The papers are organised in three parts: Access to Land and Agrarian Class Differentiation; Land Transaction; Natural Resource Management, Policy, and Economic Return. Eight papers are presented, including the welcome and opening statements and the confer

This book is a social—ecological system description and feedback analysis of the Lake Tana Basin, the headwater catchment of the Upper Blue Nile River. This basin is an important local, national, and international resource, and concern about its sustainable development is growing at many levels. Lake Tana Basin outflows of water, sediments, nutrients, and contaminants affect water that flows downstream in the Blue Nile across international boundaries into the Nile River; the lake and surrounding land have recently been proposed as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve; the basin has been designated as a key national economic growth corridor in the Ethiopian Growth and Transformation Plan. In spite of the Lake Tana Basin’s importance, there is no comprehensive, integrated, system-wide description of its characteristics and dynamics that can serve as a basis for its sustainable development. This book presents both the social and ecological characteristics of the region and an integrated, system-wide perspective of the feedback links that shape social and ecological change in the basin. Finally, it summarizes key research needs for sustainable development.

Policymakers and technology development institutions have mostly focused on high-potential farming areas, which have better resource endowments and greater access to markets and infrastructure than less-favored areas. However, in developing nations more than one billion people live in less-favored areas, where, despite disadvantages, appropriate policies and programs can generate high returns and contribute significantly to poverty reduction. IFPRI and its partners' research in the highlands of Ethiopia shows how poverty and land degradation can be reduced in a less-favored area. Using a bioeconomic model to analyze the effects that land degradation, population growth, stagnant technology, market imperfections, and increased risk of drought have on household production, welfare, and food security, the report gauges how alternative policy choices affect poverty and land degradation. According to the study, land quality and household welfare are both in peril in the Ethiopian highlands.The population in the region could suffer devastating effects if proper policies are not put in place. The bioeconomic modeling approach used in this study can be usefully adapted and applied in many other settings and at larger spatial and socioeconomic scales.