Foreign Land Ownership Research Articles

Does the Government’s Regulations in Land Ownership Empower the Protection of Human Rights?

Protection of land ownership has been regulated in various policies to protect human rights. However, it is essential to comprehensively examine the government's role in protecting land ownership because there are still various land conflicts. This research analyzes the government's role in protecting land ownership based on human rights principles and compares it with the Netherlands. This research uses a normative legal approach, using laws and cases and comparing policies with the policies of other countries. The research results show first, the Indonesian government guarantees the protection of land ownership through basic regulations on agrarian principles and the Indonesian government is trying to protect land ownership by registering land, limiting foreign land ownership, and developing governance plans at the regional level. Second, the Dutch government protects land ownership through a systematic, transparent land registration system implemented effectively to provide legal certainty for owners, investors, and related parties. Thirdly, Indonesia's regulatory approach adheres to the basic regulations on agrarian principles system, and the Netherlands uses civil law. However, both countries experience the same problems, such as land ownership disputes and scarcity. Therefore, the government needs to implement human rights-based policies through a transparent and fast land ownership process and public consultation in resolving land disputes.

Tracking farmland investment in Australia: Institutional finance and the politics of data mapping

AbstractTracking farmland purchases is central to interpreting transnational finance's growing power in agrarian restructuring. Australia's public Register of foreign land ownership reveals little about agrarian change, however. In presenting the first comprehensive mapping of farmland purchases made between 2008 and 2020, this paper examines the ways that financial investments are altering farm ownership patterns in Australia. First, we show that most foreign owned land has been purchased by only 10 pastoral companies, which are implicated in speculative development activities. Second, foreign investment in cropping and horticulture is more significant than it appears in the Register, with investments in agricultural infrastructure increasingly driving land use change. Third, we illustrate the deepening entrenchment of institutional finance. By engaging with the findings from our dataset as well as with the politics of data that have shaped the availability of information, the paper progresses understandings of the financialization of farmland in both its material and ideational aspects.

Good enough sovereignty, or on land as property and territory in Latvia

ABSTRACT After European Union expansion in the 2000s, Danish farmers went eastward in search of cheap land. In Latvia, they encountered indebted farmers and impoverished rural residents who readily sold their land, while at the same time harbouring resentment towards ‘the Dane’ for undermining Latvia’s sovereignty. In the view of significant segments of the Latvian public, ownership of land and territorial rule were intricately linked. In the view of ‘the Dane’ and the European Union, refusal to separate ownership from rule – or property from sovereignty – was a mark of ‘not-yet-mature’ liberal democratic subjects. While European Union institutions monitored and disciplined the Latvian state’s attempts to juridically restrict foreign land ownership, the Latvian state sought to use financial instruments to limit land sales to foreigners. Drawing on ethnographic analysis of the tensions surrounding the Danish presence in the Latvian countryside and on historical analysis of the shifting regimes of ownership and rule since the beginning of the twentieth century, this article traces the emergence of ‘good enough sovereignty’ as a form of political practice aimed at ensuring continued existence of the Latvian state and Latvian farmers.

“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.

Foreign Ownership of Land—Theoretical Challenges and Justifications

This work addresses the theoretical issues pertaining to alien land ownership by devoting systematic attention to the economic, human rights and national security perspectives. It suggests tht an integrated system could be established with respect to states’ regulation on foreign land ownership. Firstly, alien property investors should be granted national treatment regarding land as the internationalization of the real estate market will offer optimum capital utilization and facilitate overall global economic prosperity. Secondly, in the case of investors’ free access to domestic real estate markets, states may maintain flexibility in protecting their public policies with respect to human rights and national security. However, there must be a rational justification for invoking such a reservation. Therefore, alien land law originating from human rights and agricultural security concerns may need to be closely examined to distinguish those regulations which genuinely entail public interest concerns from those which do not. Thirdly, the deep participation of states in the international regime has greatly changed the traditional views towards alien land ownership. If a free real estate market is to be established, the trend of globalization has to be further advanced.

Determinants of Girl’s School Enrollment In Pakistan

The developing countries like Pakistan are facing the problem of low girls’ school enrolment rate. The study estimates the determinants of girls’ school enrolment by employing Binary Probit modal using the PSLM data 2010/11.The results show that though the education of both mother and father affect positively the girls’ school enrolment, yet the former affects it more as compared to the latter. The relationship between age of children and school enrolment is of inverted ‘U’ shaped. Foreign remittances and land ownership have more chances to affect the female school enrolment. School distance and poverty are major problems for female school enrolment. Further, females have more chances of school enrolment in urban areas as compared to rural ones. The results at provincial level reveal that mother’s education has more chances to affect the probability of girls’ enrolment in Sindh followed by Punjab as compared to KPK and Baluchistan. At a policy level government should pay more attention on girls’ school enrolment who are to become mothers tomorrow. The government should provide schools as near as possible to their homes. Free education should be provided especially for the poor. The ministry of Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development should be made more effective in searching out jobs abroad.

Pay the farmer, or buy the land?—Cost-effectiveness of payments for ecosystem services versus land purchases or easements in Central Kenya

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) have emerged as a popular conservation tool, yet evaluation alongside other direct conservation strategies remains piecemeal. We prospectively compared cost-effectiveness of PES to Land Purchases or Easements (LPE) in Central Kenya. We spatially predicted opportunity costs and land prices using household survey and literature data, and sampled conservation management costs from four regional conservation organizations. We simulated a fixed-budget, spatial ecological–economic site selection process for conservation intervention (PES or LPE) over 30years. We included effects of land markets, property value fluctuations, rising agricultural productivity and climate change. Depending on the scenario, the LPE strategy led to larger reserves (by 26%–610%), better representation of mammal species' ranges (by 47%–112%) and lower unit costs (by 26%–48%). Adding a yearly egalitarian social development payment to the LPE strategy did not increase costs beyond the basic PES model. Our findings were robust to discount rate choice, but cost savings of LPE only materialized after about a decade. Furthermore, Kenyan law restricts foreign land ownership and the use of land easements, thus simpler institutional requirements make PES a more immediate, if less effective, property-based tool.

“Money can’t buy me land”: Foreign land ownership regime and public opinion in a transition society

In recent years, as part of the broader policies of economic liberalization, the sale of agricultural land to foreign citizens has attracted considerable political, social and media attention in transition societies. The regime of land ownership in Georgia has evolved from the complete restriction of foreign acquisition in the beginning of the 1990s, to the unrestricted sale of land to foreign citizens from 2010 onwards. An analysis of newly-available data from International Social Survey Programme’s (ISSP) National Identity module suggests that respondents in Georgia, along with Russia, hold the most negative attitudes toward selling land to foreigners compared to other countries. I hypothesize that this is the result of a confluence of factors such as the communist legacy, historical memory, rural nationalism, agricultural underdevelopment and inequality. The quantitative part of this article tests socio-demographic, geographic, ideological, and identity-based explanations of within-country variation in attitudes toward the purchase of land by foreigners. The results suggest that socio-demographic and geographic variables such as respondents’ age and regional belonging explain some variance in the dependent variable, but that the major effects stem from individuals’ perceptions of economic protectionism, xenophobia, and ethnic national identity.

Land market liberalization, transfer of agricultural technology, and the process of industrialization

Common wisdom suggests that foreign land ownership should facilitate the transfer of agricultural technology from developed to developing countries, attract foreign capital flow to developing countries, and enhance the process of capital accumulation. The goal of this paper is to dispute this claim and describe a particular feedback mechanism through which the foreign land ownership can become a barrier for growth and development. The main result of this paper suggests that a policy proposal to enhance the process of growth and development through foreign land ownership accompanied by the transfer of agricultural technology may not always succeed. It is important to recognize that apart from benefits, foreign land ownership can sometimes become an impediment for growth. As a result, a policy maker with a clear goal to speed up the process of development may end up pushing the country even deeper into an underdevelopment trap due to the policy intervention.

Foreign land ownership: Why are the Polish and Hungarian measures in discrimination with EU citizens’ right to acquire agricultural land within the European Union?

This thesis focuses on the acquisition of agricultural land by foreigners – citizens of other EU Member States – in Poland and Hungary. Land is a fundamental resource of the nation state. Without land, constituting the delimitation of their territory, countries cannot exist. It possesses special features – e.g. limited area, economic importance, evocation of national sentiment and security – which represent much of the wealth of a state and its population. Because of its precious value, states have at different periods taken measures to restrict the possibility of foreigners’ acquiring land within their territories. Traditionally, foreigners, categorized as non-nationals of a state, were not allowed to acquire land. During the feudal period, they were seen as potential enemies to the nations. This attitude was developed and entertained by the special feudal relationship binding the people living within one territory – e.g. tenants were allowed to use their lord’s land and in return they owed him services and a personal obligation of loyalty. Being free of accountableness, foreigners had no attachment to that specific land. Centuries later, the mentality towards foreigners changed. After the French Revolution, the principles of equality and fraternity were highlighted, setting citizens and foreigners on equal footing. Although this trend seems to continue, many states nowadays still restrict foreign land ownership. Within the European context, it can be noticed that even though free movement of persons is one of the cornerstones of the internal market, EU citizens still are sometimes confronted in real life with some infringements on their free movement rights.

Capital accumulation with and without land market liberalization: beyond the “Win‐Win” situation

This paper examines the effect of land market liberalization on the dynamics of capital accumulation. It is shown that the land market liberalization, which is accompanied with the transfer of agricultural technology, may not always offer a “win‐win” outcome for developed and developing countries. Improved agricultural productivity generates a growth enhancing externality. However, land market liberalization affects the balance between the equalizing force of the diminishing returns technology and the un‐equalizing force of the low income elasticity of the agricultural commodity demand. As a result, land market liberalization accompanied with the transfer of agricultural productivity, may not always guarantee a “win‐win” outcome for developed and developing countries. If improvement of agricultural productivity is insignificant then land market liberalization can cause “win‐lose” situation for developed and developing countries. This result suggests that one should be very careful in a policy proposal designed to foster the process of development through foreign land ownership. It is important to recognize that apart from benefits, foreign land ownership also creates a disadvantage for capital accumulation and causes the magnification of the world income inequality.JEL classificationF43, O11, R14

Foreign Land Holdings in Iran 1828 to 1911

The issue of the purchase of land in one country, in this case Iran, by other countries, in this case Britain and Russia, is one of great significance because of light it may throw on the strength or weakness of national sovereignty, and the ways and degree to which it may be undermined. It can also show the strategies deployed by the country challenged to protect its territorial integrity, as here in the case of Iran. The intricacies of foreign landownership patterns thus have implications for international relations, on which they can provide telling detail in terms of contemporary power politics. The details of land purchase also demonstrate considerable differences as between the two outside powers involved in terms of their objectives in Iran, and thus challenge a tendency in the literature to see them as similar.

Buying properties in Malaysia? Highlight on laws, policies and their implication on foreign land ownership

The laws and policies pertaining to foreign land ownership in Malaysia have seen tremendous changes for the past two decades. The reasons may be linked to economic, political and social factors. The changes, as claimed, have to be carried out to accommodate the current needs and circumstances. Nevertheless, at the same time, frequent changes would also create uncertainty and insecurity to the purchaser especially the investors. The Malaysian government has made various efforts towards becoming a developed country, trying hard to attract foreign investors to invest in the country. At the same time, a reasonable consideration must be given to the needs of its own people. Moreover, it is equally important to protect and to ensure that the people’s right shall not be sacrificed for the sake of development and especially when all the benefits will go to only a certain class of people. The history of foreign land ownership policy especially on the restrictions imposed by the laws and policies are worth noting. The legal perspectives are delineated from some important statutes such as the National Land Code, 1965, the Malay Reserve Enactments, the Malay Agricultural Settlement Act, the Aboriginal Peoples Act 1954, and also the restrictions imposed by the states since land is a state matter in Malaysia. Furthermore, some of the restrictions are traceable in the policies determined by the relevant ministries. Following this, the implication of these restrictions on foreign land ownership and also property market will be addressed.

A Common European Space? National Identity, Foreign Land Ownership and EU Enlargement: The Polish and Czech Cases

In central and eastern Europe, symbiosis between particular ethnic-cultural nations and territorial areas is understood as corresponding to a natural and moral order. European Union enlargement challenges this mindset by legally transforming ‘national territory’ into ‘supranational’ real property or even opening the possibility of restitution claims by ‘foreigners’. In the Polish and Czech cases this is highly contentious, principally due to the prospect of Germans and/or Austrians obtaining land. Rather than representing prosaic exchange among neutral economic agents the issue is embroiled in a complex of political and emotive influences, with historical roots that run deeper than the communist era. Realisation of a common European legal order is accompanied and to some extent hindered by misgivings about a liberal space of free access, unrestricted capital movement and no discrimination on grounds of nationality.

East-Central Europe’s new security concern: foreign land ownership

While foreign land ownership has become a post-Cold War security concern for East-Central Europe, it has been neglected in security studies focused on more traditional topics. This article offers a comparative analysis of: (1) the post-1989 development of policy towards land sales to non-citizens, (2) why foreign land ownership has been the most controversial in Hungary and especially Poland, and (3) why foreign ownership can be a useful tool for nationalists. Mining the land issue ultimately strikes a deeper tension between foreign-driven pressures to liberalize land markets within a pan-European free market and the still-strong belief that states should control land sales for the good of the nation.

Foreign Investment in U. S. Agricultural Land: An Overview of the National Issue and a Case Study of Vermont

Abstract. A number of issues surround the ownership of farmland by absentee owners and foreign nationals. The response to these concerns in the United States has been the promulgation of the Agriculture Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA) which provides for a land purchase reporting system. The present investigation seeks to describe the nature of the foreign land ownership picture in the United States, the status of existing state laws which deal with the matter and. through the example of a case study on the State of Vermont, attempts to describe impacts and implications of such ownerships.