In Ethiopia, food security and integrated water resources management are closely related to access to land, tenure security and collective user rights. Major challenges to land governance are demand for land driven by the growing population, land fragmentation and the small size of land holdings in many areas, the pressure on natural resources, the weak institutional arrangements responsible for land governance and the policy to attract (foreign) direct inward investment in land. As landlessness in rural areas is widespread, rental markets have become important. In the past years, Ethiopia has made much progress with registration of user rights over farmland. Women’s rights over land are recognized during registration but require active facilitation. A source of controversy is the government policy to increase medium and large-scale leasing of land. It has lead local communities and farmers to lose access to land or to be displaced, which undermined their livelihood systems. These risks for local communities are reinforced by the lack of transparency which characterizes these transactions and weak land governance system put in place.