1. Project Name: Symposium on State of Art in Transnational Pressure on Land (TPL) and Food Security in South Asia
Duration: End of March 2013
Client: Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR North- South)
Major Sector: Land acquisition, food security, local responses
Area overage: South Asia

Program Description
There are huge debate on growing Land Acquisition (LA) nationally and globally and its effect and impacts. According to latest research of International Land Coalition (ILC), between 2000 to 2010, around 203 million hectares of land was grabbed worldwide. These transnational controls on land drives land use changes resulting ever pressure on domestic land resources. In addition, the capture or shift in control goes beyond land resources as they also use and needs other natural resources like water, forest etc. Many studies argue that effects of land acquisition can be seen in form of landlessness, increased poverty, and land conflicts in the society. Thus, these land grabbing has many delicate linkages on land use change, tenure system (ownership), food security and sovereignty, indigenous culture and tradition, local resource use pattern, landless (poverty) etc.
As South Asia is the continent of both developed and lease develop countries where it shares world’s largest and most populous regions, this region holds significance from the impacts of global land acquisitions. It is also one of the important regions in terms of food insecurity, agricultural dependency, poverty, rapidly growing urban centres and farmers struggles and resistance especially for land issues. Discourses on rising land acquisition and food security nexus have seriously raised the issue of local level food security. However, there is lack of comprehensive information and need to develop a benchmark (or at least the state of the art) on the issue of transnational pressure on land and its effect on food security.

In this scenario, Consortium for Land Research and Policy Dialogue (COLARP) and National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) North-South as a part of research collaboration are interested to document the state of the art in transnational land pressure in South Asia and therefore planning to organize a South-Asia level symposium on the issue of Transnational Pressure on Land with especial reference to food security. The symposium will focused on bringing empirical cases from both nationally and internationally for collective reflection and learning. Further, it will prioritize the scientific/academic community and their research findings for informed policy decisions. (For detail please see concept note and table of contents )

Final South Asia Symposium

Final Table of Content of Food Security

2. Project Name: Pro-Poor Land Governance for Nepal
Location: Nepal
Client: International Land Coalition
Major Sector/ Sub Sector: Land governance
Area Coverage: Five development Regions

Project Description: The overall goal is to understand and discuss issues, challenges and gaps of pro-poor land governance in Nepal among academics/researchers, policy makers and practitioners in jointly initiating policy debate for suggesting pro-poor land governance in Nepal. Specific objectives are: to identify and examine issues, challenges and gaps in pro-poor land governance of Nepal; to discuss the issues of land governance among academicians, policy makers and practitioners to bridge the gap among them towards pro-poor land governance; and to initiate and foster joint learning among these stakeholders for devising pro-poor land governance for its sustainability and accountability in the country. The major thrust of the proposal is to generate, analyze, synthesize and disseminate knowledge on how pro-poor land governance can contribute to equitable development and poverty alleviation in Nepal. It would also be pioneer contribution to bridge the gap by making existing knowledge accessible, filling the knowledge gap, and update the policy agency with innovation on pro-poor land governance in Nepal. The key activities are: i) action research on pro-poor land governance; ii) policy debate and dialogue/policy influencing activities for social learning and common understanding; and iii) devising pro-poor land governance.  Based on research findings and social learning and insights gained from this, 'Innovative pro-poor land governance' will be devised and published through the peer review process. During entire process, diverse range of stakeholders such as academician, researchers and practitioners will be actively engaged and thus it imparts/enhances ownership, accountability and sustainability of project output/outcomes.

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