Abstract
Large-scale land acquisitions are a critical driver of global socio-environmental change, in particular in the Global South. This study aims to investigate drivers, impacts and feedbacks of environmental change in Kilombero Valley, Tanzania, a region in rapid societal and environmental transformation. We use land cover classifications to map and quantify land cover changes from 1990 to 2016, and compare these with local perceptions of change from fieldwork conducted in 2015 and 2016. The land change detection clearly shows farmland expansion over the wetlands, which is in line with local perceptions, but fails to detect changes in forest cover, which contradicts local perceptions that proclaim rapid deforestation over the past decade. In order to move towards more inclusive sustainable development, there is a need to break the power asymmetries between agribusinesses and local farmers. Our approach posits that policies of importing regions and countries where land is leased need to be strengthened to make sure that agribusinesses establish farms that are consistent with local and domestic needs. Such policies should not only be informed by assessments of environmental change, but also be guided by local knowledge, needs and future aspirations.
Highlights
Economic development through foreign agricultural investments is a major driver of land use and land cover (LULC) change, which in turn contributes to critical sustainability challenges due to its undesirable effects on the climate system, water resources, biodiversity and human welfare (Turner et al 2007; Lambin and Meyfroidt 2011)
In Johansson and Isgren (2017), social and environmental changes are depicted as paintings, and show, e.g. farmland and settlement expansion, deforestation, wetland degradation, decreased water quantity and quality in rivers and reduced fish and wildlife (Fig. 3)
People explain that the largest driver of environmental change is farmland expansion to the wetland area, both due to the establishment of large-scale rice plantation by Kilombero Plantations Limited (KPL) and population growth, which has caused a shift in smallscale farming areas and settlements towards the wetlands
Summary
Economic development through foreign agricultural investments is a major driver of land use and land cover (LULC) change, which in turn contributes to critical sustainability challenges due to its undesirable effects on the climate system, water resources, biodiversity and human welfare (Turner et al 2007; Lambin and Meyfroidt 2011). Socio-environmental changes in the context of large-scale land acquisitions are highly complex and associated with several sustainability challenges, like deforestation (Davis et al 2015), water scarcity and pollution (Dell’Angelo et al 2018), soil degradation (Lazarus 2014) and food insecurity (Havnevik et al 2011). The use of natural resources by foreign actors often leads to conflicts over land and water resources between local and non-local land users (Schoneveld 2014)
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