This lesson brief examines the law and practice of allocating land in the protected estate for private investment. It is part of the Uganda module on the Focus on Africa: Land Tenure and Property Rights online educational tool. Private investors need land to conduct their business.

This lesson brief explores alternative biofuel production schemes in Tanzania and their impacts on rural land rights and local livelihoods.

This BMZ comissioned report by GTZ highlights the dramatic increase of land concessions and rising inequality in land distribution in Cambodia. Parts of the study refer to an earlier report by Uch Sophas “Foreign Direct Investment in Land for Biomass Production in Cambodia”. The South-East Asian country Cambodia has an area of 181,035 km2. The Government of Cambodia is adapting its activities to attract FDI, which has lead to a steady increase especially since 2007.

This report is one of the 28 being published as a part of the global study. The full list of studies, and information on other initiatives by ILC relating to Commercial Pressures on Land you can find here.

This lesson brief discusses the dangers and opportunities of increasing biofuel cultivation in Ghana and provides recommendations for a national policy governing this sector. It is part of the Focus on Land in Africa: Land Tenure and Property Rights online educational tool.

As governments in the global North look to diversify their economies away from fossil fuel and mitigate climate change, plans for biomass energy are growing fast. These are fuelling a sharp rise in the demand for wood, which, for some countries, could outstrip domestic supply capacity by as much as 600 per cent. It is becoming clear that although these countries will initially look to tap the temperate woodlands of developed countries, there are significant growth rate advantages that may lead them to turn to the tropics and sub-tropics to fill their biomass gap in the near future.

Just a couple weeks ago,  Iowa State University (ISU) withdrew from advising the Iowa-based firm AgriSol Energy on itsplanned land deal in Tanzania.

The report considers the causes, processes and impacts of rangeland fragmentation on pastoralists in Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda. Causes and processes include privatisation of resources, commercial investment, invasion of land by non-native plants, commercialisation including growth in individual enclosures, and conservation/National Parks. The impacts include increasing wealth divides and a growing inability to overcome and vulnerability to drought.  

The report describes the relationships and linkages between the Magadi Soda Company and four group ranches including Olkiramatian. Discussions and planning is carried out to develop mutually beneficial rural development and land use planning.

I am sharing this extremely important report from Margaret Sekaggya, the Special Rapporteur of the situation of human rights defenders (2011). In 2007 the former Special Rapporteur, Hina Jilani, affirmed that “the second most vulnerable group when it comes to danger of being killed because of their activities in the defence of human rights, are defenders working on land rights and natural resources” (Hina Jilani, 2007, Report submitted to the Human Rights Council, A/HRC/4/37).

Wars and their aftermaths frequently transform land use and ownership, reshaping 'post-conflict' landscapes through new boundaries, population movements, land reforms and conditions of access. Within a global context of controversial land concessions and farmland acquisitions, we bring to light the continued salience of historical memories of war in the ways land conflicts are being negotiated in Laos.

The 2008 report by ActionAid suggests that, since women and girls are overrepresented among poor and excluded people, the food crisis is having a particularly harsh impact on them.  According to the FAO, even before the current crisis women made up 60% of the chronically hungry.