embedded in social norms, political institutions, and land registration processes which are generally acclaimed to protect the individuals’ property rights. This makes spatial justice a substantial driver of tenure security for all urban dwellers, especially the poor and low-income dwellers.