In 2014 the Centre for Land Tenure Studies (CLTS) engaged in activities related to seminars, participation and presentation in conferences, publication of CLTS working papers and reports, publication in international journal and research.
This year CLTS has extended its agreement with UN-Habitat on the project with the title "Research on Land Access and Youth Livelihood Opportunities in Southern Ethiopia" until 31st of March 2015.
A new pilot project on “Land rental markets and agricultural transformation in Norwegian agriculture” was started with some basic funding from Tverrforsk at NMBU. This project continues in 2015 and makes detailed studies in three Norwegian municipalities. It is hoped that the project will provide the basis for a larger project with external funding. Three departments at NMBU are involved in the project. The project “Joint Land Certification and Household Land Allocation: Towards Empowerment or Marginalization?” funded by FRISAM under the Research Council of Norway was coming to an end in 2014. The project has resulted in a number of presentations, working papers and publication of journal papers is still ongoing.
The course EDS280 Land Rights: An Introduction and Theory, Applications, and Policy that was given jointly by three departments at NMBU – Noragric, Economics and Business, and Landscape Architecture and Spatial Planning was given for the last time in January 2014. In 2015 it is replaced by the course EIE280 Land Rights: An Introduction to Theory, Applications, and Policy. CLTS continued organizing internal Seminar Series that were launched in 2013. This year four seminars that shed a light on the topics of property right regimes, land degradation, and agrarian reform have been organized.
With respect to its own publications series, thirteen new working papers were written in 2014. CLTS has also published ten journal papers in such journals as Food Policy, World Development, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, etc. In addition, members of CLTS, namely Sosina Bezu and Stein Holden, have presented background material and supporting information relevant to land tenure studies in the report with title “Rural-urban Youth Migration and Informal Self-Employment in Ethiopia” written for UN-Habitat.