The joint initiative by Dublin City University, University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh and Wageningen University and Research on “Power and Politics in Land Administration Reform”, funded by the European Union’s Jean Monnet scheme has a call for abstracts. The objective is to convene a research cluster focusing on this crucial area, with the view to publishing a special issue in a leading peer-review journal.
Despite a number of welcome developments in recent years, including the emergence of “continuum of land rights” approaches, significant gaps remain between the findings of an increasingly critical scientific literature on land administration reform, and land administration as a public policy domain. In order to address some of these gaps, they are keen to hear from anyone who’s research relates to the broad themes listed below. Securing contributions from a diverse range of geographical settings is a high priority.
- The diversity of ways in which “legalisation” and “formalisation” processes are mediated by political and social relationships that exist within often extreme asymmetries of power.
- The opportunities such processes provide for facilitating rather than preventing disenfranchisement and dispossession through processes like land grabbing.
- Modalities by which such processes intersect with and impact upon disparities based on gender, ethnicity and religious minority status.
- How the political-administrative compartmentalisation of “land administration” relates to the oft-stated aspirations of such processes to achieve equitable and pro-poor outcomes, for example national inheritance legislation and the relationship of natural resources like forests and water bodies to “land administration”.The impact of state foreign and security policy on land acquisitions.
- How the European Union’s Global Strategy and development policy relate to these issues.
Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, the project plan included a two-day event, to be held in Dhaka on or around the 26th and 27th of February 2021. While this remains their aspiration, this is now obviously subject to change depending on how the pandemic progresses. Anyone can register their interest for further updates by sending an email to oliver.scanlan@ulab.edu.bd.
Potential participants are asked to submit abstracts of no more than 500 words to the same email address by the 31st August. On the basis of submitted abstracts, participants will be invited to join a “working group”, that will convene remotely by the first week of October. Working/background papers will be circulated among the group by early December.
These papers will form the basis of a two-day working session, in principle to be held as a physical conference in Dhaka. There is a modest budget available to support travel and accommodation expenses. In the event that continuing Covid prevalence makes this option unworkable, remote arrangements will be organised, potentially involving more flexible timings to take time differences into account.
The aim will be to have an agreed framework for the special issue by the end of the working session, as well as an agreed target journal. While all are welcome to engage with this initiative, it may be of particular interest to early career researchers. For further information please contact Dr Oliver Scanlan at the Center for Sustainable Development, University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh, at oliver.scanlan@ulab.edu.bd.
Last Updated: 31st July 2020 by Coordinator
ITC University of Twente | From Closed to Claimed Spaces for Participation: Contestation in Urban Redevelopment Induced-Displacements and Resettlement in Kigali, Rwanda
Newly published article by Alice Nikuze, Richard Sliuzas and Johannes Flacke (ITC University of Twente) – “From Closed to Claimed Spaces for Participation: Contestation in Urban Redevelopment Induced-Displacements and Resettlement in Kigali, Rwanda”
Abstract
In many cities and urban areas in Africa, land acquisition for urban redevelopment, land readjustment, and resettlement of affected urban residents are currently framed as innovative approaches to eradicating informal settlements, improving the living environments, and supporting the implementation of newly adopted city Master Plans. Nevertheless, it is not yet known how the responses of institutions and affected people shape these processes. Based on research conducted in Kigali, Rwanda, this article discusses affected residents’ responses to land expropriation and resettlement necessary for urban redevelopments. Our findings show that affected informal settlement dwellers voiced their concerns over the deviations from the Expropriation Law, compensation decision-making made behind closed doors, lack of transparency in property valuation, and compensation packages that they perceive to be unfair. Some of the consequences of these concerns are strong feelings of unfairness, exclusion, and marginalisation; distrust and increased perceptions of impoverishment risks, all of which fuel contestation and resistance attitudes among the affected landowners. The affected landowners agitate to assert their rights and stake their claims through contestations, community mobilisation, and legal recourse. We conclude that such contestations constitute claimed spaces and interactions in which affected landowners are laying claim to fair processes against the ‘’exceptionality’’ and the “decide-defend” decision-making approaches, while local authorities assert legitimacy of their decisions. Critically, informal households affected by urban redevelopments see opportunities for participation in their resettlement decision-making as fundamental to securing their future.
Posted: 30th July 2020 by Lotte van der Heijden
LAND-at-scale | 6 promising ideas selected in second round
LAND-at-scale is a government programme that contributes to improving land governance. The programme supports economic development, peace and stability in developing countries. It also contributes to sustainable incomes, social justice, and better food and nutrition security.
The second round of LAND-at-scale resulted in 24 ideas submitted by 19 Dutch embassies. The LAND-at-scale Committee selected 6 most promising ideas to develop further. The most promising ideas come from Brazil, eastern DRC, Iraq, Malaysia, South Africa and Sri Lanka. The Netherlands Enterprise Agency has contacted these embassies. The next steps to further develop the projects will be discussed as soon as capacity and resources allow it.
Please click here to read the full article or click here to visit the LAND-at-scale programme page and stay up to date.
Last Updated: 31st July 2020 by Lotte van der Heijden
Dublin City University, University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh and Wageningen University | Call for Abstracts
The joint initiative by Dublin City University, University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh and Wageningen University and Research on “Power and Politics in Land Administration Reform”, funded by the European Union’s Jean Monnet scheme has a call for abstracts. The objective is to convene a research cluster focusing on this crucial area, with the view to publishing a special issue in a leading peer-review journal.
Despite a number of welcome developments in recent years, including the emergence of “continuum of land rights” approaches, significant gaps remain between the findings of an increasingly critical scientific literature on land administration reform, and land administration as a public policy domain. In order to address some of these gaps, they are keen to hear from anyone who’s research relates to the broad themes listed below. Securing contributions from a diverse range of geographical settings is a high priority.
Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, the project plan included a two-day event, to be held in Dhaka on or around the 26th and 27th of February 2021. While this remains their aspiration, this is now obviously subject to change depending on how the pandemic progresses. Anyone can register their interest for further updates by sending an email to oliver.scanlan@ulab.edu.bd.
Potential participants are asked to submit abstracts of no more than 500 words to the same email address by the 31st August. On the basis of submitted abstracts, participants will be invited to join a “working group”, that will convene remotely by the first week of October. Working/background papers will be circulated among the group by early December.
These papers will form the basis of a two-day working session, in principle to be held as a physical conference in Dhaka. There is a modest budget available to support travel and accommodation expenses. In the event that continuing Covid prevalence makes this option unworkable, remote arrangements will be organised, potentially involving more flexible timings to take time differences into account.
The aim will be to have an agreed framework for the special issue by the end of the working session, as well as an agreed target journal. While all are welcome to engage with this initiative, it may be of particular interest to early career researchers. For further information please contact Dr Oliver Scanlan at the Center for Sustainable Development, University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh, at oliver.scanlan@ulab.edu.bd.
Last Updated: 31st July 2020 by Coordinator
New publication | On whose land is the city to be built? Farmers, donors and the urban land question in Beira city, Mozambique
New article published by Murtah Shannon, Kei Otsuki, Annelies Zoomers (Utrecht University) and Mayke Kaag (African Studies Centre Leiden) — “On whose land is the city to be built? Farmers, donors and the urban land question in Beira city, Mozambique”
Abstract
A new era of global interventionism in African cities is emerging, the implications of which for existing claims to urban space are poorly understood. This is particularly true for the claims of farmers. Despite being a ubiquitous feature of many African cities, urban agriculture broadly exists in a conceptual limbo between rurality and urbanity, largely invisible to urban governance and substantive scholarship. Based on the case of Beira, Mozambique, in this article we make urban agriculture empirically and conceptually visible within the context of emerging debates on the urban land question in Africa. Through a historical–political analysis, we demonstrate how urban farming has constituted a distinct feature of Beira’s urbanism, which has evolved amidst successive and contradictory state-land regimes. Moving to the present day, we demonstrate how a new urban regime has emerged out of a coalition of municipal leaders and international donors with the aim of erasing all traces of urban agriculture from the city through urban ‘development’. The findings demonstrate that there is a need for a better understanding of the manifold claims to urban space, outside of slum urbanism alone, in contemporary land rights debates. We conclude by arguing that there is a need for a substantive land rights agenda that transcends the prescriptive categories of urbanism and rurality by focusing instead on the universal land question.
Posted: 17th July 2020 by Lotte van der Heijden
Journal of Peasant Studies | Impact Factor
Web of Science released its 2020 Journal Citation Reports in late June. The Journal of Peasant Studies has an Impact Factor of 4.959, ranking 1/41 in Development Studies and 1/90 in Anthropology. In order to thank the authors, reviewers and readers they are offering free access to the articles below to mark such an accomplishment.
(1) Rural public health systems and accountability politics; insights from grassroots health rights defenders in Guatemala, Fischer-Mackey, J., Batzin, B., Culum, P., & Fox, J.
(2) Interview with João Pedro Stédile, national leader of the MST-Brazil, Sergio Sauer.
(3) Does China’s ‘going out’ strategy prefigure a new food regime?, Philip McMichael.
(4) Does the Arab region have an agrarian question?, Max Ajl.
(5) Growing farmer-herder conflicts in Tanzania: the licenced exclusions of pastoral communities interests over access to resources, William John Walwa.
(6) Rural revitalization, scholars, and the dynamics of the collective future in China, Hairong Yan, Ku Hok Bun & Xu Siyuan.
(7) The Long New Deal, Raj Patel & Jim Goodman.
(8) Mosaics of property: control of village land in West Africa, Matthew D. Turner & Oumarou Mounouni.
(9) The United Nations Declaration on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas, Priscilla Claeys & Marc Edelman.
(10) Automated agrifood futures: robotics, labor and the distributive politics of digital agriculture, Michael Carolan.
(11) Who will tend the farm? Interrogating the ageing Asian farmer, Jonathan Rigg, Monchai Phongsiri, Buapun Promphakping, Albert Salamanca & Mattara Sripun.
(12) Repairing rifts or reproducing inequalities? Agroecology, food sovereignty, and gender justice in Malawi, Rachel Bezner Kerr, Catherine Hickey, Esther Lupafya & Laifolo Dakishoni.
(13) Chinese state capitalism and neomercantilism in the contemporary food regime: contradictions, continuity and change, Paul Belesky & Geoffrey Lawrence.
(14) Power and powerlessness in an Appalachian Valley – revisited, John Gaventa.
(15) The digital revolution, data curation, and the new dynamics of food sovereignty construction, Alistair Fraser.
(16) Capital, labor, and gender: the consequences of large-scale land transactions on household labor allocation, Reem Hajjar, Alemayehu N. Ayana, Rebecca Rutt, Omer Hinde, Chuan Liao, Stephanie Keene, Solange Bandiaky-Badji & Arun Agrawal.
(17) ‘Civilizing’ the pastoral frontier: land grabbing, dispossession and coercive agrarian development in Ethiopia, Asebe Regassa, Yetebarek Hizekiel & Benedikt Korf.
(18) The incursions of extractivism: moving from dispersed places to global capitalism, Ye, J., van der Ploeg, J. D., Schneider, S., & Shanin, T.
(19) Meeting peasants where they are: cultivating agroecological alternatives in neoliberal Guatemala, Nicholas Copeland.
(20) Why do pastoralists in Mali join jihadist groups? A political ecological explanation, Tor A. Benjaminsen & Boubacar Ba.
Last Updated: 31st July 2020 by Lotte van der Heijden
Landesa | Policy Recommendations for Climate Action Through Land Tenure Security
Landesa has released a new policy brief detailing the ways that stronger land rights for people living in rural areas can improve climate mitigation efforts, contribute to the success of Community Forest Groups, encourage adoption of Climate Smart Agriculture, and create opportunities for women to invest in their land.
According to researchers, the world lost 46,000 square miles of forest in 2019, which is roughly an area the size of a soccer field every six seconds. These forests shelter a vast amount of plant and animal species, offer livelihoods for indigenous and local communities, and store carbon necessary to mitigate climate change, and the destruction of them is preventable. With strong land rights, women and men across the globe can slow down deforestation and contribute to restoring forests.
Please click here to read the full policy brief.
Last Updated: 16th July 2020 by Alke Gijrath
LANDdialogue | Pilot Brazil-Netherlands on LAND
LANDdialogue will start a pilot on a new way of working to find alternative and innovative solutions to accurate land related issues or dilemma’s, or to potential opportunities, since…
If you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you’ll keep getting what you’ve been getting.”
The pilot is a Dutch-Brazilian case effort, and will start at the end of August.
Please note this is a very different approach from a tender-procedure; we will run innovative ideas that are fit-for-purpose, through a process to see whether they also have enough support and power to be actually implemented. Then, they will be tested on viability and impact, and we will assist in seeking alternative ways of financing the idea.
The current lock-down, and freezing of a lot of business activities in Brazil, is not necessarily contributing to obtaining the best results to deal with the challenging Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal and Environmental (PESTLE)-factors in place and a diversity of actors at all levels.
The pilot-approach will be launched soon… Please send an email to a.gijrath@uu.nl; process facilitator LANDdialogue. Notify your interest, and if possible, please also indicate your area of expertise, your interest, and possibly whether you have alternative and innovative ideas that are specific-specific to challenging circumstances in Brazil.
This pilot is supposed to generate a new energy. To create creativity. And to alternate a different way of thinking, learning and working together. Hope to meet and greet you soon, Alke
Last Updated: 10th July 2020 by Lotte van der Heijden
Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation | Call for Proposals
The Global Programme Food Security of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) is looking for innovative initiatives to contribute to food systems’ improvements and transformative and sustainable impacts on poor people. In order to do so the SDC launches four Calls for Proposals on: 1) Human rights in food systems; 2) Promoting responsible (VGGT compliant) land-based investment practices; 3) Agrobiodiversity for food security and nutrition; 4) Nutrition in secondary cities.
Read more on all the calls for proposals here. Please click here to download the Call for Proposals on Promoting responsible (VGGT compliant) land-based investment practices.
Deadline: 28 August 2020
Last Updated: 11th June 2020 by Coordinator
Arab Land Initiative | Call for Proposals
The Arab Land Initiative is pleased to share with you a call for proposals for research projects on land governance in the Arab Region, issued by the Urban Training and Studies Institute as part of the Arab Land Initiative.
This call for research grants addresses students and young land professionals interested in conducting research on land governance-related topics in one or several countries of the Arab region. The call seeks to promote interest in land-related research and to gather innovative ideas and approaches by supporting and motivating future academic and professional leaders in the field of land governance. It is open to Masters and PhD students with interest in land management and land-related topics in one or several countries in the Arab region, land professionals and practitioners working on land related projects in the Arab region and young scholars working in universities or other relevant research institutions conducting research dealing with land issues.
The deadline for submission of abstracts is Wednesday 15 July 2020.
See here a link to the web page and find more information in the attachment.
Last Updated: 31st July 2020 by Alke Gijrath
Brief aan leden LANDdialoog COVID-19
In Dutch
Het Organiserend Comité van de LANDdialoog heeft op 15 mei een brief verstuurd aan haar leden. Hierin geeft zij haar advies over een vijftal punten rondom landrechten gedurende en na de COVID-19 pandemie.
Deze adviezen zijn enerzijds instrumenteel, waarbij de Nederlandse spelers wordt verzocht hun hulp, alsmede hun positie (economisch, sociaal en politiek) te gebruiken om kracht bij te zetten aan de zo zorgvuldig opgebouwde naleving van landrechten. Anderzijds vormen landrechten het fundament voor de opbouw na COVID-19. Het is juist nu van cruciaal belang dat landrechten en landgebruik beschermd blijven en meegenomen worden in de vormgeving van de nieuwe ontwikkelingssamenwerking en hulp na de pandemie.
De komende tijd zal de LANDdialoog op deze punten acties gaan ondernemen met haar relevante leden. LANDRECHTEN zijn cruciaal.