PhD defence George Schoneveld
2 October 2013, 16.00 hrs, Academiegebouw Utrecht University
African states offer their populations insufficient protection from foreign land grabs
Growing global resource scarcities and increasingly unstable commodity markets have in recent years encouraged large numbers of investors to seek access to the cheap and fertile farmlands of sub-Saharan Africa. Though potentially providing its often neglected agricultural sector with much-needed investment capital, with many of these investments threatening to deprive the rural poor of vital livelihood resources and contribute to environment degradation, these investments have become a topic of heated debate in the public, political, and academic arenas.
Amidst a rapidly growing body of research on particularly trends and outcomes, The Governance of Large-Scale Farmland Investments in Sub-Saharan Africa examines a critically under researched aspect of this trend, namely, host country governance. With an absence of sufficiently comprehensive international regulatory frameworks, the investment governance burden often falls solely on host country governments, which in the African context are typically ill-equipped or disinclined to provide adequate oversight. This exacerbates the risk of adverse local social, economic, and environmental impacts and undermines the effective capture of investments’ potential developmental contributions.
The primary aim of this book is to deepen our understanding of the conditions under which large-scale farmland investments can contribute to sustainable development in sub-Saharan Africa. It does this by identifying the different factors that shape local outcomes. In so doing, it examines and links a range of issues that have to date often been evaluated in isolation – ranging from the formal laws and policies in host countries to institutional dynamics and local community responses. The analysis is based on original field research conducted by the author in Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, and Zambia.
Findings show a remarkably uniform array of adverse effects across the case study countries. This poses an interesting conundrum: can these outcomes be attributed to systematic deficiencies in the content of the law aimed at regulating these impacts, or is the law rendered meaningless by poor implementation and enforcement, or do other structural social and economic factors outside formal governance structures explain outcomes? The Governance of Large-Scale Farmland Investments in Sub-Saharan Africa shows that an answer can be found in all three options, but highlights in particular the important mediating influence of institutional issues.
Through systematic, in-depth analysis of the conflicts and interactions between a diversity of stakeholders it highlights how investment capital tends to attach itself to and strengthen powerful local coalitions of modern and customary elites to the detriment of the rights of the rural poor. Such trends are reinforced by high-modernist ideologies, discriminatory perspectives on rural systems of production, co-optation, lack of inter-institutional coordination, collective action problems, and distortionary incentive structures. Although this calls for a reevaluation of the formal rules that govern and protect Africa’s land-based resources, this book shows that any legalistic reforms to that effect must be preceded by far-reaching institutional reforms that address institutional mandates, enforcement and implementation capacities, and incentive and accountability structures.
A Powerpoint of George’s presentation of his research findings is available via this link.
Last Updated: 26th July 2019 by admin
Csr in the agro-food sector
The International Development Studies group of Utrecht University, partner of LANDac, has recently published a research report about Corporate Social Responsibility in the agro-food sector in five African countries. The researchers, in close collaboration with Master students, interviewed 90 firms in South Africa, Mozambique, Rwanda, Kenya and Ethiopia. The environment and the use of natural resources (including land) are one of the aspects of CSR that were discussed.
Please find the report here.
Last Updated: 26th July 2019 by admin
Global Donor Working Group on Land launched
During the Donor Roundtable Meeting in Washington on the margins of the annual land and poverty conference at the World Bank on 12 April 2013 participants agreed to establish a new Global Donor Working Group on Land. This was in recognition of the increased attention to land issues following the first global food price spike in 2007/08, the huge relevance of land tenure rights and good land governance for food security and sustainable development, and the need for donors to be able to share information systematically and improve coordination on a continuous basis.
Please find more information about the Global Donor WG on Land, including its workplan, via:
http://www.donorplatform.org/land/on-common-ground.html
Last Updated: 26th July 2019 by admin
Land conflicts in Brazil on Dutch television: Nieuwsuur
Nieuwsuur, a Dutch newsreel, broadcasted an item about the involvement of four Dutch banks and two Dutch pensionfunds in violent land conflicts in Brazil. The banks and pensionfunds invest in Bunge, an American company, which has deals with local sugarcane farmers who are using indigenous lands in Brazil.
The report (in Dutch) is available via:
http://nieuwsuur.nl/onderwerp/557768-landroof-gefinancierd-met-nederlands-geld.html
Last Updated: 26th July 2019 by admin
Sugar rush and land rights
As part of its ‘Behind the Brands’ campaign, Oxfam today published a new report about the sugar rush and how it is driving large-scale land acquisitions and land conflicts. Sugar, as a land-intensive crop, is one of the drivers of increasing pressure on land. The report shows that these pressures have cost communities their homes, farms and food security. Major food and beverage companies are also to blame: although they rarely own land, they depend on it for the crops they buy, including sugar. Oxfam calls on individual companies to understand their supply chain and take action to solve problems.
Please access the full report via the following link:
http://www.oxfamnovib.nl/Redactie/Downloads/Rapporten/bn-sugar-rush-land-supply-chains-food-beverage-companies-021013-embargo-en.pdf
Last Updated: 26th July 2019 by admin
Community land and natural resource rights
On 23 September, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (DME and DDE), in cooperation with LANDac organized a lecture & lunch about community land and natural resource rights. The meeting was a follow-up of an international conference held on 19 and 20 September in Interlaken, Switzerland. The meeting addressed scaling-up strategies to secure community land and resource rights. Peter Veit, interim Director or the Institutions and Governance Program at the World Resources Institute, and Duncan Pruett, Land Advisor at Oxfam Novib, presented the main outcomes of the conference in Interlaken and presented follow-up activities during a lecture hosted at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Please find more information about the Interlaken meeting through the press release:
http://www.communitylandrights.org/reuters-resource-rights-groups-call-f…
For further information about the initiative, please visit the conference website:
http://www.communitylandrights.org
Last Updated: 26th July 2019 by admin
The governance of large-scale farmland investments in Sub-Saharan Africa
PhD defence George Schoneveld
2 October 2013, 16.00 hrs, Academiegebouw Utrecht University
African states offer their populations insufficient protection from foreign land grabs
Growing global resource scarcities and increasingly unstable commodity markets have in recent years encouraged large numbers of investors to seek access to the cheap and fertile farmlands of sub-Saharan Africa. Though potentially providing its often neglected agricultural sector with much-needed investment capital, with many of these investments threatening to deprive the rural poor of vital livelihood resources and contribute to environment degradation, these investments have become a topic of heated debate in the public, political, and academic arenas.
Amidst a rapidly growing body of research on particularly trends and outcomes, The Governance of Large-Scale Farmland Investments in Sub-Saharan Africa examines a critically under researched aspect of this trend, namely, host country governance. With an absence of sufficiently comprehensive international regulatory frameworks, the investment governance burden often falls solely on host country governments, which in the African context are typically ill-equipped or disinclined to provide adequate oversight. This exacerbates the risk of adverse local social, economic, and environmental impacts and undermines the effective capture of investments’ potential developmental contributions.
The primary aim of this book is to deepen our understanding of the conditions under which large-scale farmland investments can contribute to sustainable development in sub-Saharan Africa. It does this by identifying the different factors that shape local outcomes. In so doing, it examines and links a range of issues that have to date often been evaluated in isolation – ranging from the formal laws and policies in host countries to institutional dynamics and local community responses. The analysis is based on original field research conducted by the author in Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, and Zambia.
Findings show a remarkably uniform array of adverse effects across the case study countries. This poses an interesting conundrum: can these outcomes be attributed to systematic deficiencies in the content of the law aimed at regulating these impacts, or is the law rendered meaningless by poor implementation and enforcement, or do other structural social and economic factors outside formal governance structures explain outcomes? The Governance of Large-Scale Farmland Investments in Sub-Saharan Africa shows that an answer can be found in all three options, but highlights in particular the important mediating influence of institutional issues.
Through systematic, in-depth analysis of the conflicts and interactions between a diversity of stakeholders it highlights how investment capital tends to attach itself to and strengthen powerful local coalitions of modern and customary elites to the detriment of the rights of the rural poor. Such trends are reinforced by high-modernist ideologies, discriminatory perspectives on rural systems of production, co-optation, lack of inter-institutional coordination, collective action problems, and distortionary incentive structures. Although this calls for a reevaluation of the formal rules that govern and protect Africa’s land-based resources, this book shows that any legalistic reforms to that effect must be preceded by far-reaching institutional reforms that address institutional mandates, enforcement and implementation capacities, and incentive and accountability structures.
A Powerpoint of George’s presentation of his research findings is available via this link.
Last Updated: 26th July 2019 by admin
Vacancies PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency
PBL, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, offers four vacancies linked to work on Global Food Systems and natural resource scarcity. The vacancies can be accessed through this link: http://www.pbl.nl/en/aboutpbl/vacancies.
Last Updated: 26th July 2019 by admin
Successful fourth summer school Land Governance for Development
The fourth edition of the Summer School Land Governance for Development brought together a very interesting group of participants and lecturers to study current debates on land governance and land deals. The 2-week course, organized by LANDac (8-19 July 2013), was attended by 20 participants: Masters and PhD students and development practitioners from countries such as the US, Japan, Uzkbekistan, Malaysia, Philippines, Ethiopia, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and the Netherlands.
The intensive programme included lectures, workshops and an excursion given by a variety of high-quality lecturers from academia and practice. The course included a number of lectures which provided a general overview of various important themes such as the global land rush, land governance and land administration, and land issues in post-conflict situations. This was combined with a variety of illustrative case studies on topics such as land deals in Mozambique, soy expansion in Argentina, urban and hydropower-related land pressures in Vietnam, oil palm expansion in Indonesia, stakeholder responses to land deals in Kenya, real estate and tourism in Central America, and post-conflict land governance in South Sudan. Furthermore, participants had the opportunity to look at the issues from different stakeholders’ different viewpoints: there were – among others – a session on the role of farmers organizations; a workshop from a human rights approach; and a private sector-oriented session. In many of the presentations and insightful discussions, the roles of local and central governments and local communities were also discussed in depth. In an excursion to a Dutch organic farm, participants had the opportunity to learn from different experiences of Dutch livestock farming and land use, and their relevance for other countries and contexts. This was beautifully illustrated by a visit to various parts of the farm.
Towards the end of the course students elaborated cases based on their own interests, which they shared with the group through a presentation and a poster. This served to further broaden everyone’s knowledge, and it resulted in a number of very insightful discussions. As such, many new and interesting themes were dealt with, such as nature conservation and ‘green grabs’; the role of donors; land acquisition for state infrastructural projects; local communities’ responses to land deals and mobilization; land administration and economic development in Kosovo and in Greece; national and international policies to improve local livelihoods under land deals; land policies and rural-urban land use changes in Bolivia; and a narrative analysis on food crisis and land grabbing.
The day-to-day programme of the 2013 summerschool can be accessed here
Last Updated: 26th July 2019 by admin
New article: land conversion for urban development in Vietnam
A new article on urbanization and land conversion by LANDac-related PhD researcher Nguyen Quang Phuc (Hue University Vietnam / IDS UU) and LANDac (co)chairs Guus van Westen and Annelies Zoomers just appeared online in Habitat International journal. The article deals with the massive conversion of agricultural land for industrial and urban development in the medium-sized city of Hue in Vietnam, which has increased social tensions and complaints from affected people. The article can be accessed here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0197397513000568
Last Updated: 26th July 2019 by admin
Updated Land Matrix now available
The updated data-sets of the Land Matrix are now available via the Land Matrix website: www.landmatrix.org. The Land Matrix is a tool that aims to contribute to transparency in large-scale land deals. The updated information now differentiates between intended, concluded and failed land deals. In addition, information about land deals is directly linked to its sources – with that offering users the opportunity to judge reliability of information themselves.