Support for large scale agricultural investments in Africa has been mainly premised on their employment prospects for local populations. However, despite earlier calls by Tania Li to centre labour in the land grabs debate, labour is generally invisible in both mainstream policy and academic research. This paper, through a governance lens, draws attention to the implications of the global land rush on wage labour.

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.

In the last years the Brazilian agricultural frontier is expanding towards the cerrado region, more specifically the region called MATOPIBA, comprised of savannah areas of four different states located in the north and northeastern parts of the country. This research paper aims to show a recent pattern of second wave investments in the frontier aimed at inferior quality land.

This article presents a comparison for the impact from lack of land governance in Brazil between livestock and agricultural production. It begins with a brief description of the land regulatory system and its development in Mato Grosso do Sul State and Brazil. The methodology was based on focus groups research, conducted by CEPEA/USP (Center for advanced Studies on Applied Economics/University of São Paulo) on local production sites in Mato Grosso do Sul state, where a regional modal farm was established.

Since a century ago, there have been many efforts to attract foreign investment in Afghanistan. These efforts include the codification of laws and policies and the provision of facilities for participation of foreign companies in the Afghan economy through partnership with the government and partnership with private sector in this country.

The extractive industry can be an important source of human development, economic growth, government revenues and foreign investments. When well-managed, the sector provides possibility to create employment, build human capital, advance peoples mobility by improving infrastructure, and ultimately enhance the overall human development with a positive impact on poverty reduction efforts.

The second in a series of three reports entitled, “The Stolen Lands of Afghanistan and its People; The State Land Distribution System,” this report focuses on how state lands are distributed. This paper is the result of a desktop review and joint research by the UNAMA Rule of Law Unit (RoL) and the Civil Affairs Unit (CAU) in seven provinces—Kabul, Nangarhar, Kunduz, Balkh, Herat, Gardez, and Kandahar.

This practitioner’s guide explains how to promote gender-responsive forest tenure reform in community-based forest regimes. It is aimed at those taking up this challenge in developing countries. There is no one single approach to reforming forest tenure practices for achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment. Rather, it involves taking advantage of opportunities that emerge in various institutional arenas such as policy and law-making and implementation, government administration, customary or community-based tenure governance, or forest restoration at the landscape scale.

This country profile presents the Land Matrix data for Cambodia, detailing large-scale land acquisition (LSLA) transactions that:

• entail a transfer ofrights to use, control or own land through sale, lease or concession;

• have an intended size of 200 hectares (ha) or larger;

• have been concluded since the year 2000;

• are affected by a change of use (often from extensive or ecosystem service provision to commercial use);

• include deals for agricultural and forestry purposes. Mining operations are excluded.

This paper examines how far Afghanistan’s Land Acquisition Law complies with standards required for World Bank financing of public interest projects that unavoidably extinguish or diminish existing land rights in the project area. For this purpose, the law was compared with standards laid down in World Bank ESS5 on Involuntary Settlement. Additional reference was made to ESS1 on social risk and impact assessment, and to ESS7, in regard to communities whose socio-culture and livelihoods rely distinctively and historically upon collectively-based tenure or land use.

China’s influence in neighboring Central Asian states is growing at a fast pace. Since the launch of the One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative to accelerate China’s engagement in Central Asia and beyond, nearly all Chinese activity in this region has been gathered under OBOR. OBOR now seems to cover a plethora of spatially and temporally expanding state and privately driven projects. In this paper, I discuss large- and small-scale Chinese farm enterprises in Tajikistan, in which discussions around China’s “global land investments” and OBOR intersect.

This toolkit provides guidance on the making of fair arrangements that guarantee local benefits to community negotiators and consultants who work with Indigenous communities in Canada. This involves negotiation techniques and strategies. It focuses primarily on the mining sector, but it will be useful in the context of other sectors and contexts too.

This resource is part of the CCSI’s Directory of Community Guidance on Agreements Relating to Agriculture or Forestry Investment.