Items tagged:
Land acquisitions
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Archive of completed legal tools projects
IIED’s Legal Tools for Citizen Empowerment initiative aims to strengthen the rights of rural people in the face of natural resource investments. This archive page provides links to past projects
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Q&A: helping communities protect their land rights
Pressures on land and natural resources are growing, and many communities affected by land rights violations struggle to assert their rights. In this interview Rachael Knight talks about how IIED’s legal tools team supports grassroots advocates and communities impacted by large-scale land acquisitions
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Assisting communities to seek legal redress for land rights violations
With increased pressures on natural resources shifting resource control in favour of commercial interests, IIED is helping communities affected by land rights violations to assert their rights.
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Law in the natural resource squeeze: 'land grabbing', investment treaties and human rights
Lorenzo Cotula discusses highlights from his latest academic piece, in which he explores whether investment treaties protect 'land grab' deals, and how these impact the land rights of rural people
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Using online technology to empower communities facing land deals
Online databases are proving a useful tool for communities facing large-scale agricultural investments and associated conflicts, as a recent IIED webinar discovered
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Commodity cycles, economic treaties and pressures on land rights
The commodity slump has cooled the global land rush. But land rights are still under pressure, requiring action at local to global levels
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Next steps to strengthen global land governance
In 2012 there was a milestone international agreement on voluntary guidelines on the governance of land and tenure. The authors of a new progress report review the lessons learned about implementing the guidelines, and offer some recommendations for the future
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Opening up land contracts
Many land deals are still kept secret. Will a new online resource change the game?
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New online database of investment contracts hailed as a "game changer"
IIED principal researcher Lorenzo Cotula will celebrate the launch of the first searchable online repository of investment contracts at an event at Columbia University on Wednesday
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Investment treaties, land rights and a shrinking planet
Commercial land concessions may be protected under international investment law. Lorenzo Cotula argues that securing land rights requires tackling these global dimensions
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Tanzania: Moving beyond ‘land grab’ rhetoric to finding solutions
This is not an unusual story in Tanzania. Newspapers are being filled with “land grab” headlines. Stories about displacement and dodgy land deals are becoming normal street-side conversation.
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Invest in farmers, not in farmland
"Land grabs" are now one of the biggest issues in Africa.
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African governments signing away water rights for decades
The water rights often feature in the growing number of large land deals that governments are signing with investors (see First detailed study of large land acquisitions in Africa warns of impacts on poor rural people) as many of these areas require irrigation to be viable.Such deals have already raised concerns for being rushed, secretive and one-sided. Many fail to deliver real benefits and can even create new social and environmental problems (see Report shows how secret land deals can fail to benefit African nations – and how to make them better).Now, researchers at IIED warn that governments risk signing away water rights in ways that harm the future prospects of their citizens, especially fishermen and pastoralists, who rely on the same water as the investors. Some investors in Mali and Sudan have been given unrestricted access to as much water as they need."Companies that acquire land for irrigated farming will want secure water rights, but long-term contractual commitments can jeopardise water access for local farmers," says co-author Lorenzo Cotula. "This affects not only the people who have customarily used the land that is being leased, but also distant downstream users who can be hundreds of kilometres away and even across an international border."
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REDD+ in Mozambique: new opportunity for land grabbers?
Land is cheap and is perceived to be abundant in Africa. A scramble for its land, following the food and fuel crisis three years ago, is on. European and North American companies have been acquiring land to grow export and biofuel crops and to supply their need for pulp and paper. Now they’re being joined by newly emerging economies – in particular Brazil, India and China – which are also increasingly acquiring large tracts of land and searching for other natural resources, in particular water and minerals.
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Biomass: boon or bane?
A new IIED briefing paper asks some hard questions about biomass investments and warns that rising demand for renewable energy sources could drive land grabs.
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Rising demand for renewable energy could drive more land grabs
Rising demand for the dominant form of renewable energy worldwide – wood – could drive yet more acquisitions of land in developing countries where food insecurity is rising and land rights are weak, say researchers at IIED.
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‘Land grabs’ in Africa: is there an alternative?
Millions of people across the developing world depend on land for their livelihoods, culture and identity — a connection that now risks being undermined by large-scale acquisitions of farmland in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
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Open letter to Bill Gates on African land acquisitions
IIED's director Dr Camillla Toulmin, responds to comments Bill Gates made about large-scale land acquisitions in a recent interview.
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Report shows how secret land deals can fail to benefit African nations – and how to make them better
African nations risk giving investors access to large areas of land in rushed, secretive and one-sided deals that fail to deliver real benefits or create new social and environmental problems, according to the first ever legal analysis of contracts which is published today (31 January) by the International Institute for Environment and Development.
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IIED's director Camilla Toulmin discusses 'land-grabs' on Guardian podcast
Large-scale international land deals are having a huge impact on local communities. In this podcast produced by The Guardian, journalist Madeleine Bunting and a panel of guests discuss the issue and debate whether anything can be done to make these agricultural investments work for global development.
