Environmental (in)justices of land leases in Ethiopia: Premises, promises, and lived realities

Abstract

Large-scale land deals are often accompanied with multiple premises and promises of local and extra-local significance. Several premises are put forward to justify land deals in terms of growth rationale, while the promises of livelihoods improvement are given to local people by government authorities and investment companies. In preparing land for sale or lease, premises and promises are often deployed during the process of ‘consultation’ with local people. This study conceives livelihood implications of any land lease as a cumulative outcome of changes in access to local resources, the extra-local opportunities that may come along with the investments, and the processes that led to the outcomes. It employs environmental justice as a theoretical framework, constituted of procedural justice concerning the processes and distributive justice relating to the outcomes. The study adopts a mixed-methods approach, combining qualitative and quantitative methods, and it critically examines the promises pledged by the government and investment companies on the one hand, and the realities lived by the local people on the other, while providing evidence of exclusion and adverse incorporation by illuminating unjust processes and outcomes of the land leases.