LDPI Working Paper 50
by Rob Cramb

Full title: Women, Gender and Protest Emergence – Contesting Oil Palm Plantation Expansion in Sambas District, Indonesia

LDPI Working Paper 49
by Miranda Morgan

Full title: The political value of land, remittances and a possible case of land grabbing – The case of an indigenous village in Oaxaca, Mexico

LDPI Working Paper 48
by Iván Sandoval Cervantes

Full title: Processes of land accumulation and patterns of labour mobility in large-scale oil palm smallholding schemes in Indonesia

LDPI Working Paper 47
by Jean-François Bissonnette

LDPI Working Paper 46
by Mathieu Boche and Ward Anseeuw

Full title: Impact of Restrictive Legislation and Popular Opposition Movements on Foreign Land Investments in Brazil – The Case of the Forestry and Pulp Paper Sector and Stora Enso

LDPI Working Paper 45
by Debora Lerrer and John Wilkinson

LDPI Working Paper 44
by Clifford Andrew Welch

Full title: The drive for accumulation – Environmental contestation and agrarian support to Mexico’s oil palm expansion

LDPI Working Paper 43
by Antonio Castellanos-Navarrete and Kees Jansen

LDPI Working Paper 42
by Bradley Wilson

Full title: Small Farm Holders’ Response to the Global Land Deals in Benin – The role of international solidarity linkages

LDPI Working Paper 41
by Paulette Nonfodji

Full title: Land for agricultural development in the era of ‘land grabbing’ – A spatial exploration of the ‘marginal lands’ narrative in contemporary Ethiopia

LDPI Working Paper 40
by Rachel A Nalepa

Full title: Challenging the dominant assumptions about peasants’ responses to land grabbing – ‘Politics from below’ in Ukraine

LDPI Working Paper 39
by Natalia Mamonova

Full title: Financializing Prairie farmland – Farmland investment funds and the restructuring of family farming systems in central Canada

LDPI Working Paper 38
by Melanie Sommerville

Full title: The Formalization Fix? Land titling, state land concessions, and the politics of geographical transparency in contemporary Cambodia

LDPI Working Paper 37
by Michael B Dwyer

LDPI Working Paper 36
by Hossein Azadi and Ali Akbar Barati

Full title: Understanding forms of contention in the post-Soviet setting – Rural responses to Chinese land investments in Tajikistan

LDPI Working Paper 35
by Irna Hoffman

LDPI Working Paper 34
by Jessica Millgroom

Full title: Creating a Zambian Breadbasket – ‘Land grabs’ and foreign investments in agriculture in Mkushi District

LDPI Working Paper 33
by Jessica M Chu

LDPI Working Paper 32
by Ana Sofia Ganho

Full title: Foreign land deals in Tanzania – An update and a critical view on the challenges of data (re)production

LDPI Working Paper 31
by Emmanuel Sulle

Full title: An investigation of the political economy of land grabs in Malawi – The case of Kasinthula Cane Growers Limited (KCGL)

LDPI Working Paper 30
by Michael Chasukwa

LDPI Working Paper 29
by Phil René Oyono

LDPI Working Paper 28
by Kerstin Nolte and Lieske Voget-Kleschin

LDPI Working Paper 27
by Sarah Ruth Sippel

Full title: The land of our ancestors: Property rights, social resistance, and alternatives to land grabbing in Madagascar

LDPI Working Paper 26
Benjamin D. Neimark

LDPI Working Paper 25
Muriel Côte

Full title: Gaining neighbours or big losers – what happened when large-scale, land-based investment in the Ghanaian oil palm sector met the local population on the ground?

LDPI Working Paper 24
Susanne Johanna Väth

Full title: Shifting the debate about ‘responsible soy’ production in Paraguay:  A critical analysis of five claims about environmental, economic, and social sustainability

LDPI Working Paper 23
Laureen Elgert

LDPI Working Paper 22
Justa Mayra Hopma

LDPI Working Paper 21
Alice Kelly

Full title: “I Would Rather Have My Land Back”: Subaltern Voices and Corporate/State Land Grab in the Save Valley

LDPI Working Paper 20
E. Kushinga Makombe

Full title: Land Grabbing along Livestock Migration Routes in Gadarif State, Sudan: Impacts on Pastoralism and the Environment

LDPI Working Paper 19
Hussein M. Sulieman

Full title: Upheaval in Chinese Villages: A Case Study of Rural Land Expropriation for “Large-Scale” Commercial Farming in Rural China

LDPI Working Paper 18
Kan Liu

LDPI Working Paper 17
Jacobo Grajales

Full title: Consolidating land, consolidating control: state-facilitated ‘agricultural investment’ through the ‘Green Revolution’ in Rwanda

LDPI Working Paper 16
Chris Huggins

LDPI Working Paper 15
Christine Noe

Full title: The social and environmental implications of urbanization strategies and domestic land grabbing in China: The case of Chongming Island

LDPI Working Paper 14
Giuseppina Siciliano

Full title: Postponed Local Concerns? Implications of Land Acquisitions for Indigenous Local Communities in Benishangul-Gumuz Regional State, Ethiopia

LDPI Working Paper 13
by Tsegaye Moreda

LDPI Working Paper 12
by Sèdagban Hygin F. Kakai

This paper tries to explain the land problem in terms of the corruption of the urban elites, the policy brokers and, more generally, the players in the political arena. Indeed, in the context of democratising African States such as Benin, corruption has become a social phenomenon, as has the exercise of political power. There is almost no political system that is free from corruption scandals, where the economy in general and the rural economy in particular has not been pillaged. Land corruption is equally well organised in the corridors of power at local, intermediate and central level. Indeed we could talk about a ‘chain of corruption’ for land. From the viewpoint of public action, this paper offers an empirical definition of land corruption and a typology of players. It studies the major trends and the critical uncertainties surrounding this phenomenon, i.e. using land as an object of political clientelism. It also explores the future prospects for land in the face of land corruption, and the possible mechanisms for escaping the crisis.

Full title: The mining-conservation nexus: Rio Tinto, development ‘gifts’ and contested compensation in Madagascar

LDPI Working Paper 11
by Caroline Seagle

his paper traces a genealogy of land access and legitimisation strategies culminating in the recent convergence of multinational mining and conservation in southeast Madagascar. Drawing on empirical research carried out on the Rio Tinto/QMM ilmenite mine in Fort Dauphin, it focuses on how local Malagasy land users are incorporated into new forms of inclusion (into the neoliberal capitalist economy) and exclusion (from land-based, subsistence activities) resulting from private sector engagement in conservation. Various material impacts of the mine were inverted and remediated to global audiences as necessary to sustainable development and biodiversity conservation. By financing, partnering with and participating in the same land access markets as international conservation NGOs, and setting aside small ‘conservation enclaves’ in each mining site, Rio Tinto/QMM legitimise mining in situ despite the negative socio-environmental consequences for the Malagasy. Mining–conservation partnerships may fail to adequately address — and ultimately exclude — the needs of people affected by the mines.

LDPI Working Paper 10
by Martin Keulertz

This study analyses the political, economic and social impacts of the land and ‘virtual water’ grab in Southern Sudan. The ‘virtual water’ concept, which explains the absence of water wars through water embedded in agricultural imports, has been a major breakthrough in the study of the Middle Eastern water question. This paper shows how agricultural commodities in the form of virtual water are at the heart of Middle Eastern investors’ interests. The paper sheds light on investments in Southern Sudan, which are a form of water arbitrage by investing countries. The virtual extension of the investing countries’ Lebensraum into the recipient countries is part of a ‘new scramble’ over African resources — namely water resources. However, the risks of such investment activities lie in the social and environmental sphere with tribal conflicts and poor soil quality.

Full title: Conservation and ecotourism on privatised land in the Mara, Kenya: The case of conservancy land leases

LDPI Working Paper 9
by Claire Bedelian

This paper investigates private sector investment in conservation and ecotourism through conservancy land leases in the Mara region of Kenya. In a recent and growing tourism development, groups of Maasai landowners are leasing their parcels of land to tourism investors and forming wildlife conservancies. The paper examines this new conservation and ecotourism model and the implications it has for Maasai livelihoods and the environment. The subdivision of Kenya’s rangelands has tended to benefit elites, and as a consequence this trend is reinforced in land-based schemes such as these. Given the large extent and recent change in ownership in these areas, land leases do however keep the lands they cover together and are potentially an optimistic outlook for such open rangeland areas. Consideration however must be given to adjacent areas and communities that may face the negative knock on effects of such schemes. The Mara is a unique area in terms of its tourism and wildlife, so land leases may not be able to offer as much to landowners in other areas, or be financially sustainable across vast areas. However, within the Mara, land leases have been rapidly expanded upon, implying that similar schemes might be of interest to both investors and communities alike in other wildlife areas.

Gendered Dimensions of Land and Rural Livelihoods: The Case of New Settler Farmer Displacement at Nuanetsi Ranch, Mwenezi District, Zimbabwe

LDPI Working Paper 8
by Patience Mutopo

Nuanetsi Ranch had been invaded by villagers from different parts of Mwenezi, Chiredzi and Chivi communal areas since 2000. In February 2010, the government announced that the settlers had to be removed and resettled in other ’uncontested lands’ in the area, compromising their rights to sustainable livelihoods, human development and land acquisition. The perceptions of the men and women resident at Chigwizi has had a bearing on understanding the nature of gendered land and rural livelihoods in the context of biofuel production in Zimbabwe, after fast track land reform.

Full title: Agricultural land acquisition by foreign investors in Pakistan: Government policy and community responses

LDPI Working Paper 7
by Antonia Settle

This paper explores the Pakistani government’s 2009 agricultural investment policy package — a response to increasing foreign investor interest in agricultural land — and considers the likely implications for local communities. By analysing the policy pertaining to the categories of cultivated and uncultivated land, the paper explores possible consequences that peasant farming communities and grazing communities face. The policy’s dependence on arbitrary and anti-poor colonial-era laws and processes places the policy squarely in established centre–periphery relations rooted by colonial-era politics of land ownership. Thus, the offer of agricultural land to foreign investors is both an unprecedented international land grab and a development in ongoing land appropriation by influential people through state apparatuses, continuous with colonial practices. This in turn has spurred community responses within the same dynamic of colonially rooted centre–periphery conflict; community responses revolve around various ethnic separatist movements that originated in earlier colonial politics. Apart from the precarious balance of social and economic power in Pakistan — evident in the making and implications of the agricultural investment policy — the findings point to an urgent need for the Pakistani government to address environmental and food security issues.

LDPI Working Paper 6
by Christopher PI Mahonge

This study aimed to gain insight into how land deals have affected traditional Tanzanian land-based interactions and networks, and what coping mechanisms those affected have deployed. Case studies of land deal transactions — in both the Kisarawe district, in the Coast region and the Same district in the Kilimanjaro region —show the impact of cultivating bio-energy crops on traditional land. While the Same district employed an out-grower model to cultivate biofuel, Kisarawe district adopted the plantation approach. Traditional land governance systems and actors are affected differently by out-grower and plantation biofuel production models; the plantation model leads to traditional land governance frameworks being totally dismantled, while the out-grower model has insignificant impact on traditional land governance systems. For both models, laws and guidelines governing biofuel cultivation are ineffective: plantation and out-grower biofuel cultivation exacerbates a vicious cycle of poverty and environmental degradation. More research in other socio-ecological environments is necessary to understand broader interactions between land deals and traditional governance systems, and then to develop concrete, sound guidelines to govern foreign, national and local institutional actors involved in land deals.

Full title: Who Gets the Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production?: Biomass Distribution & the ‘Sugar Economy’ in the Tana Delta, Kenya

LDPI Working Paper 5
by Leah Temper

In this article we focus on the connection between purchases of land and the emerging ‘biomass-economy’, analysing biomass distribution in a region targeted for land-grabbing in order to understand the process from both bio-physical and political ecological perspectives. We narrow the focus down to a case study in the Tana Delta, Kenya, one of the new commodity frontiers in the recent large-scale land acquisitions, employing an indicator derived from social metabolism analysis — the Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production (HANPP). This allows us to examine biomass flows in the Delta, combining a biophysical perspective with a political-ecology analysis of the interests, stakes and power politics in the delta. The first section introduces the conceptual tools and theoretical framework, expanding on the concept of the ‘sugar economy’ as a socio-metabolic transition, and material and energy flow analysis (MEFA) as valuable instruments in gauging sustainability and potential sites of conflict over biomass. The second section contextualises the case study of the Tana Delta in Kenya as a site of conflict over biological resources through an analysis of property rights and historical dynamics. The third section presents the results of the analysis of biomass distribution. The fourth and fifth sections offer discussion of the results and the conclusions.

LDPI Working Paper 4
by David K Deng

Sudan is among the global ‘hotspots’ for large-scale land acquisitions. Although most of this investment activity was thought to be focused in the Northern part of the country, recent research indicates that a surprising number of large-scale land acquisitions have also taken place in the South in recent years. Now that the Southern Sudanese have opted for independence in the 2011 referendum on self-determination, investment activity will likely increase further. This paper presents preliminary data concerning large-scale land acquisitions in two of the ‘Green Belt’ states of Southern Sudan: Central Equatoria and Western Equatoria. It explores the concept ‘land belongs to the community’; a statement communities have take up in their demand for greater involvement in decision-making regarding community lands. It also examines processes of company–community engagement and the extent to which rural communities are being involved in investment projects. Finally, the paper presents a number of case studies that illustrate the complex interplay between cultural sovereignty, conflict, and post-war reconstruction in Southern Sudan. It concludes with recommendations for the government moving forward.

LDPI Working Paper 3
by Bliss J; Guillozet K

Foreign investment in Ethiopia’s forestry sector is currently limited, but agricultural investments that affect forests — largely through forest clearing — are commonplace, but there are challenges and opportunities in implementing them. Given the key role forests play in rural livelihoods, new tenure arrangements will have significant implications for communities located at the forest–farm interface. We use evidence from a case study in the Arsi Forest area of Oromia Regional State to examine historic and contemporary forest benefit distributions and investigate the potential for conflict over competing forest access claims associated with new investments.

LDPI Working Paper 2
by Lavers, T.

Recent foreign agricultural investment in Africa has generated a great deal of interest and criticism, with western media warning of a neo-colonial ‘land grab’. This paper moves beyond this narrow assessment by examining the political and social dynamics of foreign agricultural investment in Ethiopia, a country that has figured prominently in recent debates. The paper links macro-level analysis regarding the types of projects and their role in the Ethiopian economy to case studies of investments at the micro-level, which examine changing patterns of land use and implications for displacement, employment and technology transfer. The paper concludes that the expansion of foreign investment in Ethiopia is part of a government move towards an export-led development strategy. As such, macro-benefits in terms of increased foreign exchange earnings come at the cost of increased micro-level risks to those living near new investments, in particular, politically marginalised pastoral populations in remote regions.

Full title: Commercial Biofuel Land Deals & Environment and Social Impact Assessments in Africa: Three case studies in Mozambique and Sierra Leone

LDPI Working Paper 1
by Andrew M; van Vlaenderen H

This paper examines three case studies of proposed biofuel developments in Mozambique and Sierra Leone in terms of their social displacement impacts and the extent to which such impacts can be avoided or minimised. The case studies show that even in areas with low population densities and settlements concentrated in villages where it is easier to minimise displacement impacts, livelihood displacement impacts still cannot be entirely avoided due to communal and scattered land use in most rural areas. Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) processes have changed the location, size and boundaries of developments to reduce displacement impacts, but more mitigation measures — such as outgrower schemes and land dedicated to food production — can provide further livelihood restitution and avoid food security impacts. The three biofuel ventures also highlight the influence of tenure security for local land right holders in determining the nature of the land deals and the consultation processes: cases where land leases are made with central government seem to provide fewer incentives for developers to negotiate directly with local communities and provide them with lower levels of compensation.