Global Land Rush Research Articles

​The Demand Side of the Rule of Law: India’s Experience With Eminent Domain Law Reform

This paper places the issue of land acquisition within a rule of law framework and analyses the national level reform of India’s Land Acquisition Act, 1894. While orthodox approaches to legal reform have placed a strong emphasis on state-centric ‘supply-side’ factors, more recently it is the constituencies within society that call for and enforce limitations to the exercise of state power that have been highlighted in the context of rule of law reform strategies. The rule of law seeks to restrain government action through law. In the context of its relevance to economic development, it is seen as a protection of private property against arbitrary expropriation by the state. Eminent domain, on the other hand, is the state’s legal power to take possession of an individual’s property for the purposes of undertaking state-led development projects. Both of these legal precepts, the rule of law as well as eminent domain, are in their own right seen as enablers of a nation’s economic development. However, in the context of the ongoing global land rush, it is argued that they can be at odds with one another. This paper illustrates how an attempt at eminent domain action came in conflict with rule of law principles in the specific case of the compulsory acquisition of agricultural land in rural West Bengal in India. A broad-based social movement against this land acquisition sparked the passage of a new land acquisition law in 2013. Specifically, it is argued that this legal reform resulted from a legal empowerment process involving both, rights-based legislation and the activism of non-state agents. Illustrating this case of demand for the new land acquisition law, its substantive provisions, and subsequent legal and political developments in relation to the 2013 Act, this paper concludes with critical reflections on the potential of legal empowerment and demand-side strategies to contribute to long-term and sustainable legal reform in pursuit of the ‘rule of law’ ideal.

Land Conflict in Kenya: A Comprehensive Overview of Literature

Land governance continues to be a topic of high interest within policy and academic circles. The manner in which land institutions should (or should not) go about reforming national land policies has been a highly contested topic given the complex and multilayered nature of land-related conflicts. The purpose of this literature review is to identify and discuss how, why, and by whom land conflicts are mobilized to generate tension, conflict, and violence over land in Kenya. The article argues that, in addition to “global land rush” narratives, the structure of politics is a key organizing element of land conflict in Kenya. This is because politics define the kinds of relationships people have with land, including the institutions that prescribe, manage, and oversee land rights. This literature review contributes more broadly to address land conflict and ethno-political violence in Kenya.

The Tenure Guidelines in Policy and Practice: Democratizing Land Control in Guatemala

This paper explores the challenges for democratizing land and natural resource control in Guatemala through use of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries, and Forests (Tenure Guidelines). This international human rights instrument comes at a critical moment, in which the current global land rush has shaped contemporary agrarian transformation with serious implications for the right to food and control of natural resources. The Tenure Guidelines provide us with a unique opportunity to put land and natural resource tenure squarely under the prescriptions of international human rights law, rather than allowing tenure to be subsumed by a narrow understanding of property rights based on civil and merchant law. In Guatemala, we are witnessing a political opening, where the government has incorporated the language of the Tenure Guidelines into its regulatory framework unlike any other country in Latin America. At the same time, the world watches on while a slow-motion coup engulfs the Central American country, reflecting a global trend of gutting democracies and coopting the language and legislation meant to protect them. Thus, the implementation of the Tenure Guidelines is strongly contested by state and corporate actors seeking to use the instrument in order to gain political legitimacy for the expansion of agribusiness like oil palm and sugarcane, and other forms of extractive industry. This paper’s findings indicate that when applied together with a rights-based approach, the Tenure Guidelines are a powerful social and political tool. Such is especially true of the most marginalized populations who require protection and respect for their existing tenure rights, promotion of reforms for better access to and control over land and resources, and restoration of tenure rights resulting from displacement or dispossession.

Land deals, and how not all states react the same: Zambia and the Chinese request

ABSTRACT The global land rush has drawn new attention to the African state. Governments have generally been accused of brokering deals that are assumed to negatively affect local people. This framing contributes to an image that all states react in the same way, ignoring that states and customary rulers still covet control over land. By drawing on a Chinese land request for 2 million hectares in Zambia, the article argues that processes of land acquisition are deeply influenced by the shifting politics and policies within the respective country, specifically since a change of government changed the dynamics of the deal.

Politics, economics, how about our health? Impacts of large-scale land acquisitions on therapeutic spaces and wellbeing in coastal Tanzania

One question that has remained unexplored in the global land rush debate is how large-scale land acquisitions affect health and wellbeing of local populations. As part of a larger study, this study advances our understanding in this area by applying the concept of therapeutic landscapes to analyze interviews conducted in two coastal communities in Tanzania where land investments have been prevalent. Our analysis found that local populations perceived traditional lands with sacred sites as therapeutic spaces, which embodied cultural values, and promoted health and wellbeing when protected. Intrusion into these spaces through large-scale land investment is believed to remove their therapeutic attributes, thereby turning them into unhealthy landscapes. Dispossession of these spaces is perceived to heighten community distress resulting in poor psychosocial health. Based on our findings, we suggest that health consequences of land investments should move to the center of the large-scale land acquisition discourse. Health policy should refocus on the psychosocial health impacts of global land investments in Tanzania and other low-income countries. Ultimately local participation in land governance should be strengthened through land reforms in Tanzania and similar contexts, as this may provide a buffer to poor psychosocial health.

Narratives of scarcity: Framing the global land rush

Global resource scarcity has become a central policy concern, with predictions of rising populations, natural resource depletion and hunger. The narratives of scarcity that arise as a result justify actions to harness resources considered ‘underutilised’, leading to contestations over rights and entitlements and producing new scarcities. Yet scarcity is contingent, contextual, relational and above all political. We present an analysis of three framings – absolute, relative and political scarcity – associated with the intellectual traditions of Malthus, Ricardo and Marx, respectively. A review of 134 global and Africa-specific policy and related sources demonstrates how diverse framings of scarcity – what it is, its causes and what is to be done – are evident in competing narratives that animate debates about the future of food and farming in Africa and globally. We argue that current mainstream narratives emphasise absolute and relative scarcity, while ignoring political scarcity. Opening up this debate, with a more explicit focus on political scarcities is, we argue, important; emphasising how resources are distributed between different needs and uses, and so different people and social classes. For African settings, seen as both a source of abundant resources and a site where global scarcities may be resolved, as well as where local scarcities are being experienced most acutely, a political scarcity framing on the global land rush, and resource questions more broadly, is, we suggest, essential.

The challenge of locating land-based climate change mitigation and adaptation politics within a social justice perspective: towards an idea of agrarian climate justice

The global land rush and mainstream climate change narratives have broadened the ranks of state and social actors concerned about land issues, while strengthening those opposed to social justice-oriented land policies. This emerging configuration of social forces makes the need for deep social reforms through redistribution, recognition, restitution, regeneration and resistance – book-ended by the twin principles of ‘maximum land size’ (‘size ceiling’) and a ‘guaranteed minimum land access’ (‘size floor’) – both more compelling and urgent, and, at the same time, more difficult than ever before. The five deep social reforms of socially just land policy are necessarily intertwined. But the global land rush amidst deepening climate change calls attention to the linkages, especially between the pursuit of agrarian justice on the one hand and climate justice on the other. Here, the relationship is not without contradictions, and warrants increased attention as both unit of analysis and object of political action. Understanding and deepening agrarian justice imperatives in climate politics, and understanding and deepening climate justice imperatives in agrarian politics, is needed more than ever in the ongoing pursuit of alternatives.

Legalizing Illegitimate Large-Scale Land Deals for Commercial Agriculture in Cameroon

Abstract Many communities in Cameroon are fast losing large expanse of ancestral land in the wake of a global land rush to local and foreign capitalists operating in the mining and agricultural sectors. This study examines the legal status of commercial land acquisition, the extent to which investors are complying with the law, and the land rights of those affected. It is based on primary data collected through interviews conducted among local administrative and traditional authorities, community members, and civil society organizations. The article highlights how agro-investors with complicity of the State have exploited weakness in Cameroon land laws to dispossess poor communities from ancestral lands. Findings indicate that in violating both laws and due processes to acquire land, the current land rush has left affected communities impoverished and without land and security. Commercial agriculture has displaced communities from traditional sources of livelihood to promote international capitalist interest.

Land control and crop booms inside China: implications for how we think about the global land rush

ABSTRACTThis paper aims to broaden the scope of analysis of the contemporary global land rush by examining crop booms not only outside, but inside China; and investment flows not only from China, but also within and into China. It does so by examining the eucalyptus and sugarcane sectors in southern China, which have witnessed investment booms during the past decade, with capital being infused by both domestic capital and foreign capital, including Finnish, Indonesian, and Thai companies. Our argument addresses three key issues: (a) explaining why foreign and domestic companies enter into a multitude of lease and grower contracts involving holders of micro-plots, (b) revisiting the notion of extra-economic coercion, and (c) a critique of thinking about flows of large-scale investments centred primarily on nationality. These issues are central in current debates in the land grabs literature, and our study offers a different perspective from dominant narratives.

Visualizing new political ecologies: A critical data studies analysis of the World Bank’s renewable energy resource mapping initiative

In the context of climate change and concerns about fossil fuels, territories around the world are being remapped for their renewable energy generation potential. The World Bank and other institutions dominated by the global North are urging countries, especially in the global South, to undertake such mapping. The resulting maps are shown to potential investors in efforts to accelerate and direct the rapidly growing flow of capital into the renewable energy sector. These representations of territory and the new patterns of investment and land use they facilitate and foreshadow engage core concerns of political ecology: who claims, uses, and controls rural lands and resources; how are competing claims contested and legitimated; and who benefits or suffers as new visions of development, accumulation, and ‘sustainability’ are inscribed upon the land and new aspects of ‘nature’ are drawn into circuits of capital.We make two arguments in this paper. First, the dramatic expansion of renewable energy production from abiotic sources is an important but under-researched component of the global land rush, one that differs in key analytical ways from the agricultural and extractive sectors examined by most scholarship in that domain. Second, since powerful new visualizations are central to this expansion, there is an urgent need for closer engagement between political ecology and critical data studies to analyze their production, deployment, and effects. We support these arguments through analysis of examples drawn from the work of the Renewable Energy Resource Mapping Initiative of the World Bank’s Energy Sector Management Assistance Program.

Scaling struggles over land and law: Autonomy, investment, and interlegality in Myanmar’s borderlands

This article explores the relevance of spatial global legal pluralism—an emerging field at the interstices of geography, anthropology, and socio-legal studies—for research on the global land rush, and the study of land law and investment in particular. I argue that a focus on the spatial dimensions of law—coupled with attention to the interlegality, scalar politics, and spatio-temporalities of semi-autonomous law—offers important insights into the dynamic forces, actors, and stakes in the global land rush. In Myanmar, the prospects for peace—however tenuous—have led to an acceleration of land law development including the creation of ‘semi-autonomous land law’ by ethnic armed groups and activists in its borderlands. I discuss the ways in which such policies not only anticipate peace but seek to shape its political-economy over multiple spatio-temporalities. By recognizing both international human rights law and customary law, such ‘non-state’ laws bring these two scales into an intermediary legal jurisdiction, contributing to the sedimentation of Kawthoolei and Kachinland as political scales in their own right.

Addressing the impacts of large-scale land investments: Re-engaging with livelihood research

What started as a media-driven hype about the global land rush has developed into a well-established academic debate on land governance and an important domain for policy intervention. Research over the past decade has deepened our understanding of how land, water and forests, which were once considered to be local assets and the sources of livelihoods, are transformed into global goods and the focus of capital investments. We are now clearly aware that such transformation generates significant impacts on the livelihood security of vulnerable groups. In response to this, a variety of policy interventions have been devised to minimize the negative impacts (‘do not harm’) and create new opportunities (‘do good’). Yet, it is still unclear how actual policy implementations play out on the ground, what the real impacts are at the local level and whether these interventions help people to improve their livelihoods. In this paper, we present an overview of the existing intervention approaches and their theoretical underpinnings, and discuss how to optimize the developmental outcomes. We argue that the once popular livelihood research framework should be revised and then incorporated more robustly in the existing intervention approaches, as it could help investors and governmental actors to engage in making their investments more relevant to local development.

The Tragedy of the Grabbed Commons: Coercion and Dispossession in the Global Land Rush

Rural populations around the world rely on small-scale farming and other uses of land and natural resources, which are often governed by customary, traditional, and indigenous systems of common property. In recent years, large-scale land acquisitions have drastically expanded; it is unclear whether the commons are a preferential target of these acquisitions. Here we argue that the contemporary global “land rush” could be happening at the expense of common-property systems around the world. While there is evidence that common-property systems have developed traditional institutions of resource governance that make them robust with respect to endogenous forces (e.g., uses by community members), it is less clear how vulnerable these arrangements are to exogenous drivers of globalization and expansion of transnational land investments. In common-property systems, farmers and local users may be unable to defend their customary rights and successfully compete with external actors. We define the notion of “commons grabbing” and report on an exploratory study that applied meta-analytical methods, drawing from the recent literature on large-scale land acquisitions and land grabbing. Informed by political economy and political ecology approaches, we coded selected cases on the basis of acquisition mechanisms, claims and property rights, changes in production system, and coercive dynamics, and explored the interactions between the different variables using association tests and qualitative comparative analysis. We found that the majority of the cases included in this analysis (44 of 56) could be examples of commons grabbing.

Sustainable livelihoods in the global land rush? Archetypes of livelihood vulnerability and sustainability potentials

Abstract Large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) have become a major concern for land use sustainability at a global scale. A considerable body of case studies has shown that the livelihood outcomes of LSLAs vary, but the understanding of factors and processes that generate these livelihood outcomes remains controversial and fragmented in terms of cases, contexts, and normative orientations. Therefore, this study presents a meta-analysis of case studies and applies the archetypes approach developed in global change research to analyse the configurations of factors and processes that generate different livelihood outcomes in LSLA situations. The analysis is based on 44 systematically selected studies covering 66 cases in 21 countries in Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe. The results show that LSLAs affect rural livelihoods through a small set of archetypical configurations. Adverse livelihood outcomes arise most frequently from processes of (1) enclosure of livelihood assets, (2) elite capture, (3) selective marginalisation of people already living in difficult conditions, and (4) polarisation of development discourses, and less frequently from (5) competitive exclusion, (6) agribusiness failure, and (7) transient jobs. The processes are activated in specific configurations of social-ecological factors. Moving beyond diagnosis, the paper identifies archetypical potentials for safeguarding or enhancing sustainable livelihoods in LSLA target regions at multiple levels of decision-making. Finally, we analyse how contextual factors modify these general insights. This paper helps to advance the archetypes methodology for use in global change research that aims at integral analysis of recurrent patterns expressed in local manifestations. The results can be used to better link local case studies with regional and global inventories of the global land rush.

Marginal land and the global land rush: A spatial exploration of contested lands and state-directed development in contemporary Ethiopia

The ‘global land rush’ or ‘global land grabbing’ phenomena has prompted concerns over the potential of large-scale land acquisitions to displace rural populations and impact food security in lesser-developed countries. State actors often assert that lands being leased to investors are ‘marginal’, ‘wasteland’, ‘barren’, or ‘unused’ without explicitly stating the criteria that are used to classify those spaces. Using Ethiopia as a case study, this paper synthesizes semi-structured interviews and geospatial land-use data to unpack the federal government’s notion of ‘marginal land’ to investigate how land qualifies for deposition into a federal land bank set aside for future investment and the agro-ecological characteristics and human-environment interactions endemic to these areas. We find that government officials conceive land bank areas to be generally fertile but currently ‘unused’. In reality, we find land bank areas: (1) are used by pastoralists or rural people practicing land extensive forms of cultivation that are only loosely integrated into the Ethiopian state, (2) overlap with protected areas such as National Parks, and (3) are located in places that have surface water resources the government intends to use for large-scale development such as irrigation or hydropower projects. We argue that the intended land uses of banked lands serve not only to fulfill larger development objectives but also increase state-accessible product produced in these areas strengthening the link between ‘othering’ labels, development, and state-making in the context of the global land rush.

Investment’s rituals: “Grassroots” extractivism and the making of an indigenous gold mine in the Peruvian Andes

What happens when an Andean family finds gold on its land? As mining corporations rapidly claim surrounding properties on rugged terrain near Mount Mismi, a water-supplying deity overlooking Peru’s Colca Valley, the Flores family is springing into action to beat the Buenaventura mining company to the gold that might be hidden within. The global land rush has been pronounced in Peru, whose mineral resources have largely been responsible for rapid economic growth but whose profits remain restricted to a relative few. The Flores family, many of its members underemployed, are engaged in a costly race against time to constitute themselves as an enterprise, rent equipment, formalize their title, and fulfill other rituals necessary for legitimating their own effort to access what they see as their small share of Peru’s mineral wealth, against the specter of state subsoil rights and corporate power. They are simultaneously racing to seek the land’s permission, via rituals like the pago a la tierra (offering to the earth) and the provision of spiritually infused chicha (fermented maize and barley). Through an ethnographic focus on the exemplary case of the Flores property and the diverse rituals essential to extracting its prosperity, this article asks how the Peruvian state’s categories of legitimate land use articulate with a perspective acknowledging land as a powerful non-human agent with its own requirements for becoming investable. I argue that beyond a simple dichotomy between official and indigenous rituals of legitimation, the Flores’ urgent race to render land investable puts multivalent ontologies and ethics to work together. In doing so, I further argue, family members draw on years of engagement with development projects and non-governmental organizations focused on promoting explicitly indigenous entrepreneurship. They are thus forging new interpretations of identity-based empowerment that complicate any stereotypical relationship between environmental sustainability and indigeneity.

‘How come others are selling our land?’ Customary land rights and the complex process of land acquisition in Tanzania

ABSTRACT The recent increase in transnational acquisitions of agrarian land raises concerns about rural people's inadequate involvement in the decision-making process, and violations of their land rights. Tanzania's statutory land laws are comparatively progressive in terms of recognising customary land rights. According to legislation, transferring ‘Village Land’ to an investor requires villagers' approval. It is therefore revealing to focus on the acknowledgement of customary rights in land deals in Tanzania. This study analyses the land transfer process of a UK-based forestry company that has acquired land in seven villages in Kilolo District. In the case of the village presented here, the investor seems to have followed legal procedure regarding decision-making for the land deal in a formally correct way. Yet, interviews with various stakeholders revealed flaws at village and district government level that have led to a conflict-ridden situation, with numerous affected villagers having lost their land rights – and thus the basis for their livelihoods – against their will. Among those affected are several households from a neighbouring village, whose customary rights date back to the period before the resettlements of the 1970s (‘villagisation’). Employing the concepts of property rights and legal pluralism 1 and unbundling the role of different actors in the host country government, this article analyses the decision-making process that preceded this land transfer. It illustrates how unequal power relations lead to unequal recognition of customary and statutory law. The study concludes that even under comparatively favourable legal conditions, there is no guarantee that local land rights are fully protected in the global land rush.

Climate change and large-scale land acquisitions in Africa: Quantifying the future impact on acquired water resources

Pressure on agricultural land has markedly increased since the start of the century, driven by demographic growth, changes in diet, increasing biofuel demand, and globalization. To better ensure access to adequate land and water resources, many investors and countries began leasing large areas of agricultural land in the global South, a phenomenon often termed “large-scale land acquisition” (LSLA). To date, this global land rush has resulted in the appropriation of 41million hectares and about 490km3 of freshwater resources, affecting rural livelihoods and local environments. It remains unclear to what extent land and water acquisitions contribute to the emergence of water-stress conditions in acquired areas, and how these demands for water may be impacted by climate change. Here we analyze 18 African countries – 20Mha (or 80%) of LSLA for the continent – and estimate that under present climate 210km3year−1of water would be appropriated if all acquired areas were actively under production. We also find that consumptive use of irrigation water is disproportionately contributed by water-intensive biofuel crops. Using the IPCCA1B scenario, we find only small changes in green (−1.6%) and blue (+2.0%) water demand in targeted areas. With a 3°C temperature increase, crop yields are expected to decrease up to 20% with a consequent increase in the water footprint. When the effect of increasing atmospheric CO2concentrations is accounted for, crop yields increase by as much as 40% with a decrease in water footprint up to 29%. The relative importance of CO2 fertilization and warming will therefore determine water appropriations and changes in water footprint under climate change scenarios.

Between two hypes: Will “big data” help unravel blind spots in understanding the “global land rush?”

The past several years have seen a huge number of publications, conferences and campaigns on “land grabbing” or large-scale acquisition of land, most often in Africa. Land-grabbing became a fiercely debated issue and the attention rapidly evolved into a real hype which has generated a wealth of knowledge. This global land grab awareness has coincided in time with the “big data” discussion which is one of the most hyped terms today in both academia and business, suggesting that the availability of datasets of increasing volume, velocity and variety can help to better understand reality.This article aims to critically review to what extent the availability of huge amounts of information about the land grab debate, including new sources of big data, has helped to untangle land grabbing and – more particularly – raising new questions and formulating new hypotheses that have been overlooked in the past. What is the value of digital methods and data driven research through online platforms for identifying knowledge gaps and proposing solutions? Our article shows the value of big data in uncovering new realities but also challenges to not become overwhelmed – while making more efforts than ever to look at the quality – and reliability – of information. Keep doing empirical research – and keep our feet on the ground while also learning from “virtual space” – is a sine qua non – for keeping track and making sensible interpretations. In many cases, however, there is a discrepancy between what is reported (big data) and what is important.

‘Better-practice’ Concessions? Some Lessons from Cambodia’s Leopard Skin Landscape

In the context of the global land rush, policy debates are split on the question of state land concessions: are smallholder-centric ‘inclusive’ investment models the only real form of responsible agricultural investment, or are ‘responsible’ concessions possible when it comes to the protection of local land access? To help move this debate forwards, this paper examines two case studies in Cambodia – an oil palm plantation recently certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and a teak plantation certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) – which we refer to as ‘better-practice’ concessions. These cases reflect efforts to operationalise the Cambodian government’s ‘Leopard-Skin’ policy, which stipulates that concessions be developed around smallholders rather than directly on top of them. We argue that regularisation is not inherently objectionable, but carries risks when carried out on a concession-by-concession basis, because it distances vulnerable land users from the potentially protective effects of the law and defers to localised, and often unequal, relations of authority. The paper thus highlights the challenges that investors and communities are likely to face even when concession developers seek to respect existing local land claims, and suggests that models based on empowered communities with more secure forms of tenure are likely to work better for all parties involved.