Millennium Development Goal Number Seven is particularly concerned with the safeguarding and provision of freshwater resources to all human.beings; this is a major challenge – and perhaps even the main challenge – for all the world’s drylands.

Although ancestral rights to land are a cornerstone of the livelihoods of indigenous peoples, few countries have been ready to undertake their recognition.

The aim of this study is to analyse modes of access to land and agreements regulating the exchange of plots between families and between villages.

The papers contained in this issue have been selected from those presented at a series of workshops, held in 2002 in Hungary, Uganda, Mexico and Cambodia, that were organized by the World Bank jointly with the Department for International Development (DFID), the French Ministry for Foreign Affair

Land Tenure Service (SDAA) of the Rural Development Division embarked on the preparation of a land tenure "Thesaurus", mainly covering the following sectors: legal, institutional, historical, description of space, traditional or written land tenure regulations, topographical, land management, as