Land Rush Research Articles

The Law and Land Grabbing: Friend or Foe?

AbstractThis paper reflects upon the role of law in the contemporary surge in global large-scale land acquisitions. Its point of reference is the land security of several billion rural poor who traditionally own and use untitled lands that are classified as state lands or unowned public lands in national laws. Most of the affected lands are off-farm areas including forests, marshlands, and rangelands. Investors target these lands in belief they are unowned. Governments concur, selling or leasing these lands on grounds of being technically the lawful owner and despite awareness that these lands are occupied and used. Despite the longstanding nature of such conflicts as well known and long debated, the present land rush brings unresolved contradictions between statutory and customary law and associated meanings of property firmly to the fore. Using Sub-Saharan Africa as the example, this paper examines the legal effects. It is shown that while millions of local land rights are threatened, the land rush also vitalises demands for improved national law status for unregistered customary rights, including those such as forest and rangelands purposely held by communities in common. To this extent, the contemporary rush could prove as much legal friend as foe to majority land rights in agrarian economies. This is partly because the current rush, unlike those that have gone before it, occurs in an environment of advanced popular communication, emergent mass empowerment, and has the advantage of a pre-rush era of legal improvement in the handling of indigenous and customary land rights that has established alternative precedents. Opportunities to coerce modification of classical dispossessory paths of economic growth strongly exist. Global advocacy for secure community land rights is rapidly advancing.

‘Land grabbing’ or harnessing of development potential in agriculture? East Asia's land-based investments in Africa

Large-scale foreign investment in Africa's abundant but largely underutilized arable land has been criticised by international NGOs and social movements as ‘land grabbing’, which limits access of smallholder farmers to land, deprives local people of their livelihoods and threatens local and national food security across the continent. By way of contrast, many host governments and some leading international development agencies regard land-based investments as beneficial for development in terms of providing the necessary capital and technological know-how for modernising the region's neglected agriculture including take-off in agribusiness and agro-industrialisation, which is vital to much needed economic diversification in many African countries. East Asia's participation in the global land rush on Africa is examined from the standpoint of these two different perspectives: while China's growing presence and involvement in trade and investment in mining, energy and infrastructure in Africa is well known, less recognised is its involvement and those of other East Asian countries such as South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam in agriculture through large-scale land acquisitions. The development consequences and policy implications of these foreign land-based investments are analysed from a political economy perspective, which identifies motives, interests and benefits of the different actors and addresses the question of governance in terms of transparency and appropriate institutional arrangements to safeguard land rights and food security. In the bigger picture, the paper argues that the negative consequences of land grab has to be seen alongside the benefits flowing to Africa from growing economic relations with China and other dynamic East Asian economies and learning from the development experiences of those countries. African countries however need to re-assess the current approach and relationship with foreign land-based investors and decide how best this trend can be used to forward their economic and social agendas.

Battle for Bhoomi: The Indian Experience of Land Management, Land Acquisition and Land Grab.

The rush for land for hard economic infrastructure projects has shot to global attention lately capturing media space and invading the language of informed discourse. Suddenly the votaries of a liberal economic policy are not so sure anymore, and traditionalists skeptical of the inevitability of the new economy feel vindicated. I propose in this paper to study the management of public lands and the related problems of land grabbing and land acquisition for large infrastructure, housing & development projects.The land rush takes various forms: acquisition, encroachment, purchase, conversion and grab. It erodes varied spaces: green belt lung space, grazing land for cattle, cultivable land for agriculture, forests and lakes. It uses various means: notification, denotification, persuasion, use of state pressure and coercion. I argue that while land is undoubtedly an economic resource, the framing of this problem as an economic one is limiting, and it needs to be seen as a larger political economy and sociological issue. I see the conflicts over land as framed within a larger conflict between social groups; with the polity and bureaucracy and thereby the state itself playing multiple roles: adjudicator, mediator, colluder, developer and beneficiary. I use grounded theory methodology and an embedded case study design, grounding my study in India with the state of Karnataka as my local context, drawing global parallels as appropriate.

People, Power, and Land: New Enclosures on a Global Scale

AbstractA global land rush is aggressively underway. It is reinventing frontier narratives wherever farmland, rangeland, and forestland appear “underutilized,” particularly in the Global South. Though the means and motives of these acquisitions are diverse, the lens of “new enclosures” lends itself to focusing on their similarities. New enclosures surpass the enclosures of bygone centuries in scale and speed and in the plethora of resources they reach. Sociological interventions, both theoretical and applied, are needed to contextualize and concretize this burgeoning alienation of land rights and power contingencies across communities and continents.

What Drives the Global “Land Rush”?

We review evidence regarding the size and evolution of the "land rush" in the wake of the 2007–8 boom in agricultural commodity prices, and we study the determinants of foreign land acquisition for large-scale agricultural investment. The use of data on bilateral investment relationships to estimate gravity models of transnational land-intensive investments confirms the central role of agro-ecological potential as a pull factor. However, this finding contrasts the standard literature insofar as the quality of the destination country's business climate is insignificant, and weak tenure security is associated with increased interest for investors to acquire land in the country. Policy implications are discussed.

The Land Rush and Classic Agrarian Questions of Capital and Labour: a systematic scoping review of the socioeconomic impact of land grabs in Africa

This paper has two main objectives. First, to address the problematic of the socioeconomic impact of land deals in sub-Saharan Africa by looking at what we know from the available literature so far, namely what has been claimed and how much research has been done, as well as why we do not know very much despite the quantity of material published. This is done via a systematic scoping review, which aims to avoid some of the biases inherent in conventional literature reviews and to provide evidence for some basic features of the emerging research on land grabs in Africa, with specific reference to their contribution to the understanding of livelihood impacts. Second, the article links empirical questions about the impact and implications of land grabs with a discussion of alternative (neglected) research questions, notably the implications of the current land rush phenomenon for the classic agrarian questions of capital and labour, as understood in agrarian political economy. Thus the paper proposes a re-engagement with debates on the classic agrarian questions in a Marxist political economy tradition in order to move the land grab research agenda towards more conceptually and empirically challenging research questions.

The New Enclosures? Polanyi, international investment law and the global land rush

Seven decades after its first publication, Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation remains one of the most insightful readings about the socioeconomic changes associated with the Industrial Revolution, and the ways in which law facilitated, or countered, moves towards the commodification of land at that time. As today’s global land rush brings competing land claims into contest, new transitions are occurring between more commodified and more ‘socially embedded’ conceptualisations of land. Using Polanyi’s framework, this article analyses the role of international law in these processes. International investment law construes land as a commercial asset, can facilitate access to land for foreign investors and imposes discipline on the exercise of regulatory powers in land matters. But shifts in the political economy that underpins international investment law and growing recourse to international human rights law are creating new opportunities for reflecting the non-commercial (cultural, social, political) relations within which land rights remain embedded in many societies. When contrasting conceptualisations of land collide, the relative strength of legal rights and enforcement mechanisms become particularly important. Ultimately, the legitimacy of international law to mediate between competing land claims will depend on the extent to which it can recognise the multiple values that society attaches to land.

Land Grabbing, Large- and Small-scale Farming: what can evidence and policy from 20th century Africa contribute to the debate?

This article examines the contemporary phenomenon of ‘land grabbing’ in relation to the history of plantation and large- and small-scale farming (pf, lsf and ssf) in sub-Saharan Africa. It looks at the extent of pf and lsf over the 20th century, as well as the policy narratives that have justified, supported or circumscribed their development. Many characteristics of the current land rush and its interpretation reveal elements of continuity with some of the general trends marking the history of pf and lsf up to recent years. In particular, the heterogeneity of pf and lsf, subsuming quite different relations to ssf, and the pivotal role played by the combination of private capital (whether foreign, domestic or combined) with the state represent organisational continuities. Meanwhile continuities in supporting narratives centre on the prevalence of generic prescriptions for either lsf/pf or ssf. Refuting these generic prescriptions is a precondition for more nuanced analysis and policy proposals.

Global land investments in the bio‐economy: evidence and policy implications

AbstractFor countries dependent on agriculture, the recent wave of investor interest in farmland could, in principle, help set in motion a virtuous cycle of economic growth and poverty reduction. A large literature documenting failure of such investments documents the risks involved. To appreciate associated opportunities and challenges, we review past experience, quantify country‐level potential for area expansion versus intensification, and identify determinants of countries’ attractiveness for investors in the initial stages of the “land rush.” The fact that weak land governance seems to increase, rather than reduce, land demand justifies an emphasis on improving institutions, transparency, and accountability while at the same time providing concrete suggestions for policy and research.

Sovereignty, Human Rights and the Global Land Grab

The phenomenon of land grab in recent years has drawn the attention of various interests including international organizations, government and civil society. This is because of the speed at which such large scale acquisition are taking place, the nature of most deals and more importantly the unjustness in which most land deals do not take into consideration the right of the local communities and also small holder farmers. The era of globalization has made it impossible for nations to exist without engaging in some trade or contractual agreement with other state or private investor. States in legitimate exercise of their sovereignty attract foreign investors, but with such right is the responsibility to respect the investor and protect their interests. States also exercise their sovereignty through membership of international organizations, establishment of sovereign wealth funds and direct/indirect support to investors. States pursue commitments at these levels, usually in terms of their national interest. Human rights concerns and their protection guaranteed by numerous international legal instruments are a partial cause of the current trend in global land rush. Before the advent of human rights protection most land acquisitions were based on agreements between parties concerned or were based on the use of force. However, the Charter of the United Nations has frowned against unlawful threat or the use of force against any sovereign state. While land grabs are condemned because of the impact they have on the local population and the environment, it does not change the fact that most land deals are legitimate. It is therefore argued that human rights capture important dimension of the values that are at stake when we discuss or modify the land rights and land use of women, men and children and their should be the focus of states and international organizations in addressing the issue of land grabs.

Legitimizing Accumulation by Dispossession: The State/Capital Nexus in Land-Related Investment Agreements

The notion of land grab has rapidly become a global catch-phrase. As such, the phenomenon is subject to a multitude of interpretations, and at the same time has not been properly unpacked in its being supported and determined by legal means. In the attempt to contribute to a better legal and economic understanding of the global land rush, the present paper underlines the importance to broadly interpret land-grabbing as a contemporary form of massive private accumulation by dispossession of common goods, a mechanism of occupation and transformation of the territory conducted thanks to the essential role of public authority. Moreover, the Author looks at existing investment agreements, and demonstrate that the grabbings are not the consequence of failures or misconducts, but rather the expression of a right to appropriate which is clearly stated in the private-public deal. Law and sovereignty are, therefore, crucial allies of the expansion of an exclusionary model of development, but could also become strong forms of resistance.

The politics of evidence: methodologies for understanding the global land rush

The most recent ‘land rush’ precipitated by the convergent ‘crises’ of fuel, feed and food in 2007–2008 has heightened the debate on the consequences of land investments, with widespread media coverage, policy commentary and civil society engagement. This ‘land rush’ has been accompanied by a ‘literature rush’, with a fast-growing body of reports, articles, tables and books with varied purposes, metrics and methods. Land grabbing, as it is popularly called, is now a hot political topic around the world, discussed amongst the highest circles. This is why getting the facts right is very important and having effective methodologies for doing so is crucial. Several global initiatives have been created to aggregate information on land deals, and to describe their scale, character and distribution. All have contributed to building a bigger (if not always better) picture of the phenomenon, but all have struggled with methodology. This JPS Forum identifies a profound uncertainty about what it is that is being counted, questions the methods used to collate and aggregate ‘land grabs’, and calls for a second phase of land grab research which abandons the aim of deriving total numbers of hectares in favour of more specific, grounded and transparent methods.

The Hidden Grabbing: Large Scale Investments in Land between Accumulation by Dispossession and Tailor-Made Fiscal Havens

The global land rush (land grabbing) is attracting an increasing attention by social movements, NGOs, academics, governments and even international financial institutions. However, the excessive concentration of the debate over the concrete act of enclosing land (and now water) and over the consequences that derive, is obscuring a third form of private accumulation of public value, which equally originates from the ongoing process of global transformation of agrarian structure. Starting from the empirical analysis of the available investment contracts concluded between some peripheral countries and land investors, this article aims at exposing how the combination between their clauses and the surrounding legal architecture is utilized to prevent the target country, but also the rest of the global community, from enjoying a relevant share of the value produced by the grabbed land. Embedded into a continuous legal race to the bottom, land deals impose trivial land rents, tax holidays, low fiscal pressure, and unrestricted mobility of foreign currencies. The space and time of the investment become Special Fiscal Zones, contract-made private havens that represent which should raise deep concerns.

The rush for land in Africa: Resource grabbing or green revolution?

The article details features and implications of the global land rush, with particular focus on Africa. Data and analyses of the ‘Land Matrix’ project help to provide an overview of these land-based investments, while locally implemented case studies in the framework of the ‘Commercial Pressures on Land’ project facilitate the assessment of implications related (or not) to the question of Africa's green revolution. By emphasising the need to go beyond the land acquisition phenomenon and its direct consequences, it re-contextualises the rush for land and relates it to broader dynamics of agrarian transformation in Africa. While the present rush for land may represent a revitalisation of Africa's agricultural sector, it is doubtful that this revolution benefits the continent overall.

Reframing the Land Grab Debate: The Need to Broaden and Deepen the Agenda

Abstract This article does not present new evidence about the land rush, but reveals the urgent need of broadening the debate by including a few key issues that are so far neglected. Transnational land acquisitions are a logical outcome of globalisation and neoliberal policies resulting in processes of disembedding land from local societies. Control over land is decreasingly vested in territorially defined communities or societies, and increasingly dictated by global actors and processes, leading to a patchwork of locally disembedded land holdings responding to different translocal network logics. Global actors play an increasingly important role in reserving spaces for global goods, securing food, preserving biodiversity and mitigating climate change in widely dispersed localities. The resulting fragmentation is not conducive for inclusive and sustainable development at the local level. Findings are based on ongoing research on the consequences of transnational land acquisitions in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Looking back to see forward: the legal niceties of land theft in land rushes

This paper aims to make a modest contribution to an overdue need to locate the current land rush in its historical context, less as a new phenomenon than as a surge in the continuing capture of ordinary people's rights and assets by capital-led and class-creating social transformation. It aims to do so by looking back to earlier land rushes, and particularly to those which have bearing upon sub-Saharan Africa, the site of most large-scale involuntary land loss today. In particular, the paper focuses upon a central tool of land rushes, property law. The core argument made is that land rushes past and present have relied upon legal manipulations which deny that local indigenous (‘customary’) tenures deliver property rights, thereby legalizing the theft of the lands of the poor or subject peoples. Even prior to capitalist transformation this feudal-derived machination was an instrument of aligned class privilege and power, later elaborated to justify mass land and resource capture through colonialism. Now it is routinely embedded in the legal canons of elite-aligned agrarian governance as the means of retaining control over the land resources which rural communities presume are their own.

Large-scale land deals from the inside out: findings from Kenya's Tana Delta

Although there is alarm over the global land rush, many plans for the large-scale transformation of land acquired by investors remain on the drawing board. Based on a study of two land deals in Kenya's Tana Delta, this paper considers the processes by which blueprint designs are amended or delayed through the involvement of local actors. It demonstrates that even top-down acquisition of land by powerful state-linked actors with the support of policy discourse can be stalled by the rural poor, particularly if the latter have strong customary claims and links to wider opposition. At the same time, large-scale land acquisition is not automatically opposed by local people, who may see land deals as an opportunity to safeguard access to resources and to support their development expectations. The paper also suggests that although consultation and the existence of recognised property rights appear to result in fairer project designs, land deals are likely to reflect the decision-making power of an elite that is not fully informed. The conclusion affirms the need for more nuanced, place-based analyses of large-scale land deals, taking into account tenure arrangements, resource access mechanisms, land management discourses and the role of cross-scale agency and alliances in building support for, or opposition to, such deals.

The international political economy of the global land rush: A critical appraisal of trends, scale, geography and drivers

Over the past few years, agribusiness, investment funds and government agencies have been acquiring long-term rights over large areas of farmland in lower income countries. It is widely thought that private sector expectations of higher agricultural commodity prices and government concerns about longer-term food and energy security underpin much recent land acquisition for agricultural investments. These processes are expected to have lasting and far-reaching implications for world agriculture and for livelihoods and food security in recipient countries. This paper critically examines evidence of trends, scale, geography and drivers in the global land rush. While this analysis broadly corroborates some widespread assumptions, it also points to a more complex set of drivers that reflect fundamental shifts in economic and geopolitical relations linking sovereign states, global finance, and agribusiness through to local groups. Only a solid understanding of these fundamental drivers can help identify levers and pressure points for policy responses to address the challenges raised by large-scale land acquisitions.

Land and Territory: Meanings of Land between Modernity and Tradition

The recent ‘land rush’ reinforces the historical struggles for land and territory in the fight for a place to dwell and work, beyond the questions of land exchange value and price. The resistance of peasants and traditional communities against processes of expropriation give rise to new theoretical challenges and perspectives in the discussion of the importance of land and territory. Along with it, recent changes in the representations of space (and time) have established new relations between the local and global dimensions, and have yielded new meanings to these historical struggles for land in connection with territorial rights. The present article seeks to understand the processes of reinventing rural space, which are taking place in the struggle for land as a place to be, to dwell and to work in the Brazilian countryside.

Energy transitions and the global land rush: Ultimate drivers and persistent consequences

While the recent emergence of a global land rush has initiated large debates and conflicts over the use and access to land, further investigation into the underlying drivers is required to enhance the understanding of the potential trajectories of the land grab phenomenon. This paper takes a biophysical perspective and explores how declining fossil stocks and a global transition towards renewable energies ultimately drive the land rush. The paper addresses, in qualitative terms, how societal needs for land change with different patterns of societal energy metabolism. The potential spatial expansions of renewables are illustrated in quantitative terms, based on the power density concept and energy provision forecasts for the year 2020. The transition from an energy system based on fossils stocks, with high power densities, to one based on renewables, with low power densities, drastically boosts societal demand for land. This drives the land rush directly through land acquisitions for the expansion of energy systems. The energy transition also drives the land rush indirectly, in particular through food security threats motivated by the growing competition over farmland uses and changes in crop supply. Although currently fossil stocks are still relatively abundant, future declines are expected to trigger the demand for land to even greater extents. Given the inevitability of the energy transition, we believe that the land rush will have persistence, bearing long-term consequences for land use and struggles over access to land.