Foreign Land Acquisitions Research Articles

Land Grabbing and Development: The Case of Ethiopia

Since African decolonization and independence, foreign land acquisitions for agriculture have surged in Sub-Saharan Africa, notably transforming agricultural production. This “land grabbing” phenomenon is particularly pronounced in the Horn of Africa, especially Ethiopia. This study assesses the impact of land grabbing on Ethiopia’s development, targeting economic, environmental, and quality of life dimensions. Development is viewed as multifaceted, spanning beyond merely economic aspects. The research delves into the land-grabbing phenomenon in Sub-Saharan Africa and Ethiopia, focusing on policy and legal frameworks for large-scale commercial agriculture. It then explores the effects of large-scale land acquisition on Ethiopia’s development in terms of economy, environment, and quality of life. The analysis reveals that land grabbing profoundly affects Ethiopia’s development. Although some economic benefits exist, the negatives like environmental degradation and food insecurity greatly outweigh the positives. Consequently, the study advises prioritizing alternatives and strategies favoring Ethiopia’s economic development and people’s well-being.

Property Institutions and State Capacity: A Comparative Analysis of Chinese Agricultural Projects in Zambia

A long-standing literature argues that African states have weak capacity, especially in regulating land. Increasingly, scholarly work on foreign land acquisition in developing countries recognizes that the African states and subnational actors have played an important and diverse role in (re)structuring access and control over land and natural resources. I contribute to this scholarship by focusing on the role of African property institutions and propose a land tenure regime theory as the mechanism through which foreign agricultural projects and African state capacity interact. By process-tracing three Chinese agricultural projects in Zambia as typical cases, I show that Zambian state structures investment strategies of Chinese investors through different configurations of rule of land access, transfer and control in each LTR. Furthermore, Zambian state capacity in enforcing contract and projecting infrastructural power can be reinforced or tested through investing CAgriIs in different LTRs. My findings challenge the ‘weak state’ argument and raise important questions of how African governments should approach rural development on customary land.

Racial Geographies of Land and Domestic Service in Panama

Foreign land control and Afro-Panamanian women domestics are mutually constituted and embedded in tourism development in Panama. In this article, I center the racial and patriarchal logics of dispossession informing land control, a process that connects twenty-first-century residential tourism development to twentieth-century U.S. imperial formations in the making of the Panama Canal. My approach blends ethnographic research with historical data collection, newspapers, and development-related policy documents drawn across a variety of research sites in Panama, Spain, and North America. To begin, I briefly trace the contemporary context of tourism-induced land dispossession and the growing tenure insecurities for Afro-Panamanian communities living on the shores of the Panamanian Caribbean. Here I show how residential tourism development reproduces settler colonial landscapes. Further, I place in conversation the concepts of postcolonial intersectionality and cuerpo-territorio (Cabnal 2015) to illustrate how land control and domestic service are interconnected, punctuating how land is not the only site of colonial governance. I then historicize tourism in Panama through tracing the discursive narratives of imperial formations in the early period of U.S. empire and the construction of the Panama Canal. I trace elite travel narratives, newspapers, and memoirs to link the racialized labor regimes of the Canal to the domestic spaces of the Canal Zone. Finally, I argue that foreign land acquisitions and domestic service are inextricably entangled in tourism development across time and space in Panama.

“A Fossilized Utopia”? Debates over Foreign Landownership and Development in Haiti, 1830s–1870s

Haiti’s constitutional article protecting against foreign land acquisition sparked infamy and controversy in the nineteenth century. In self-interested and racist terms, foreign capitalists and politicians condemned the article as if it were anomalous, an unnecessary vestige of the revolution, backward, or even monstrous. This essay considers a strain of Haitian liberalism that also advocated eliminating the protection, especially after coffee prices declined in the 1830s. However, steadfast popular opinion sustained the article through various constitutions. This protectionist conviction spurred multiple anticolonial mobilizations, reaching a peak in the late 1860s and early 1870s, when activists across the island organized against potential US annexation of the east and coaling stations in the west, and in favor of Cuban and Puerto Rican independence. These contests over protection offer a prehistory to Liberal and National Party debates in the 1880s, as well as the roots of Caribbean federation independence plans.

The impact of foreign land acquisitions on Africa virtual water exports

Do Foreign Land Acquisitions (FLA) in Africa increase the use of water? This paper provides empirical evidence about the impact of FLA on the water content of goods exported from African countries. A dynamic panel gravity-like equation is estimated to explain the pattern of African agri-food exports, of total Virtual Water exports, and of the green and blue Virtual Water components. Results suggest that FLA in African countries increase exports and that, by changing the composition of traded products, they imply an increase in overall water consumption both green and blue. However, a differentiated pattern emerges depending upon the origin of the investing firm. While investments coming from North and South America tend not to affect the water content of African exports, this is not the case for FLA from other parts of the world.

Foreign land acquisitions and environmental regulations: Does the pollution‐haven effect hold?

AbstractThe recent wave of foreign land acquisitions (FLA) has raised several concerns in terms of their environmental and social sustainability. An unexplored issue is whether pollution‐haven mechanisms are driving the pattern of FLA. This paper investigates whether and how differences in environmental stringency between investing and target country affect the pattern of FLA. We estimate a panel gravity equation and use different indexes to measure the environmental stringency. Our results show that, by and large, differences in environmental stringency do affect FLA. The wider the gap in the environmental stringency between the investor and the target country, the higher is the number of firms investing abroad. Our results also show that the impact of environmental stringency differentials on FLA depends on the investor country and on corruption in the target country, and that in a number of estimations the choice over the index of stringency may be a relevant factor.

Us and them. Is the COVID-19 pandemic a driver for xenophobia in land transactions in Romania?

COVID-19 is a humanitarian challenge that puts a spotlight on the need to understand the new provocations and how to prevent the escalation of different types of conflict. The present contribution gravitates around three major problems – foreign land grab, COVID-19 pandemic, and xenophobia. To the authors’ best knowledge, this is the first study that investigates how COVID-19 has influenced the xenophobia feelings and the perceptions on foreign land acquisitions. Therefore, one objective is to investigate Romanian landowners’ attitudes toward land grabbing effects, consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, and xenophobia. Another objective is to reveal how well a set of variables could predict the preference for the nationality of the buyer in land transactions. The binary logistic regression indicates that the preference for the nationality of the buyer in agricultural land transactions can be predicted by three variables. The effect of COVID-19 on population health is found to have a significant prediction power. Even if only a moderate to low level of xenophobia among the interviewed persons is present, when land is under discussion, negative judgments and feelings towards non-Romanian citizens emerge. Authors consider that correcting misperceptions can be achieved through information campaigns using messages that reinforce positives outcomes of foreign investments. The study provides empirical justification for regulations, law enforcement mechanisms, and information campaigns that should profoundly reflect and support the multicultural dynamics of the European societies.

The impact of multinational enterprises on community informal institutions and rural poverty

Multinational enterprise (MNE) investments in developing countries can induce a range of positive and negative impacts on host economies; the international business literature has tended to emphasize the former. Drawing from research on community informal institutions and institutional ecology, we explore the potential negative impacts of MNE investments on rural areas of developing countries. Specifically, we examine the impacts of foreign MNE land acquisitions for natural-resource-seeking purposes on the rural population by studying rural communities and their informal institutions. We find that land acquisitions by foreign MNEs weaken community informal institutions and, as a consequence, exacerbate rural poverty. Our research adds to the literature on the negative impact of MNE investments and provides additional perspectives on the role of informal institutions and institutional theory more broadly.

Water Resources as Determinants for Foreign Direct Investments in Land - A Gravity Analysis of Foreign Land Acquisitions

Worldwide increasing demand for agricultural products poses the critical question of where this additional production will take place. In this context, the phenomenon of large scale Foreign Land Acquisition (FLA) is one strategy that has been controversially discussed in scientific and public debates. A better understanding of what factors drive FLA-flows between investor and target countries is still needed. This project applies a gravity model to estimate the effect of agro-environmental determinants in target countries. The response variables are derived from improved data obtained from the Land Matrix Global Observatory and the explanatory variables from a range of climatic and agricultural data sets. The issue of large numbers of zero flows in such a data set is tackled using zero-inflating regression models. Overall the results highlight the crucial role of water resources, in particular the potential of rainfed crop production in the targeted areas, and not just land abundance alone as found in previous studies. Moreover, in line with previous studies, we show that in contrast to other types of investment flows, agricultural investment flows are not negatively affected by weaker institutional regulations or corruption.

Repercussions of Chinese land deals in South America: vectors of mobilization and domestic institutions

ABSTRACT Introduction: The article analyses domestic reactions to Chinese land deals in Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia, and how such attempts have affected these countries’ regulatory framework for foreign land acquisitions. Materials and Methods: Mobilizations against these deals are examined with focus on their internal composition of social forces, and the framings which they produce in order to press for regulatory restrictions. Results: The emergence of protest in Argentina and Brazil, relative to the lack of opposition in Bolivia, is explained through a most similar case design, emphasizing differences in the rural socio-economic structure and composition of capital within the agricultural sector as central explanatory factors, accounting for the variation of the outcome in the cases examined. Discussion: With point of departure in the debate about global land investment, the article contributes to understanding how foreign investment is accommodated within different modes of commodity dependent development.

Transparency in Foreign Land Acquisitions: The role of institutions and information

AbstractMotivationForeign land acquisitions (FLA) is a hot issue in development policy, but empirical work is scant, mostly because of the lack of official and consistent cross‐country data. Although transparency is a necessary ingredient to avoid FLA’s most negative effects, no articles currently address this issue.PurposeWe examine transparency in the release of information on FLA by (a) measuring the degree of government transparency; (b) exploring the extent to which transparency depends upon democratic and governance features; and (c) discussing how the dissemination of information by non‐state actors can positively affect data disclosure.Approach and methodsFirst, we check the information source (including companies, non‐government organizations (NGOs) and research) and then compute an original index of transparency and the free flow of information on FLA for 78 countries. Finally, we discuss the relationship between transparency, free flow of information on FLA and political and institutional variables in the host country.FindingsWith regional variations, institutional quality, democracy and the free flow of information overall are positively related to government transparency on FLA. Countries with a higher degree of information disseminated by non‐state actors tend to have higher data disclosure on FLA. The system of land governance contributes to explaining counter‐intuitive behaviour at the country level.Policy implicationsThe role of NGOs, research institutions and companies in providing information on FLA can contribute to improving government transparency. Researchers and activists emerge as important agents of change, especially when civil and political rights are restricted and local communities disempowered. Activists can help research on land governance by collecting data; the data disseminated by researchers can affect government transparency and improve land governance and development.

How Far Does the European Union Reach? Foreign Land Acquisitions and the Boundaries of Political Communities

The recent global surge in large-scale foreign land acquisitions marks a radical transformation of the global economic and political landscape. Since land that attracts capital often becomes the site of expulsions and displacement, it also leads to new forms of migration. In this paper, I explore this connection from the perspective of a political philosopher. I argue that changes in global land governance unsettle the congruence of political community and bounded territory that we often take for granted. As a case study, I discuss the European Union’s Renewable Energy Directive as a significant driver of foreign land acquisitions. Using its global power, the European Union (EU) is effectively governing land far outside of its international borders and with it the people who live on this land or are expelled from it. As a result, EU citizens ought to consider such people fellow members of their political community. This has implications for normative debates about immigration and, in particular, for arguments that appeal to collective self-determination to justify a right of political communities to exclude newcomers. The political community to which EU citizens belong reaches far beyond the EU’s official borders.

Foreign Land Acquisitions and Institutional Distance

This paper investigates whether and how the distance in institutional quality between investing and target country affects the pattern of foreign land acquisitions. We estimate a panel gravity-like equation to assess the impact of the institutional distance on the amount of land acquired and the number of contracts signed. Our results show that the institutional distance significantly affects both the number of contracts and the amount of land, but that the direction of these effects varies according to the geographical region and the relative strength of institutions in the target countries, with Africa following a pattern of its own.

The long land grab: market-assisted enclosure on the China-Lao rubber frontier

ABSTRACTThe rise in transnational land deals has brought nationally inflected concerns about foreign land acquisition into uneasy tension with longstanding scholarly and popular concerns about dispossession. Using the case of Chinese rubber plantation promotion projects in northern Laos, we examine the intersection of these two processes during the boom decade of the 2000s, as well as the aftermath during the 2010s, when global rubber prices have fallen. We describe a ‘long’ land grab from upland communities in northern Laos that cannot be blamed on either ‘the Chinese’ (whether private, state or both) or Lao government policy, which has long mobilized political and legal authority to enclose smallholder lands for national development. Rather, what is significant is the interaction of regulatory politics and market dynamics under conditions of both unequal international relations and internally competing policy agendas on both sides of the border. Examining a case where the initial regulatory impulse from the host government was for the protection of smallholder land tenure, the paper demonstrates the need to examine the interaction of local land governance and international relations in a way that treats the latter as the product of internal struggles rather than coherent national strategy.

Determinants of foreign land acquisitions in low- and middle-income countries

This article analyses the determinants of growing demand for agricultural land in developing countries. We propose some determinants that are specific to foreign acquisitions of agricultural land as a subset of agricultural foreign direct investment (FDI) and empirically examine the corresponding locational choice. Using a gravity model and a data set on land acquisitions worldwide, we find that the determinants partly overlap with those for other forms of FDI but are specific in certain regards. Rich investors target (poorer) economies with abundant land and water resources, and the effects of the quality of institutions are ambiguous.

Whereto land fragmentation–land grabbing in Romania? The place of negotiation in reaching win–win community-based solutions

The present study seeks to discuss and advance the understanding of land fragmentation and land grabbing within Romania's economic historiography landmarks, depicting how the origins of the land property issues are deeply embedded politically, socially, and culturally in history and still strongly exist in today's collective mind. Scientific evidence on the perceptions and behaviors of land owners regarding land grabbing was obtained through a non-probabilistic survey. The data collection instrument was a structured questionnaire, which was applied through face-to-face interviews to a sample of 52 Romanian land owners from various regions of the country. The results show that in the land owners’ perception, if land is sold to foreigners, national security is the most vulnerable aspect. Regarding the preference for the nationality of the land buyer, the majority of the people investigated prefer to sell to a Romanian buyer, thus making a clear statement in favor of the Romanian ownership of the land. The empirical results are placed in the context of a bottom-up approach—negotiation, with a high potential, unexplored in Romania, for implementing win–win agricultural solutions. Negotiation is valued as part of the answer to land fragmentation–land grabbing, a “back and forth” matter. The study recommends several measures for land use policy, tailored according to specific Romanian conditions, such as using an open access electronic registry of foreign land acquisitions, establishing a threshold for these acquisitions, and securing the preservation of the agricultural destination of land. In a political and economic context where land fragmentation and grabbing are two realities that are hard to deny and separate, a significant implication of the research is the enrichment of knowledge related to the sources of the “chronical” nature of fragmentation and to land owners’ attitude toward land grabbing, thus contributing to the design and implementation of future integrative land use solutions.

Economic and social issues related to foreign land grab and capacity building in Zambian Agricultural economy

This paper focuses on the recent land grab in Zambia for agricultural investment. The paper explores the history of foreign land acquisition and shows the dynamics that led to the liberalization of land market in Zambia. The research argues that despite the negative effect of these investments, the government can leverage this opportunity to place the country on the trajectory of growth, especially in the area of capacity development through skill acquisition. This can be achieved by structuring the contract to contain some performance requirements that investors are expected to contribute to the local people. Keywords: land grab, foreign agricultural investment, capacity development. JEL Classification: Q1

Impacts of Large Scale Foreign Land Acquisitions on Rural Households: Evidence from Ethiopia

The impact of large-scale foreign land acquisitions (“landgrabs”) on rural households in developing countries has proven a highly contentious question in public discourse. Similarly, in the academic literature, evolutionary theories of property rights and enclosure models make diametrically opposed predictions about the impacts on holders of informal property rights of increased demand for land. The current paper uses a multi-method approach to provide much-needed empirical evidence on the impacts of large-scale land acquisitions in Ethiopia. We use basic economic theory to structure evidence from disparate sources, including: a survey of existing qualitative evidence; original legal analysis of specific foreign land-acquisition contracts; and original econometric analysis of new World Bank household survey data. The evidence from all three methods suggests large-scale foreign land acquisitions are associated with losses of land and resource rights for rural households. While there is some compensating evidence of increased household expenditure, it is difficult to say whether this increase is caused by growth in incomes or in implicit prices.

GCC States' Land Investments Abroad: The Case of Cambodia

Foreign land acquisition offers the possibility of securing reliable long-term food supplies, but has been criticized as risking exploitation of communities in host countries. This Summary Report examines Cambodia as a case study of Gulf-state land investments in developing country agriculture to develop a long-term prognosis for this going abroad strategy. Despite the critical regional interest in food security and food sovereignty, there is a dearth of available information on the subject as it relates to the Middle East. It is widely acknowledged that there exists a lack of available data on the subject on which to base sound analysis. This scarcity of data and non-reliability of data means that academic work on the subject of food security in this region remains limited to non-existent. A scholarly approach to this issue is both valuable and timely. With that as its goal, CIRS launched a research initiative on “Food Security and Food Sovereignty in the Middle East” and held working group meetings to discuss the topic.

Socio-economic risk factors of foreign land acquisition in a developing country

Large investment in African land has generated serious interest among academicians, policy makers, international and local development agencies as well as civil organization. The debates centre on the phenomenal trajectory and the drivers of this investment in Africa. The inaccuracy or ambiguities in number of deals and institutional specificities has brought in the main, the need to undertake country by country study of foreign land deals in agricultural investment. To suggest vital information that will aid policy formulation and deliberation at country level, the study is on Congo-Brazzaville. This paper explores the factors that influenced foreign land acquisition in Congo, the impact of such investment on the host communities, and faults the decision of the government to make the attraction of foreign investment in agriculture a priority without fashioning out institutional framework that will regulate the investors and promote market discipline. Based on the above, the paper recommends strategies the government should earnestly pursue to mitigate the negativities of the investment and leverage on the benefits of commercial farming in the country, especially, in the area of skill transfer.