Deadline for abstracts is 31 October 2014!
CALL FOR PAPERS
International Academic Conference
Land Grabbing: Perspectives from East and Southeast Asia
5-6 June 2015
Chiang Mai University, Thailand
The Land Deal Politics Initiative (LDPI, www.iss.nl/ldpi) is collaborating with several initiatives and institutions to hold an international conference with a regional focus on East and Southeast Asia, with emphasis on land grabbing, responses to climate change consequences and policy responses as well as resource conflict. The co-organizers are: BRICS for Critical Agrarian Studies (BICAS, http://www.plaas.org.za/bicas), the research project MOSAIC (www.iss.nl/mosaic), and Chiang Mai University (http://rcsd.soc.cmu.ac.th). It will be organized in collaboration with the Transnational Institute (TNI, www.tni.org), Inter-Church Organization for Development (ICCO) Cooperation – Southeast Asia, and Focus on the Global South (www.focusweb.org), and in partnership with: University of Amsterdam (WOTRO/AISSR Project on Land Investments); Université de Montréal – REINVENTERRA (Asia) Project; University of Wisconsin-Madison. It will be held on 5-6 June 2015 in Chiang Mai, Thailand and to be hosted by The Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development (RCSD) of Chiang Mai University. See attached flyer.
The 2015 conference is a follow up to the highly successful international academic conferences organized by LDPI: in 2011 in IDS University of Sussex, UK and in 2012 in Cornell University, New York, USA. Since the 2012 Cornell conference, there has been a popular clamor for more regionally focused international conferences. There will be one each for Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe/Central Asia, and China and/in Southeast Asia to be held during the period of 2014-2016.
The purpose of the 2015 Chiang Mai conference is to continue deepening and broadening our understanding of global land deals – but in the specific regional context, with special attention to climate change and the role of China and other middle income countries within the region. As before, we remain open to broader topics around land grab intersections with political economy, political ecology and political sociology, and will convene a series of parallel sessions on a range of themes responding to the issues below (and others):
• Agrarian Change: What changes in broad agrarian structures are emerging? Are land deals motivated by new forms of agrarian capitalism or repeats of the past? What is the nature and extent of rural social differentiation – in terms of class, gender, generation and ethnicity – following changes in land use and land property relations as well as organizations of production and exchange? What are the emerging trends around dynamics of power, elites and corruption; land as a source of patronage? How can we make sense of the politics of land deals in different contexts? What are the dynamics of international politics of land grabs in the broader context of energy, mining, forestry and conservation; and the role of big capital and powerful interests?
• Finance: How are land deal contracts developed between foreign and local companies and national states and financiers? Who finances these deals? What is the role of sovereign funds, hedge funds, pension funds and other financial instrument? Who is involved? How does the money flow? How and to what extent has (trans)national finance speculation played a role in land deals in the context of the convergence of food, fuels, climate and finance crises?
• Green Grabbing: What environmental rationales are being deployed to appropriate land and nature? How does nature conservation, carbon sequestration, ecosystem service valuation intersect with land grabbing? What are the intersections between land deals and climate change mitigations strategies such as REDD+ and biofuels?
• The role of BRICS/China, other East Asian countries and middle income countries (MICs): What is the role of BRICS/China in the emerging patterns of investments in agriculture in the region? What is the extent and character of its investments in agriculture in the region, and what are the motivations inside China for such regional investments? What are the emerging land use and agrarian change inside China? To what extent are the rising MICs (middle income countries, e.g. Thailand) within the region involved in recent large-scale land investments? Where are the East Asian countries (Japan, Taiwan, South Korea) in all these new agrarian dynamics?
• Resistance and Alternatives: What is the range of reactions from local communities to these investments? To what extent have agrarian political struggles been provoked by the new land investment dynamics? What are the issues that unite or divide the rural poor, organized movements, and rural communities around the issue of land deals? What are some of the relevant emerging alternatives from key actors? Are some of the traditional policies such as land reform, and some of the more recent alternative visions such as ‘food sovereignty’ relevant and useful in protecting and promoting the interest of the rural poor in the midst of these (trans)national commercial land deals?
• International Policy Actors: Have global land policies of different overseas development agencies (eg World Bank, ADB, FAO, EU) contributed to facilitating/encouraging or blocking/discouraging land deals? What are the limitations of ‘code of conduct’, certification, regulation, FAO’s Tenure Guidelines, FPIC, information dissemination, and capacity-building strategies?
The organizers invite papers that offer rigorous and innovative analysis of this list of issues. Papers based on recent, original field research are especially welcomed. We also encourage comparative studies. Doctoral students and younger researchers, particularly from within the region, are especially encouraged to participate.
Last Updated: 26th July 2019 by Gemma
29/10/2014 New publication: ‘Losing your land’
New publication: Losing your land – Dispossession in the Great Lakes
Dispossession of land on a small scale can have as great an impact on living conditions as large-scale land-grabs. With the increasing commodification of land, new forms of dispossession, in urban as well as rural districts, are also gaining in importance.
This book looks at this largely uninvestigated issue through case studies in the Eastern DRC, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda: here the loss of land often represents the loss of people’s livelihoods in these areas of extreme land scarcity in highly populated regions. In the post-conflict states of the Great Lakes, governance challenges increase the risk of dispossession of the already poor and vulnerable: formal institutions are weak or biased; customary authorities have lost some of their moral authority. The cases in this book show in particular how local power dynamics, often rooted in history, bear upon the processes of land competition, dispossession and land grabbing. This timely volume will be important not only for those in African Studies, but for those in development studies, as well as practitioners and policy-makers worldwide.
Contents
1 Introduction: Causes and risks of dispossession and land grabbing in the Great Lakes region by An Ansoms and Thea Hilhorst
2 Land grabbing and development history: The Congolese experience by Jean-Philippe Peemans
3 This land is my land: Land grabbing in Ituri (DRC) by Dan Fahey
4 Land grabbing by mining companies: Local contentions and state reconfiguration in South-Kivu (DRC) by Sara Geenen and Jana Hönke
5 Competition over soil and subsoil: Land grabbing by local elites in South Kivu (Eastern DRC) by Klara Claessens, Emery Mudinga and An Ansoms
6 The continuities in contested land acquisitions in Uganda by Mathijs van Leeuwen, Ilse Zeemeijer, Doreen Kobusingye, Charles Muchunguzi, Linda Haartsen and Claudia Piacenza
7 Land grabbing and power relations in Burundi: Practical norms and real governance by Aymar Nyenyezi Bisoka and An Ansoms
8 Land grabbing and land tenure security in post-genocide Rwanda by Chris Huggins
9 The reorganization of rural space in Rwanda: Habitat concentration, land consolidation and collective marshland cultivation by An Ansoms, Giuseppe Cioffo, Chris Huggins and Jude Murison
10 “Modernizing Kigali”: The struggle for space in the Rwandan urban context by Vincent Manirakiza and An Ansoms
11 Conclusion by Thea Hilhorst and An Ansoms
An Ansoms is assistant professor in development studies at the Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium); Thea Hilhorst is a senior advisor at the Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam.
Link to the publisher’s website:
Losing your land
Last Updated: 26th July 2019 by Gemma
20/10/2014 – Principles for responsible agriculture and food investments are approved
Principles for responsible agriculture and food investments are approved
Rome, 16 October 2014
During the 2014 annual meeting of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) from 13-18 October in Rome, governments from around the world have approved a landmark set of principles meant to guide investment in agriculture and food systems, aimed at assuring that cross-border and corporate investment flows lead to improved food security and sustainability and respect the rights of farm and food workers.
The Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems were approved by the Committee on World Food Security (CFS).
The Principles were hammered out over two years of consultations and negotiations. They build on and are complementary to the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security, endorsed by the CFS in May 2012 amid heightened global concern about rising food prices and large-scale purchases of agricultural land and operations in developing countries, dubbed “land grabbing” by critics and widely seen as a threat to smallholders.
For more information about the endorsement, please see the FAO press release:
Principles for responsible agriculture and food investments are approved
Full text of the approved principles:
Full text
Last Updated: 28th June 2019 by Gemma
20/10/2014 – Vacancy announcement: Land Matrix Project Support Coordinator
Vacancy announcement: Land Matrix Initiative Project Support Unit Coordinator
Deadline for applications: 31 October 2014
The Land Matrix Initiative (LMI) is a global and independent initiative monitoring competition over land use in the Global South. Its goal is to facilitate an open development community of citizens, researchers, policy-makers and technology specialists to promote transparency and accountability in decisions over land and investment. The LMI has become an international innovative benchmark for its open data and development approach, database structure, web appearance, and multi-stakeholder character, and has received wide interest among policy makers, development practitioners, NGOs, the media, researchers and the informed public.
In view of enhancing the quality of the LMI, and increasing its impact on policy-dialogue and decision making, the LM is presently involved in a process of decentralization and expansion. Five new organizations have joined the network in June 2014 and will act as Regional Focal Points – and regional, national and thematic Land Observatories will complement the well-established LM Global Observatory that monitors and collects data on large-scale land transactions worldwide.
The Project Support Unit
As the LMI expands and decentralizes, project coordination becomes necessary. In the framework of this expansion and decentralization, it has been decided to establish a Project Support Unit (PSU). The PSU will be the coordinating entity of the LMI and will act as an intermediary body coordinating and implementing the decisions taken by the Steering Committee.
It will be based at the University of Pretoria, hosted by the Post-Graduate School of Agriculture and Rural Development, in the Department of Agricultural Economics and the Centre for the Study of Governance Innovation. Initially the PSU will be composed of:
1. Coordinator
2. Research assistant (reports to PSU coordinator)
3. Communication assistant (reports to PSU coordinator)
TORs LM Coordinator_9 10 14
More information and the full vacancy text, including task/ responsibilities and skills/ competencies:
Last Updated: 31st July 2020 by Gemma
16/10/2014 – Available now: report of the launch of the World Bank report ‘Voice & Agency’ about gender and land
On 11 September 2014, LANDac organized, together with the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the World Bank Group, a launch of the new World Bank publication ‘Voice & Agency: empowering women and girls for shared prosperity’ in The Hague. The report and presentation gives specific attention to issues of women and land. The report of this launch is now available here:
Report_WB Gender
Last Updated: 26th July 2019 by Gemma
15/10/2014 – Deadline call for papers LDPI Conference 5-6 June 2015, Thailand
Deadline for abstracts is 31 October 2014!
CALL FOR PAPERS
International Academic Conference
Land Grabbing: Perspectives from East and Southeast Asia
5-6 June 2015
Chiang Mai University, Thailand
The Land Deal Politics Initiative (LDPI, www.iss.nl/ldpi) is collaborating with several initiatives and institutions to hold an international conference with a regional focus on East and Southeast Asia, with emphasis on land grabbing, responses to climate change consequences and policy responses as well as resource conflict. The co-organizers are: BRICS for Critical Agrarian Studies (BICAS, http://www.plaas.org.za/bicas), the research project MOSAIC (www.iss.nl/mosaic), and Chiang Mai University (http://rcsd.soc.cmu.ac.th). It will be organized in collaboration with the Transnational Institute (TNI, www.tni.org), Inter-Church Organization for Development (ICCO) Cooperation – Southeast Asia, and Focus on the Global South (www.focusweb.org), and in partnership with: University of Amsterdam (WOTRO/AISSR Project on Land Investments); Université de Montréal – REINVENTERRA (Asia) Project; University of Wisconsin-Madison. It will be held on 5-6 June 2015 in Chiang Mai, Thailand and to be hosted by The Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development (RCSD) of Chiang Mai University. See attached flyer.
The 2015 conference is a follow up to the highly successful international academic conferences organized by LDPI: in 2011 in IDS University of Sussex, UK and in 2012 in Cornell University, New York, USA. Since the 2012 Cornell conference, there has been a popular clamor for more regionally focused international conferences. There will be one each for Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe/Central Asia, and China and/in Southeast Asia to be held during the period of 2014-2016.
The purpose of the 2015 Chiang Mai conference is to continue deepening and broadening our understanding of global land deals – but in the specific regional context, with special attention to climate change and the role of China and other middle income countries within the region. As before, we remain open to broader topics around land grab intersections with political economy, political ecology and political sociology, and will convene a series of parallel sessions on a range of themes responding to the issues below (and others):
• Agrarian Change: What changes in broad agrarian structures are emerging? Are land deals motivated by new forms of agrarian capitalism or repeats of the past? What is the nature and extent of rural social differentiation – in terms of class, gender, generation and ethnicity – following changes in land use and land property relations as well as organizations of production and exchange? What are the emerging trends around dynamics of power, elites and corruption; land as a source of patronage? How can we make sense of the politics of land deals in different contexts? What are the dynamics of international politics of land grabs in the broader context of energy, mining, forestry and conservation; and the role of big capital and powerful interests?
• Finance: How are land deal contracts developed between foreign and local companies and national states and financiers? Who finances these deals? What is the role of sovereign funds, hedge funds, pension funds and other financial instrument? Who is involved? How does the money flow? How and to what extent has (trans)national finance speculation played a role in land deals in the context of the convergence of food, fuels, climate and finance crises?
• Green Grabbing: What environmental rationales are being deployed to appropriate land and nature? How does nature conservation, carbon sequestration, ecosystem service valuation intersect with land grabbing? What are the intersections between land deals and climate change mitigations strategies such as REDD+ and biofuels?
• The role of BRICS/China, other East Asian countries and middle income countries (MICs): What is the role of BRICS/China in the emerging patterns of investments in agriculture in the region? What is the extent and character of its investments in agriculture in the region, and what are the motivations inside China for such regional investments? What are the emerging land use and agrarian change inside China? To what extent are the rising MICs (middle income countries, e.g. Thailand) within the region involved in recent large-scale land investments? Where are the East Asian countries (Japan, Taiwan, South Korea) in all these new agrarian dynamics?
• Resistance and Alternatives: What is the range of reactions from local communities to these investments? To what extent have agrarian political struggles been provoked by the new land investment dynamics? What are the issues that unite or divide the rural poor, organized movements, and rural communities around the issue of land deals? What are some of the relevant emerging alternatives from key actors? Are some of the traditional policies such as land reform, and some of the more recent alternative visions such as ‘food sovereignty’ relevant and useful in protecting and promoting the interest of the rural poor in the midst of these (trans)national commercial land deals?
• International Policy Actors: Have global land policies of different overseas development agencies (eg World Bank, ADB, FAO, EU) contributed to facilitating/encouraging or blocking/discouraging land deals? What are the limitations of ‘code of conduct’, certification, regulation, FAO’s Tenure Guidelines, FPIC, information dissemination, and capacity-building strategies?
The organizers invite papers that offer rigorous and innovative analysis of this list of issues. Papers based on recent, original field research are especially welcomed. We also encourage comparative studies. Doctoral students and younger researchers, particularly from within the region, are especially encouraged to participate.
Last Updated: 26th July 2019 by Gemma
09/09/2014 – Debate on 21 October: How do we stop land grabbing?
On October 21st, activists, companies, investors, scientists and Dutch government representatives will come together in De Balie in Amsterdam, to debate the best way to end land grabbing due to rising palm oil demand. Hosted by Milieudefensie (Friends of the Earth Netherlands); LANDac Chair Annelies Zoomers is one of the panelists. Entrance is free, but registration required through: De Balie, Amsterdam
More information:
12 foei debate invite lr-2
Last Updated: 26th July 2019 by Gemma
26/09/2014 Now available: Report ‘The global Jatropha Curcas hype: What can we learn from the boom and bust of a miracle crop’ (19-20 June 2014)
The final report of the conference ‘The global Jatropha Curcas hype: What can we learn from the boom and bust of a miracle crop?’ held on 19 and 20 June 2014, in Utrecht, the Netherlands, is now available. The conference, organized by LANDac, the IDS group at Utrecht University, Van Vollenhoven Institute Addis Ababa University, Hivos, BothENDS and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), drew together a group of around 50 experts working on Jatropha. The focus of the conference was on the hype around Jatropha and see what we can learn from the boom and bust of a miracle crop or wonder crop. Studying processes that led to the initial boom of Jatropha as a commercial biofuel crop, as well as the circumstances that led to its abrupt decline and failure of many of the business projects provides us with valuable lessons for future hypes around miracle crops.
Besides this conference report, the organizers are currently drafting a policy brief based on the outcomes of the discussions.
The conference report can be downloaded here:
Report Jatropha 19-20 June 2014_final
The short documentary A very promising biofuel for Africa: Jatropha from 2007, highlights some of the drivers of the Jatropha business.
Last Updated: 26th July 2019 by Gemma
18/09/2014 – Call for cases
LANDac is calling for cases of domestic or foreign investments or activities in agriculture in the Global South that are models in which due attention is paid to issues of sustainable development, inclusive growth and food security; with specific attention for the local land governance situation.
LANDac activities in this area include short- and long-term research projects. Short-term research is conducted into responsible investment practices and its linkages to the wide diversity of (international) guidelines and principles that have recently come up. Long-term research includes a PhD project, in collaboration with CGIAR’s Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), in Tanzania within the Large-scale Investments in Food, Fibre and Energy (LIFFE) Options project. The project aims to take stock of existing smallholder-oriented agricultural business models.
In the terms of stakeholder involvement, LANDac in collaboration with the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs organizes the LANDforum, a think tank of professionals whose work is focused around agricultural investments. The LANDforum was set up in 2013 and consists of selected researchers, policy makers and practitioners from Brazil, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Mozambique and Uganda.
In the context of these ongoing LANDac activities and studies around topics of sustainable development, inclusive growth and food security, the network is now interested in receiving interesting and innovative approaches by practitioners that are active in the Global South. Cases can be submitted to the LANDac secretariat: landac.geo@uu.nl. In case of any questions about this call, please do not hesitate to contact us!
Last Updated: 26th July 2019 by Gemma
12/09/2014 – Successful launch World Bank report Voice & Agency
Together with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, LANDac organized the Dutch launch of the World Bank report ‘Voice & Agency: Empowering women and girls for shared prosperity’ last week in The Hague. The launch was attended by more than 50 representatives and experts working on gender issues and land issues. The report was presented by Jeni Klugman and Lucia Hamner of the World Bank gender group in Washington DC.
A full report and powerpoint presentations of the event will be available on this website soon.
Last Updated: 26th July 2019 by Gemma
09/09/2014 – Call for papers: World Bank Conference 2015
The World Bank announces that the 16th Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty will be held at the World Bank Headquarters in Washington, D.C., from March 23 – 26, 2015. The conference theme will be “Linking Land Tenure and Use for Shared Prosperity.”
The organizers invite the submission of 800 to 1,500 word abstracts on ten thematic areas which are outlined in the call for papers (see link below). A technical committee will base their reviews and acceptance of submitted papers on the innovative nature, policy relevance, and contribution to the literature and general body of knowledge of the paper.
This year, new and exciting sessions are added to the conference: an innovation fair and hands- on classes. The innovation fair on March 26 will feature how innovations in technology and open data can help improve land governance at scale, and will encourage hands on interaction for participants looking for solutions to the land challenges of the post-2015 Development Agenda. A post-conference learning day on March 27 will offer hands-on classes to familiarize participants with cutting edge tools and techniques developed to help policy makers.
Important Dates:
• Online submission of individual abstracts: October 31, 2014
• Notification of acceptance: December 1, 2014
• Registration deadline for conference: December 31, 2014
• Submission of full paper with a 200 word summary: January 31, 2015
For more information, please see the call for papers:
Call for Papers Land Conference 2015