Yesterday, the Vice Versa special issue on land rights was officially handed over to Minister Ploumen, Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation. The special issue features stories from journalists giving perspectives on land rights from different angles, and was produced in cooperation with LANDac.
Written by Selma Zijlstra, Vice Versa.
The special was presented during the ‘LANDdialogue’, where representatives of NGOs, academia, business and government came together to discuss achievements in the sector in the past year and to design steps for the future of land governance.
Special reference was made to the Minister on a story from Iraq, where a local civil servant managed to grab the local cadastre records just before ISIS arrived to take Sinjar. Now that the peace has returned and refugees slowly return home, the two big green books have become an important source for preventing conflict. This is symbolic of the importance of land rights and good governance in building peaceful and resilient communities.
Land rights are equally important in the post-conflict setting of Colombia, where many internally displaced people will return to their homes now the peace agreement between FARC and the government of Colombia is in place. According to locals, formal land registration will take ‘two centuries’ to complete. As long as these remain unregistered, new conflict is looming. A participatory method hopes to bring a solution.
The importance of good relations with the community was also highlighted for the Minister. In one of the stories on Mozambique, it is described how frustrated young employees of a company put up a road blockage out of frustration with delayed payment of their salary. As we have seen in Ethiopia as well: without good relations with the community, companies cannot move forward – both literally and figuratively.
In the special issue, reports from Indonesia, Uganda and Mozambique tell about the complexities of large scale land acquisitions. Sometimes they deserve the label ‘land grab’, yet sometimes they are a promise for prosperity in the eyes of many — provided that conditions and rules are in place. The important role of the state and having adequate rules in place is emphasized throughout the special issue, for example by quoting the economist Karl Polyani who already in the 1940s understood that, while self-regulating markets may work for commodities, they create problems when labour and nature – which includes land – are brought under the same market discipline.
In the magazine, we see critical reflections vis-à-vis policy coherence on aid and trade, while initiatives of the Netherlands on land governance are highlighted as well – such as the support of the Dutch government for Mozambique’s Terra Segura program which aims to provide 5 million small-farmers with individual land titles. Different researchers contributed to the issue, including Femke van Noorloos from Utrecht University. She tells us about her research on “new cities” in the making, in Ethiopia, Nigeria and Kenya, amongst others. Models from Dubai are being enthusiastically copied in African settings, she says, but the complexities of local land rights are not always understood and accounted for in the designs.
The city is the main character as well in a story on Beira, Mozambique’s second largest city, a story which was made with the cooperation of Utrecht University and LANDac researcher Murtah Read. The inhabitants of Beira see their houses flooded time and time again, and it is mainly the poor that are suffering. Dutch companies designed an ambitious ‘Masterplan’, yet Beira proves that city development also involves extensive resettlement which is not always desirable. “Does the city of the future take the poorest of the poor into account?”, is the central question in this report.
Last but not least, Annelies Zoomers, Professor of International Development Studies and Chair of LANDac, advocates for Sustainable Development Goal number 1 and the commitment to leave no one behind. To realize that goal, people should not be moved aside for investments. Because there is also a right to stay, according to Zoomers – to stay on the land of your ancestors, where even the rivers and stones might have spiritual and symbolic meaning.
Vice Versa is a Dutch journalistic platform about global cooperation. Visit www.viceversaonline.nl for more information.
For questions or to find out how to access a copy of the magazine (currently available in Dutch; English pending), please contact landac.geo@uu.nl.
Last Updated: 31st July 2020 by Gemma
ITC Twente | Vacancy Assistant Professor Urban and Regional Planning and Geo Information Management
THE ORGANIZATION:
Last Updated: 31st July 2020 by Gemma
Tropenbos et al | New working paper! Improving the positive impacts of investments on smallholder livelihoods
Moving from “do no harm” to “do good”…
This working paper is aimed at impact investors, and presents key pointers or core guidance that have been drawn from international standards, principles and case studies, that follow. It provides solid and evidence-based examples of how investors can work with smallholders and promote better land governance and livelihoods. International guidelines provide the bottom line, and case studies provide examples of projects, business models and investment funds that are implementing and/or financing alternative and innovative land related business models with smallholders and local communities.
This publication has been produced jointly by Tropenbos International, FMO – the Dutch Development Bank, KIT- The Royal Tropical Institute, and HIVOS International.
You can download the publication here.
Last Updated: 31st July 2020 by Lucy Oates
LANDac | Special issue: From land grabs to inclusive development?
LANDac is pleased to announce the release of a themed special issue, based on contributions from the LANDac Annual International Conference 2015, in the journal Geoforum.
The themed issue explores the “elusiveness of inclusive development” through analyses of empirical evidence on land grabbing ten years after the hype began. The cases collected show different types of investment flows into food and biofuel crops, wildlife, mining and city development in various developing regions, and analyse how different types of marginalized groups actually experience the flows of global capital in their local places – and search for a deeper understanding of the new and complex situations created under the banner of inclusive development in the context of landscape transformations triggered by large-scale land investment projects.
For more information, see the Geoforum page, or contact us at landac.geo@uu.nl.
Last Updated: 31st July 2020 by Gemma
LANDdialogue | LG MSD seeks consultant for IMVO study
ToR for Consultant Land Governance & ICSR Agreements
The Organising Committee of the Dutch Land Governance Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue is looking for a consultant to carry out a study on the relevance of land goverance as a priority issue in different sector-based agreements to address ICSR risks. A detailed job description is provided in the attached Terms of Reference (in Dutch).
Interested consultants are invited to send their application to gijs.schoutens@minbuza.nl. The deadline for submission is 16 June 2017. Submissions (maximum 5 pages, excluding CV) are assessed in accordance with the following award criteria (maximum of 100 points):
For more details on the vacancy, please download: ToR Consultant for Study Land Governance and ICSR agreements
Last Updated: 15th January 2020 by Gemma
LANDdialogue | LG MSD seeks consultant for IMVO study
ToR for Consultant Land Governance & Dutch Banking Sector Agreement
The Organising Committee of the Dutch Land Governance Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue is looking for a consultant to carry out a study on how to effectively incorporate issues related to land governance in the implementation phase of the Dutch Banking Sector Agreement on international responsible business conduct regarding human rights. A detailed job description is provided in the attached Terms of Reference (in Dutch).
Interested consultants are invited to send their application to gijs.schoutens@minbuza.nl. The deadline for submission is 16 June 2017. Submissions (maximum 5 pages, excluding CV) are assessed in accordance with the following award criteria (maximum of 100 points):
For further details on how to apply, download: ToR Consultant for Study Land Governance and Dutch Banking Sector Agreement
Last Updated: 31st July 2020 by Lucy Oates
LANDac | New journal article: Land acquisition for urban expansion in peri-urban Hue, Vietnam
Recent LANDac PhD graduate Phuc Nguyen, together with co-chair August van Westen and chair Annelies Zoomers have recently published:
Compulsory land acquisition for urban expansion: livelihood reconstruction after land loss in Hue’s peri-urban areas, Central Vietnam
Available at: http://online.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/toc/idpr/current
Land acquisition for urbanisation in Vietnam has become a hot topic, attracting attention not only from land administrators, but also from the media and politicians. This paper draws on the case of Hue to investigate how farmers reconstruct their livelihoods after land loss. The findings indicate that the majority of people are able to reconstruct their livelihoods with better living conditions. Besides the employment opportunities derived from an expanding local economy, such as in Hue, remaining in the same physical environment and the retention of social networks are important factors for successful livelihood reconstruction. However, there are emerging issues that challenge equitable development and sustainable livelihoods, such as increased vulnerability for the elderly and infirm after land loss, in addition to the difficulties casual workers may face in the long term. The capacity of households to adapt to new situations, training, consultations and social security systems for the affected farmers should, therefore, be taken into account.
Keywords: Vietnam, Hue, land acquisition, peri-urban areas, livelihood reconstruction
Suggested citation:
Phuc Nguyen, August van Westen and Annelies Zoomers (2017). Compulsory land acquisition for urban expansion: livelihood reconstruction after land loss in Hue’s peri-urban areas, Central Vietnam
International Development Planning Review IDPR, 39 (2) 2017 https://doi.org/10.3828/idpr.2016.32
IDPR, 39 (2) 2017 https://doi.org/10.3828/idpr.2016.32
Last Updated: 31st July 2020 by Lucy Oates
Land Rights Now | Earth Day Mobilisation
Secure Community Land Rights Now to Fight Climate Change and Protect our Planet
This 22 April, the growing Land Rights Now movement will come together to show that secure land rights are central to fighting climate change.
“Together we can push national governments, investors, and companies to recognize that securing land rights is essential for delivering on the promises of the Paris Agreement and keeping global warming under 1.5 degrees. At this time of grave political, economic, and social turmoil, we can promote secure land rights for millions of Indigenous Peoples and local communities as a key solution to build a more fair and inclusive world.”
Launching on 22 April for one week, the campaign will mobilize and link with other movements and initiatives including the March for Science, the 10-year anniversary of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the People’s Climate March on 29 April.
There are more than 40 mobilisation actions taking place in 27 countries – see this map of action.
Also avilable: Policy Brief ”Tested, Cost-Effective and Practical: Securing Indigenous and community land rights is a key solution to climate change”.
In the Netherlands – there will be film screening Monday 24th April in Amsterdam – all are welcome!
Last Updated: 15th January 2020 by Gemma
LANDac | LANDac and Partners at the World Bank Conference
Want to catch up with us at the World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty?
You can find out where we’ll be here: LANDac and partners at the World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty.
LANDac will be running a Masterclass on Multi-Stakeholder Approaches in Land Governance:
In debates around land-based investments, much attention has been given in recent years to making investments more inclusive and sustainable, including raising companies’ Corporate Social Responsibility profile. In approaches of ‘inclusive business’ or ‘shared value creation’, use of multi-stakeholder processes has been on the rise. By bringing together different stakeholders and exchanging views it is the aim of these approaches to make businesses more inclusive and sustainable. However, what is less clear in the existing processes is how local stakeholders are represented in the discussions: including diversities and dynamics at local level, existing expectations, livelihood priorities and engagement with the businesses. Moreover, impact analyses tend to be biased towards economic impacts (namely job creation) and environmental impacts of the investment, while often mostly looking at those groups that are directly affected, but only to a lesser extent taking into account people that live near the investment but are not directly involved in the business model.
With the goal of including local context in multi-stakeholder processes, three Learning Platforms on land governance and food security will be organized in 2017. In the platforms, local knowledge and bottom-up fact finding is combined with multi-stakeholder learning and dialogue, accompanied by follow-up activities for implementation and monitoring. The initiative focuses on concrete investments in Tanzania, Mozambique and Uganda: countries that are receiving large-scale land-based investments. The countries have been selected on the basis of a mix of criteria: the quantity of the investment flows, opportunities for making a change (Dutch and European stakeholders), as well as existing opportunities for linking up with ongoing research, practice and existing initiatives. The main thrust of the platforms consist of mapping local context around specific investments, in close collaboration with local monitors. The outcomes of this will be brought into 3-day learning meetings with businesses and other local stakeholders (local government, NGOs, farmer organizations etc.). The learning meetings will lead to the identification of actions that can contribute to better aligning the investments with the local context. In the remainder of the year several (shorter) follow-up meetings with the stakeholder groups will be organized, to ensure that the change processes are monitored.
By starting the learning platforms – with bottom-up research into the diversity of local context – the project aims to better align the investments with local priorities and expectations while starting an open exchange about innovative approaches to improve impacts locally. Communities will have better information about the investment, while investors will increase their knowledge about what is happening in the area, including business risks and opportunities.
For more details on any of the above, contact l.e.oates@uu.nl.
Last Updated: 31st July 2020 by Gemma
GLTN | Call for Proposals: “Conflict in the context of large scale land acquisitions”
Through the Land and Conflict Coalition, the Global Land Tool Network (GLTN) invites organizations and institutions to submit Expressions of Interest in undertaking a study on Conflict in the context of large scale land acquisitions.
The primary objective of the Study is to analyze how land based investments contribute to conflict, violent conflict and social destabilization in selected countries and provide recommendations on how to prevent, mitigate and address such risks in the short, medium and long term.
The study is central to the ongoing work of the Land and Conflict Coalition, established in November 2015 with funding support from the Swiss Development Cooperation, to address the various articulations of the land and conflict challenges across the conflict cycle: from prevention, to humanitarian response and development; through coordinated efforts between the UN system and non-UN actors (see Annex 2 in the Terms of Reference).
This call is limited to Organizations and Institutions only. Each must fulfill the following requirements:
Submissions Process:
Your Expression of Interest submission should include the following:
Expression of Interest must be delivered in electronic format no later than 6th March 2017 to Ombretta Tempra at ombretta.tempra@unhabitat.org.
The detailed terms of reference are available below.
Download the Terms of Reference
Last Updated: 15th January 2020 by Gemma
LANDac | Vice Versa and LANDac present special issue on land rights to Minister Ploumen
Yesterday, the Vice Versa special issue on land rights was officially handed over to Minister Ploumen, Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation. The special issue features stories from journalists giving perspectives on land rights from different angles, and was produced in cooperation with LANDac.
Written by Selma Zijlstra, Vice Versa.
The special was presented during the ‘LANDdialogue’, where representatives of NGOs, academia, business and government came together to discuss achievements in the sector in the past year and to design steps for the future of land governance.
Special reference was made to the Minister on a story from Iraq, where a local civil servant managed to grab the local cadastre records just before ISIS arrived to take Sinjar. Now that the peace has returned and refugees slowly return home, the two big green books have become an important source for preventing conflict. This is symbolic of the importance of land rights and good governance in building peaceful and resilient communities.
Land rights are equally important in the post-conflict setting of Colombia, where many internally displaced people will return to their homes now the peace agreement between FARC and the government of Colombia is in place. According to locals, formal land registration will take ‘two centuries’ to complete. As long as these remain unregistered, new conflict is looming. A participatory method hopes to bring a solution.
The importance of good relations with the community was also highlighted for the Minister. In one of the stories on Mozambique, it is described how frustrated young employees of a company put up a road blockage out of frustration with delayed payment of their salary. As we have seen in Ethiopia as well: without good relations with the community, companies cannot move forward – both literally and figuratively.
In the special issue, reports from Indonesia, Uganda and Mozambique tell about the complexities of large scale land acquisitions. Sometimes they deserve the label ‘land grab’, yet sometimes they are a promise for prosperity in the eyes of many — provided that conditions and rules are in place. The important role of the state and having adequate rules in place is emphasized throughout the special issue, for example by quoting the economist Karl Polyani who already in the 1940s understood that, while self-regulating markets may work for commodities, they create problems when labour and nature – which includes land – are brought under the same market discipline.
In the magazine, we see critical reflections vis-à-vis policy coherence on aid and trade, while initiatives of the Netherlands on land governance are highlighted as well – such as the support of the Dutch government for Mozambique’s Terra Segura program which aims to provide 5 million small-farmers with individual land titles. Different researchers contributed to the issue, including Femke van Noorloos from Utrecht University. She tells us about her research on “new cities” in the making, in Ethiopia, Nigeria and Kenya, amongst others. Models from Dubai are being enthusiastically copied in African settings, she says, but the complexities of local land rights are not always understood and accounted for in the designs.
The city is the main character as well in a story on Beira, Mozambique’s second largest city, a story which was made with the cooperation of Utrecht University and LANDac researcher Murtah Read. The inhabitants of Beira see their houses flooded time and time again, and it is mainly the poor that are suffering. Dutch companies designed an ambitious ‘Masterplan’, yet Beira proves that city development also involves extensive resettlement which is not always desirable. “Does the city of the future take the poorest of the poor into account?”, is the central question in this report.
Last but not least, Annelies Zoomers, Professor of International Development Studies and Chair of LANDac, advocates for Sustainable Development Goal number 1 and the commitment to leave no one behind. To realize that goal, people should not be moved aside for investments. Because there is also a right to stay, according to Zoomers – to stay on the land of your ancestors, where even the rivers and stones might have spiritual and symbolic meaning.
Vice Versa is a Dutch journalistic platform about global cooperation. Visit www.viceversaonline.nl for more information.
For questions or to find out how to access a copy of the magazine (currently available in Dutch; English pending), please contact landac.geo@uu.nl.