Transnational Land Research Articles

“Go Back To Where You Came From!”: Moral Economy of Land and the Politics of Belonging in Coastal Tanzania☆

AbstractThis article examines how the threat of eviction by a transnational land deal in coastal Tanzania shaped competing narratives with which longtime residents and migrants defended and legitimated the moral economy of land: a widely shared customary norm that land belonged to those who cleared, occupied, and used it continuously for their daily provisioning, with or without title deeds. To counter the state's claim that all villagers were “invaders,” long‐term residents appealed to their ethnic and ancestral connections to the land, while migrants invoked a broader idiom of agrarian citizenship that placed land entitlements at the heart of rural people's relationship with the state. Despite this divergence, nervousness similarly pervaded both group's narratives, due in part to the instability of the notion of ethnicity and autochthony in coastal Tanzania and people's historically informed sense of foreboding about state‐sanctioned dispossession. The article draws on the analytic of assemblage to advance a more relational and dynamic understanding of the co‐construction and performance of moral economy and rural identity. Analyzing how villagers imagine and articulate their identities, and how discourses of exclusion and belonging get deployed in conjunctures of displacement is critical to understanding the socio‐material realities of rural life in Tanzania today.

Making concessions pay? Historical vs. potential tax revenues from Laos’s rubber sector

Under-taxation has been a prominent feature of the global land rush, figuring centrally in early concerns that transnational land deals constitute a new round of land grabbing rather than a source of productive investment. In the years since, however, under-taxation has been widely ignored in subsequent literature on state land concessions in the agri-plantation sector across the global South. To address this gap, this paper draws on ongoing research in Laos, where improved concession inventory efforts have helped stimulate a wide-ranging debate (both in and out of government) about the country’s still-opaque processes of concession taxation. We use the rubber sector to examine a pair of concession-taxation strategies that have been pursued to varying degrees both in Laos and more broadly: taxing land from the time it is alienated to a concessionaire (a land fee model), and taxing the resource itself – in this case rubber plantations – from the time they become productive (a royalty model). Using a quantitative-geographic approach enabled by Laos’s recently updated land concession inventory, we estimate potential tax revenues from rubber plantations under four taxation regimes that were deployed in various parts of the country over the last decade and a half: two of each type, with each type including higher and lower per-unit variants. Our analysis of the space of potential taxation implies significant opportunity costs inherent in the status-quo approach to taxation, which we discuss via the example of unaddressed need for concession-related compensation. Especially at the higher-end range, where taxation potentials total in the tens of millions of dollars per year, we find that Laos’s rubber-concession landscape has significant potential to help address this issue. To the degree that under-taxation is addressed in the future, however, new concession-tax revenues will increasingly be subject to spending demands from outside the rubber sector.

The new abnormal: Identifying and ranking anomalies in the land trade market.

Large-scale national and transnational commercial land transactions, or Large-Scale Land Acquisitions (LSLAs), have been gaining a lot of academic attention since the late 2000s and since the reported rush for land, resulting in turn from an increase in demand for arable land. If many data exist to characterize land deals, the analysis of investment networks remain limited and predominantly portrays power asymmetries between countries from the Global North investing in the Global South. The aim of this work is to perform a deeper investigation on the land trade market, specifically focusing on cases that do not follow such narratives. For instance, almost 25% of the countries included in the transnational land trade network do not follow a strict investor/target dichotomy, thus being characterized by a double role, i.e., they both acquire and cede land in the transnational context. In order to globally acknowledge for what was currently considered as abnormal cases, we model open access data about LSLAs extracted from the Land Matrix Initiative (LMI) open-access database into a network graph, and adapt an eigenvector based centrality method originally conceived for online social networks, namely LurkerRank, to identify and rank anomalous profiles in the land trade market. We take into account three different network snapshots: a multi-sector network (including all the transnational deals in the LMI database), and three networks referring to specific investment sectors (agriculture,mines and biofuels). Experimental results show that emerging economies (e.g., China and Malaysia) play a central role in the land trade market, by creating alternative dynamics that escape the classic North/South one. Our analyses also show how African countries that are often seen as targets of land trade transactions in a specific sector, may often acquire foreign land in the context of investments in the same sector (i.e., Zimbabwe for biofuels and the Democratic Republic of Congo for the mining sector).

Competition for water induced by transnational land acquisitions for agriculture

The ongoing agrarian transition from smallholder farming to large-scale commercial agriculture promoted by transnational large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) often aims to increase crop yields through the expansion of irrigation. LSLAs are playing an increasingly prominent role in this transition. Yet it remains unknown whether foreign LSLAs by agribusinesses target areas based on specific hydrological conditions and whether these investments compete with the water needs of existing local users. Here we combine process-based crop and hydrological modelling, agricultural statistics, and georeferenced information on individual transnational LSLAs to evaluate emergence of water scarcity associated with LSLAs. While conditions of blue water scarcity already existed prior to land acquisitions, these deals substantially exacerbate blue water scarcity through both the adoption of water-intensive crops and the expansion of irrigated cultivation. These effects lead to new rival water uses in 105 of the 160 studied LSLAs (67% of the acquired land). Combined with our findings that investors target land with preferential access to surface and groundwater resources to support irrigation, this suggests that LSLAs often appropriate water resources to the detriment of local users.

Strategic spatial planning in emerging land-use frontiers: evidence from Mozambique

Land-use frontiers are territories with abundant land for agriculture and forestry, availability of natural resources relative to labor or capital and predisposed to rapid land-use change, often driven by large-scale land investments and capitalized actors, producing commodities for distal markets. Strategic spatial planning (SSP) represents a consolidated long-term governance practice across high- and low-income countries. One of the objectives of SSP processes is to articulate a more coherent and future-oriented spatial logic for the sustainability of land-use patterns and typologies, natural-resources protection, and investments. SSP may thus constitute a useful approach in addressing some of the challenges affecting land governance in frontier settings; to date, its potential contribution to land-use frontiers lacks explicit exploration. In this paper, we examine how SSP can play a role in governing land-use frontiers through a case-study analysis of Mozambique as an emerging frontier, located on the southeast coast of Africa. We gathered empirical evidence by interviewing experts involved in resource management, territorial planning, and development in the country. The theoretical spine of the paper builds on the literature focusing on land-use challenges and SSP. We show that emerging land-use frontiers face several challenges, such as transnational land deals and the intensification of commercial plantations. Interview data show that several structural factors are hindering the establishment of a long-term territorial development strategy. These are, among others, the short-termism of political cycles and the absence of a long-term strategic vision. Our analysis reveals that SSP processes could contribute to addressing land-use challenges in frontier contexts, such as poverty traps and land degradation spirals, should various local and distant actors join forces and marry interests. We conclude by presenting a systematic rationale, explaining how SSP could play a role in governing land-use frontiers, with a view to promoting the well-being and sustainability of rural communities.

Commons grabbing and agribusiness: Violence, resistance and social mobilization

The recent phenomenon of large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) is associated with what has been described as a global agrarian transition. New forms of land exploitation and concentration have led to profound socio-environmental transformations of rural production systems in Latin America, South-East Asia and Sub Saharan Africa. Scholars have pointed out that the expansion of transnational land investments is often associated with detrimental social outcomes, has negative environmental impacts and can represent a potential impediment to the achievement of many SDGs. In this paper, our primary concern is on the mounting evidence that LSLAs preferentially target the commons, in the process altering long-standing customary resource governance systems. While it has been shown that in many instances of commons grabbing associated with LSLAs, different types of social conflict emerge, it is less clear what forms of social mobilization and organized collective re-actions are taking place to defend the commons and contest such processes of dispossession and enclosure. The main aim of this contribution is to fill this gap by synthesizing and describing the different typologies of social mobilization and collective re-actions that emerge as a result of commons grabbing associated with the transnational expansion of the agribusiness frontier. In order to do this our research synthesizes information from the Environmental Justice Atlas (EJAtlas) shedding light on some of the key characteristics associated with the different forms and dynamics of social mobilization that are organized in reaction to agribusiness-related commons grabbing.

Transnational land and property disputes: the British-Bangladeshi experience

ABSTRACT This article examines the issue of ongoing transnational tensions and disputes around land and property ownership that the members of the British-Bangladeshi diaspora are encountering in rural Sylhet, their origin region in their home country. While the existing literature on transnational communities documents migrants’ land-purchasing and house-building practices in their country of origin, too often in a celebratory way, the material disputes and tensions that arise from these investments, and their effect on transnational personal, familial and social relationships, have yet to be exposed. For British Bangladeshis, these disputes are rife and in some cases are being articulated through intimidation and even violence. My research suggests that these evolving phenomena of land and property disputes threaten to disrupt the transnational relationships that were established and maintained by one generation after another.

Impact of transnational land acquisitions on local food security and dietary diversity

Foreign investors have acquired approximately 90 million hectares of land for agriculture over the past two decades. The effects of these investments on local food security remain unknown. While additional cropland and intensified agriculture could potentially increase crop production, preferential targeting of prime agricultural land and transitions toward export-bound crops might affect local access to nutritious foods. We test these hypotheses in a global systematic analysis of the food security implications of existing land concessions. We combine agricultural, remote sensing, and household survey data (available in 11 sub-Saharan African countries) with georeferenced information on 160 land acquisitions in 39 countries. We find that the intended changes in cultivated crop types generally imply transitions toward energy-rich, but nutrient-poor, crops that are predominantly destined for export markets. Specific impacts on food production and access vary substantially across regions. Deals likely have little effect on food security in eastern Europe and Latin America, where they predominantly occur within agricultural areas with current export-oriented crops, and where agriculture would have both expanded and intensified regardless of the land deals. This contrasts with Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where deals are associated with both an expansion and intensification (in Asia) of crop production. Deals in these regions also shift production away from local staples and coincide with a gradually decreasing dietary diversity among the surveyed households in sub-Saharan Africa. Together, these findings point to a paradox, where land deals can simultaneously increase crop production and threaten local food security.

Free in the mountains or home in the vineyard: Institutional changes in agriculture and negotiating between contract farm labour and valuable fungi collection in Tibet

AbstractThis paper evaluates how Tibetan farming communities choose between two methods of livelihood production: working as labourers on vineyard land they have leased to a French winery or collecting valuable fungi. I argue new transnational land and labour management, as part of institutional rearrangements in land tenure, are leading to significant changes with mixed benefits for rural farming communities. These communities respond by seasonally seeking freedom from capitalist labour and returning to communal forms of income production based around community land tenure and common‐pool resources. Although villagers have become contracted labour, they choose to escape this new agricultural work in the mountains, collecting fungi together as a community. The common‐pool land on which fungi are collected is also managed for access in a specific way by and for the community. Contrary to agricultural labour for the winery, fungi collection creates a chance for people to interact once again more as a cohesive community as they once did in their fields by collecting a commodity from land controlled by the community. The disembedding of one section of the economy has thus in a way reinforced the embeddedness of social relations in another as a coping mechanism for the former.

Drivers and challenges for transnational land–water–food investments by the Middle East and North Africa region

AbstractOver the last decade, transnational land–water investments in farmlands abroad by the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) economies have been adopted as an alternative strategy to address water–food scarcity and security narratives. Large‐scale land acquisitions in farmlands abroad are often attributed to the food and fuel crisis of 2007/8 and 2010/11. Land–water investments entail several drivers and challenges in light of demographic growth trends, physical water stress, commodity market fluctuations, food sovereignty concerns, and climate change uncertainties across diverse countries of the MENA region. Despite the ongoing reliance on virtual water trade to secure their food needs, transnational investments were adopted by MENA economies as an alternative strategy for water–food security. From a political economy standpoint, such investments are founded on state‐capital alliances to achieve both; profit as well as larger strategic objectives. Critical literature attempted to unpack transnational land–water investments through different analytical lenses including accumulation by dispossession, resources grabs, nexus, and water security mercantilism. Yet, the materialization of the investments on the ground go beyond these debates, and is often associated with challenges related to infrastructure, energy, investment climate, labor, as well as other environmental, social, and sovereign risks. Most importantly, land–water–food investments may also entail hydropolitical risks on local, national, and transboundary levels.This article is categorized under:Human Water > Water GovernanceEngineering Water > Planning Water

Transnational land investment web: land grabs, TNCs, and the challenge of global governance

ABSTRACTDespite international media’s waning attention, research and political debates on global land grabbing have not subsided. We argue the importance of understanding the ‘transnational land investment web’ of corporate and state actors and institutions, which are not always immediately visible. Focusing on transnational corporations (TNCs) based in the European Union (EU), we examine five sets of actors and institutional spheres through which these actors are able to grab lands beyond Europe. It is crucial to understand these not as individual sets of actors or institutions, but as interconnected sets, comprising a web. These are EU-based: (1) Private companies using regular institutional platforms; (2) Finance capital companies; (3) Public–private partnerships; (4) Development Finance Institutions; and (5) Companies using EU policies to gain control of land through the supply chain. One implication of this complex web is that democratic governance in the context of land grabs becomes an even more daunting challenge.

Transnational land acquisitions beyond the food and financial crises

Large-scale land acquisitions (LSLA) in resource-rich countries came to global attention after the food and financial crises of 2008. Previous research has assessed the magnitude of these land investments in terms of land areas acquired. In this study, we analyze the trends in the evolution of LSLA by framing the latter as virtual land trade network with land transactions occurring between 2000 and 2015, in order to shed light on the development and evolution of this system. Based on an index we introduce to represent both the number of countries and size of deals, we discover three main phases of trade activity: a steady increase from 2000 until 2007 (Phase 1) followed by a peak coinciding with the food and financial crises between 2008 and 2010 (Phase 2) and concluded by a decline from 2011 to 2015 (Phase 3). We identify 73 countries that remained active in land trading during all three phases and form a core of land traders much larger than previously thought. Using network analysis methods, we group countries with similar trade patterns into categories of competitive, preferential, diversified, and occasional importers or exporters. Finally, in exploring the changes in investors and their interests in land throughout the phases, we attribute the evolution of LSLA to the different stages in the globalization and financialization of different industries. By showing that land investments seem fully integrated as investment strategies across industries we argue for the urgency of better regulation of LSLA so that they also benefit local populations without damaging the environment regardless of their primary purpose.

Capital has no homeland: The formation of transnational producer cohorts in South America’s commodity frontiers

Most of today’s agricultural frontiers in the Global South involve large-scale agricultural companies operating across borders. While much has been written on large-scale land acquisitions and their social and ecological consequences, there is a relative lack of theoretically-informed empirical research on the decision-making of the actors driving these acquisitions. In this paper, I use the case of soy and cattle frontiers in the Gran Chaco and Chiquitano woodlands of Paraguay and Bolivia to explore the mechanisms behind such transnational land acquisitions. In particular, I draw attention to the formation of “cohorts” of agricultural producers from a common origin who acquire land in the same destinations. Based on interviews with farmers and key informants and drawing from literature on agricultural frontiers, international migration, and herding behavior, I discuss the role of structural and agent-level factors in the formation and evolution of these cohorts from the early 1990s to the 2010s. In particular, I explore the importance of social dynamics, specifically network effects and herd effects, in shaping the development of these frontiers.

Access and exclusion: case of transnational ‘land grabbing’ in Pakistan

In recent years, hundreds of thousands of hectares of land in developing countries is being granted to the governments and private investors of developed countries through leases, land purchase and contract farming. Based on the notion of ‘power of exclusion’ this paper explores the process and identifies which social class has more access to new income generating opportunities and who is excluded in the context of transnational land acquisition in Sindh province of Pakistan. Quantitative and qualitative data shows that poor segments of society such as previous land user, women, agricultural labor and landless farmers were the most excluded groups regarding TLA process and associated benefits while elite social groups such as land leaser/politicians and some irrigation department officials have increased access to positive outcomes of transnational land acquisition. Decreasing in the acreages under food crops also have a detrimental impact on local food security.

Claim-making in transnational land deals: Discourses of legitimation and stakeholder relations in central Uganda

Land relations and contestation over land control in Uganda are deeply embedded in socio-historical struggles for legitimacy, identity, and belonging. While contemporary processes of land governance reform attempt to address increasing pressures on land with technocratic, administrative, and legal solutions, these approaches fail to take into consideration stakeholder dynamics underlying land claims. Within the context of rising volumes of transnational land acquisitions and corresponding increase in land-related conflicts, this research investigates the processes by which various actors seek to legitimise their claims over land at the local level. Drawing on empirical research into four transnational land deals in central Uganda, we examine everyday practices of claim-making through the study of discursive legitimation and stakeholder interactions. Land deals are thus conceptualised as ‘zones of intermediality’ where various claims are mediated at the intersection between references, practices, and discourses of local and external actors. We conclude that understanding patterns of stakeholder discourses and dynamics of interaction can provide critical insights into the role of claim-making in shaping practices and outcomes of land access and control.

Transnational Migrants, Land and New Investment Hubs in African Cities

Intensifi ed and competing claims over land are crucial to understanding current urban transformations in Africa. This paper aims to highlight the role of transnational migrants in urban land investments and claim making on urban land. While the relationship between urbanization in Africa and migration has long been a focus of research and policy, att ention had mainly focused on the intertwinement between rising urbanization and the infl ux of rural migrants, internally displaced people (IDPs) and refugees struggling to survive and gain access to urban space and services. More recently, the African city has gained a more positive image as a consequence of Africa's economic boom and has come to be seen as a pillar of development, rather than a place of chaos and poverty. In this 'urban turn' in development thinking and concomitant technocratic and infrastructural policy approaches, the link between urbanization and migration has been largely overlooked. We argue, however, that transnational migrants in particular are an important category in claim-making processes over urban land and real estate and add to these in specifi c ways. Using case studies in Khartoum and Dakar, we investigate the ways in which transnational migrants contribute to speculation, rising land values and processes of socio-spatial inclusion and exclusion. Rather than making a comparative analysis, we use two concrete cases to gain an empirical understanding of the processes associated with these diaspora investments, including the question of whether these transnational migrants can be considered as contributing to urban 'land grabs' or not.

Impact of Government Policies and Corporate Land Grabs on Indigenous People’s Access to Common Lands and Livelihood Resilience in Northeast Cambodia

Cambodia has become a principal target of transnational (and domestic) land grabs over the past decade, mostly in the form of economic land concessions (ELCs). The northeastern part of the country—where the majority of Cambodia’s indigenous people reside—is a particular hotspot. In this article, we discuss three policy mechanisms that the Cambodian government has employed to extend and legitimize land exclusions in the name of national economic development through the example of two indigenous villages in Srae Preah Commune, Mondulkiri Province. First, we show how the allocation of two ELCs has deprived indigenous communities of their communally managed land. Second, we examine how communal land titling processes have failed to provide indigenous villagers with effective legal mechanisms to counteract ELCs and land encroachment by internal migrants. Third, we elucidate how the promotion of cash crop production contributed to livelihood and land use transitions from a reliance on forest resources in 2003 to a dependence on cash crops in 2012 to a struggle to remain resilient amid a slump in crop prices in 2018. We conclude that the combination of these policies has undermined communal ownership and livelihood resilience under a situation of limited exit strategies.

Accessing African Farmlands: Discourses and Practices of Transnational Land Acquisitions in Central Uganda

The surge in international interest in and acquisitions of African farmland has received considerable attention in the last decade. An equally growing body of research has attempted to explore explanatory pathways, or drivers of the phenomenon from both a local and global perspectives. But how do these land deals actually occur? There is still insufficient understanding of the strategies of access and processes of acquisition deployed by transnational actors. Using findings from five years of empirical research in central Uganda on Chinese, Indian and Norwegian owned farms, this paper analyses the discourses and practices of land acquisition deployed by transnational investors and examines how these strategies shape the process and determine the outcomes of land deals at the local level. Findings show that investors construct multiple narratives at various times and selectively deploy them in pursuit of specific interests. Careful alignment with global developmental thinking designed to attract funding and synchronizing with local policy priorities to attain access show mixed results. Cultivation of local patronage networks are predominant pathways of access, but these are fraught with risks occasioned by socio-political heterogeneity and shifting power relations across multiple levels. I argue that the identity and experiences of the investors, and their dexterity in navigating the complex diversity of local contexts are important factors that shape the processes and outcomes of transnational land deals at the local level.

Dynamics of the North–South Capital Flows or Rise of South–South Land Deals? Features of Land Acquisition in Ethiopia

AbstractTransnational land deals are among the most contested but inadequately understood topics. In this paper, we focus on the features of large‐scale transnational land deals (LSTLDs) in the Global South through an examination of Ethiopia. We apply a mixed method (qualitative and quantitative) research design.Results indicate that in 2005–2015, the government leased nearly 2·47 million ha of the country's approximate total 114 million ha area and offered 11·5 million ha of cultivable land to domestic and transnational investors. We explore the prevalence of LSTLDs deals by companies of the Global South, particularly entrepreneurs from India. Ethiopia's example validates emerging arguments on the rise of South–South investment deals rather than the established explanation of North–South capital flows. However, 75% of the land deals show poor performance. The study shows that LSTLDs have contributed to raising domestic agricultural production but have resulted in non‐performing loans of the banks of the host country. In sum, the land deals have resulted in financial grabbing, where Ethiopian banks end up with non‐performing loans and then must chase investors to settle the approximate €791 million in loans that investors borrowed for their projects. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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.