Abstract
Abstract: In the context of globalization, market liberalization, and deregulation, many African governments are embracing the potential of private agricultural investment to address structural issues within their agricultural economies. Sustainably integrating these investments into target landscapes, however, poses a number of governance challenges since it requires careful reconciliation of competing needs, priorities, and land uses. This paper examines the effectiveness of existing policy arrangements in managing these conflicts within two environmentally significant investment landscapes, the ObanKorup Forest -Block, Nigeria, and Lower BaroAkobo River Basin, Ethiopia. Findings reveal that -investments tend to conflict with socially and environmentally valuable l and uses, largely as a result of institutional failings. The paper identifies a number of underlying institutional challenges that need to be addressed in order to achieve sustainable development objectives within Africa’s many emerging investment landscapes. Findings have relevance for the development of sustainable landscape governance systems and the alignment of global governance innovations with landscape -level policy arrangements.
Highlights
Since the 2007–2008 food and energy price crisis, favorable conditions within soft commodity markets and an increasing imperative to control upstream value chain activities to minimize exposure to Forests 2015, 6 global price shocks has stimulated new investments in the cultivation of cash crops [1,2]
This paper applies the policy arrangement approach (PAA) as an analytical tool for assessing how well investment landscapes are governed in line with sustainable landscape objectives
Even though district governments have been assigned important land management functions under Nigeria’s land reform, because substantial rents can be captured through the land acquisition and allocation process, these functions have become concentrated within state government, causing many key investment districts in Cross River State (CRS) to close down their land management departments
Summary
Since the 2007–2008 food and energy price crisis, favorable conditions within soft commodity markets and an increasing imperative to control upstream value chain activities to minimize exposure to Forests 2015, 6 global price shocks has stimulated new investments in the cultivation of cash crops [1,2]. Due to insecure property rights, the abundance of inadequately protected high conservation value ecosystems, comparatively weak societal embeddedness of the state, and limited domestic planning capacity [2,10], early evidence is suggesting that most new agricultural investments in Africa compete with existing land uses, leading to displacement and dispossession, disruptions to traditional systems of production, and conversion of environmentally significant landscapes [11] These negative sustainability outcomes are largely a product of poor governance [2,6,11]. Structural institutional challenges and a conclusion on the implications of findings for the sustainable development governance debate
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