In the wave of efforts to encourage and support more “responsible” land investments, one aspect has been largely overlooked: are governments equipped with the legal and technical support needed to effectively negotiate and conclude investment contracts that lead to responsible outcomes?
Across Africa, Asia and Latin America, investors are increasingly approaching rural communities seeking land for logging, mining, and agribusiness ventures. Even in those situations where the investors have followed FPIC guidelines and undertaken a formal “consultation” with the community, these consultations are generally conducted in a context of significant power and information asymmetries. Part of the power imbalance comes from communities’ lack of information about the value of community lands and natural resources.
Tanzania and Mozambique — countries of vast mountain ranges and open stretches of plateaus — now face a growing land problem. As soil degradation, climate change and population growth place enormous strains on the natural resources that sustain millions of people, multinational companies are also gunning for large swaths of land across both countries. Caught between these pressures, many poor, rural communities get displaced or decide to sell their collectively held land.
Analyses the configuration of land rights among different users of land and discusses the implementation of Tanzania’s land policy reform. The key rights explored include those of small-scale producers (farmers and pastoralists) and large-scale investors. Explores how the state defines, allocates, protects and compensates for land when it appropriates such rights. Looks at the formal, informal and procedural rights that provide for and protect the rights of small-scale producers and investors, and the compensation offered to those who give up their land for investment.
One of the new government’s major policy priorities has to be to get agriculture moving as a motor of growth. The long-running issue of outstanding compensation payments has meant that international donors and financiers have not engaged with land reform areas, missing out on supporting major development opportunities. People on the resettlement farms are producing significant quantities of food and other agricultural products. Recent figures make it clear how vital they are to Zimbabwe’s struggling economy. So quick resolution of the compensation issue is essential.
Women disproportionately bear the negative impacts of large-scale land investments (in agribusiness, extractives, logging) in the global South.
We investigate the extent of variation in output sharing in land rental contracts and alternative hypotheses to explain this variation. Close to half of the rental contracts in our study in northern Ethiopia have output shares that deviate from the dominant 50-50 equal sharing. Variation in land quality, the relative bargaining power of landlords and tenants, production risks and shocks are hypothesized to influence output shares. Matched data of landlords and tenants are used.
Women disproportionately bear the negative impacts of large-scale land investments (in agribusiness, extractives, logging) in the global South.
▪▪Lack of formal land rights and their subordinate role in the household and community lead to the marginalization of women in decision-making processes and the bypassing of them in the distribution of compensation and the planning and implementation of resettlement.
While the potential contribution of a nationally implemented program for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) to developing countries’ budgets remains as yet obscure, two general concerns are that REDD+ will i) incentivize land grabbing and ii) remain financially uncompetitive against current commercial forest uses.
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