Campesino a Campesino tells the inspiring story of a true grassroots movement: poor peasant farmers teaching one another how to protect their environment while still earning a living. The first book in English about the farmer-led sustainable agriculture movement in Latin America, Campesino a Campesino includes lots of first-person stories and commentary from the farmer-teachers, mixing personal accounts with detailed analysis of the political, socioeconomic, and ecological factors that galvanized the movement. Campesino farmer leading a farmer to farmer training session in Mexico by Eric Holt-GimenezMany years ago, author Eric Holt-Gim�nez was a volunteer trying to teach sustainable agriculture techniques in the dusty highlands of central Mexico, with little success. Near the end of his tenure, he invited a group of visiting Guatemalan farmers to teach a course in his village. What he saw was like nothing he had known. The Guatemalans used parables, stories, and humor to present agricultural improvement to their Mexican compadres as a logical outcome of clear thinking and compassion; love of farming, of family, of nature, and of community. Rather than try to convince the Mexicans of their innovations, they insisted they experiment new things on a small scale first to see how well they worked. And they saw themselves as students, respecting the Mexicans' deep, lifelong knowledge of their own particular land and climate. All they asked in return was that the Mexicans turn around and share their new knowledge with others--which they did. CAC campo3_photo by Food FirstThis exchange was typical of a grassroots movement called Campesino a Campesino, or Farmer to Farmer, which has grown up in southern Mexico and war-torn Central America over the last three decades. In the book Campesino a Campesino, Holt-Gim�nez writes the first history of the movement, describing the social, political, economic, and environmental circumstances that shape it. The voices and stories of dozens of farmers in the movement are captured, bringing to vivid life this hopeful story of peasant farmers helping one another to farm sustainably, protecting their land, their environment, and their families' future.

During Latin America’s China-led commodity boom, governments turned a blind eye to the inherent flaws in the region’s economic policy. Now that the commodity boom is coming to an end, those flaws cannot be ignored. High on the list of shortcomings is the fact that Latin American governments—and Chinese investors—largely fell short of mitigating the social and environmental impacts of commodity-led growth. The recent commodity boom exacerbated pressure on the region’s waterways and forests, accentuating threats to human health, biodiversity, global climate change and local livelihoods. China and Sustainable Development in Latin America documents the social and environmental impact of the China-led commodity boom in the region. It also highlights important areas of innovation, like Chile’s solar energy sector, in which governments, communities and investors worked together to harness the commodity boom for the benefit of the people and the planet.

This is the second volume of a series on current processes of land tenure change in Latin America. It aims at clarifying the relationship between land and sustainable livelihood in various countries: Mexico, Nicaragua, Chile, Bolivia and Peru. The first volume "Current land policy in Latin America" describes the shift away from the redistributive policies. This volume analyzes in detail the implications of changing land tenure regimes for land use (agricultural production, environmental sustainability) and the income generating capacity of farmers (is greater access to land still a way out of poverty?). Also the consequences for the non-material aspects of life (e.g., prestige, identity, social relations, etc.) are included. By focusing on the goals and priorities of rural households, rather than on policy goals, an attempt is made to provide an insider's view of rural life. Irrespective of whether policy makers aim at liberalizing land markets or other goals, farmers respond in their own way to the changing situation. Land is a necessary element of life, even in those cases where it no longer plays a crucial role in terms of income generation. Given the current changes in rural life (farmers are having to cope with multifunctional, and often transnational, spaces, as well as neo-liberal production environments and neo-liberal land policy), it is time to make a conceptual update of the land issue. This volume will inspire policy makers to formulate a new land policy, one that does greater justice to the diversity and dynamics of rural life, and make them more aware of the multifunctionality of land and livelihood.

In large Latin American cities the number of dwellings in informal settlements ranges from one-tenth to one-third of urban residences. These informal settlements are caused by low income, unrealistic urban planning, lack of serviced land, lack of social housing, and a dysfunctional legal system. The settlements develop over time and some have existed for decades, often becoming part of the regular development of the city, and therefore gaining rights, although usually lacking formal titles. Whether they are established on public or private land, they develop irregularly and often do not have critical public services such as sanitation, resulting in health and environmental hazards. In this report from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, author Edesio Fernandes, a lawyer and urban planner from Latin America, studies the options for regularization of the informal settlements. Regularization is looked at through established programs in both Peru and Brazil, in an attempt to bring these settlements much needed balance and improvement. In Peru, based on Hernando de Soto's theory that tenure security triggers development and increases property value, from 1996 to 2006, 1.5 million freehold titles were issued at a cost of $64 per household. This did result in an increase of property values by about 25 percent, making the program cost effective. Brazil took a much broader and more costly approach to regularization by not only titling the land, but improving public services, job creation, and community support structures. This program in Brazil has had a cost of between $3,500 to $5,000 per household and has affected a much lower percent of the population. The report offers recommendations for improving regularization policy and identifies issues that must be addressed, such as collecting data with baseline figures to get a true evaluation of the benefit of programs established. Also, it shows that each individual informal settlement must have a customized plan, as a single approach will not work for each settlement. There is a need to include both genders for long-term effectiveness and to find ways to make the regularization self-sustaining financially. Any program must be closely monitored to insure the conditions are improved for the marginalized, as well as be sure it is not causing new informal settlements to be established.

This open access book outlines development theory and practice overtime as well as critically interrogates the “cultural turn” in development policy in Latin American indigenous communities, specifically, in Guatemala, Honduras, Ecuador, and Bolivia. It becomes apparent that culturally sustainable development is both a new and old idea, which is simultaneously traditional and modern, and that it is a necessary iteration in thinking on development. This new strain of thought could inform not only the work of development practitioners, graduate students, and theorists working in the Global South, but in the Global North as well.