Managing Territories, Cities, and the Rural World

Securing the access rights of the many millions of households who rely on common property for their livelihoods is one of today’s biggest challenges facing poverty reduction efforts in rural areas. The commons fulfill religious, cultural and environmental functions, and are of particular importance for securing the livelihoods of poorer members of society, including women and the landless. Recent studies have also demonstrated that although significant levels of national income are derived from the commons, they are rarely recognized in national accounting.

The drive towards individual ownership of land, occurring in all regions of the globe, means that large tracts of historically commonly-held land are becoming privatized. This benefits the tenure security of a privileged few who are able to privatize land in their name, but it generally results in the dispossession of large numbers of poorer land users who previously had access to these resources.