Land Grabs
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Recent papers in Land Grabs
In recent decades a substantial shift in landownership has taken place in rural America as millions of acres of land have come under the ownership and control of various financial institutions. This article outlines a political economic... more
This study examines the ongoing creation of the Dholera Special Investment Region along the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor in Gujarat. It analyses the agrarian political economy of the region in relation to the anticipated rentier gains... more
Drawing on Marx’s approach to original accumulation at the dawn of capitalism, I characterize the waves of parliamentary enclosures that unfolded in England between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries as an exercise of original or... more
Taking possession of private land for public purpose by the eminent domain of the state is a global phenomenon but it dispossesses the people at the local level. The researchers have mainly dealt with this phenomenon either from the field... more
The Waterberg is punted as South Africa’s next coal frontier by industry and government. It has already seen two rounds of boom and bust driven by mega projects. The first was in the 1980s when the original Grootegeluk mine and the... more
This article lays the groundwork for a Marxist theory of the international law of land grabbing. It argues that any comprehensive politico-economic analysis of land grabbing must also be a politico-economic analysis of the law of land... more
In this chapter, I describe the adoption of a liberalised economy for the investment of private capital in West Bengal. Paradoxically, implementation of the liberalisation policy rested on a colonial and/ or post-independence state... more
Policy paper for ActionAid on four key steps to prevent land grabs worldwide.
This paper focuses on one community in Cambodia that won back land from a large land deal by grabbing onto the rupture in property relations initiated by a one-year land titling campaign. I document the struggle between competing... more
The renewed interest in land, especially after the 2007-2008 global financial crises, has led to land being viewed as a new strategic asset. The drivers of this rush, sometimes referred to as 'land grabs', are contested, as are its actors... more
En las pasadas tres décadas, la Península de Yucatán (PY) ha experimentado trasformaciones territoriales sustanciales relacionadas a la propiedad social. Desde las modificaciones a la Ley Agraria en 1992 y hasta mayo del 2019, en... more
The concepts of degraded forest (pa mai xout xom) and degraded land (din seuam xom) have been variously applied in official Lao government policy narratives and law over the last couple of decades. In this article I focus on the concepts... more
In this unfinished rough powerpoint for a series of lectures I explore why the United States is markedly different from other representative democracies and welfare states. I trace the tradition of using a combination of bribery and... more
Since the early 2000s the Lao government has dramatically increased the number of large-scale land concessions issued for agribusinesses. While studies have documented the social and environmental impacts of land dispossession, the role... more
A report for Friends of the Earth UK on global land grabs and UK-listed pension and investment funds. With examples involving Sime Darby in Liberia, Wilmar in West Kalimantan in Indonesia, Bunge in Mato Grosso, Glencore in Colombia and... more
The debate between the suitability of smallholder farms against large-scale agribusiness is today leading to polemic policy choices that influence millions of lives in the developing world. Directly related to this issue is the current... more
In this article, we analyze a central aspect of Mercosur’s agriculture financialization: the entrance of risk capital in this economic sector. Among the main actors in this process, we can find private equity firms and the agribusiness... more
South African corporate agribusiness and large-scale commercial farmers have been major players in the current acquisitions of large tracts of very fertile land in southern and eastern Africa through massive investments in large-scale... more
This unpublished PhD thesis deals with the various dimensions of development caused displacement in West Bengal under the Left Front Government. The main theme centers round land acquisition by the government for industrial projects and... more
Whether land transactions can benefit the local population depends on the governance system, the so‐called rules of the game and their enforcement. As investors often face a weak institutional environment in target countries, outcomes for... more
La complejidad de los procesos asociados a la expansión del agronegocio requiere de análisis circunstanciados. Aquí abordamos los cambios en la tenencia de la tierra y sus impactos en términos de diferenciación agraria en el norte de... more
This study examines the local processes, effects, and responses to large-scale logging and agricultural development efforts in subsistence communities on New Hanover Island, Papua New Guinea (PNG). Recently, New Hanover became the site of... more
Certification initiatives are an increasingly prominent means of quelling public concern about the wider socio‐political, economic and environmental consequences of commodity production (timber, palm oil, soy) on increasingly concentrated... more
In West Africa, domestic investors acquire plots of farm land using their connections, powers and resources. Some policy makers view these investments as a shift towards agribusiness and state that these “new actors ” will modernise and... more
- by Joost Nelen
- Land tenure, Niger, Mali, Benin
As transnational movements contest economic inequalities and demand inclusion into global decision‐making processes, new models of collaborative governance have proliferated. Promoters of this new mode of governance suggest that it can... more
This article focuses on two issues. First, it critically engages with the emerging global databases on large-scale land deals and the ‘data’ on global trends so far circulated, paying special attention to their accuracy and reliability,... more
In 2005, Guatemalan community forest concessionaires achieved a remarkable legislative victory that reversed a green land grab in the Maya Biosphere. The fight over this space, the Mirador Basin, provides valuable contributions to... more
Large-scale plantation land concessions are causing an array of serious social and environmental impacts in Southeast Asia as well as in other parts of the world. This paper, however , is focused on the many challenges and limitations... more
This article explores the question of political struggles for inclusion on an oil palm land deal in Ghana. It examines the employment dynamics and the everyday politics of rural wage workers on a transnational oil palm plantation which is... more
Mainstream discourses tend to treat land dispossession as a ‘developing’ country problem that arises due to weak/corrupt legal systems and inadequate property institutions. This article unsettles such discourses by examining... more
In this article, I argue for a critical recognition of the law of the sea, as it developed from the post-war period, as fostering a ‘grab’ of the ocean floor via national jurisdiction and international administration. I discuss why we... more
The state gives as a right what the mafia offers as a gift: reverse land enclosures in Sicily Theodoros Rakopoulos, university of Bergen This paper, drawing from a Sicilian example, explores the problematics of what are claimed and... more
This paper first explores the question of what might ‘land grabs’ be in Zambia, from the perspective of two important accusations of ‘land grabs’ in Zambia. It then more closely explores the discourses employed Chayton, before proceeding... more