Sylvia Kay is a political scientist with an MSc. in Global Politics from the London School of Economics and Social Science (LSE). She joined TNI in 2011 as a researcher working on issues around land tenure, natural resource governance, and agricultural investment. She has written various studies and policy briefs for TNI on land and water grabbing, the role of public policy in rural development...
A TNI Fellow since 2008, Saturnino 'Jun' M Borras Jr. ranks among the top 1% of the world’s most cited researchers in his field, and is a recipient of a European Research Council Advanced Grant (2019-2024) for his research on land politics and five spheres of global social life (food, climate change, labour/migration, citizenship, and geopolitics). Jun has been deeply involved in rural social...
Jennifer C. Franco is a research associate in the Agrarian and Environmental Justice as well as the 'Myanmar in Focus' Programmes of TNI, and an adjunct professor at the College of Humanities and Development Studies (COHD) of the China Agricultural University in Beijing....
The dominant perception of land-grabbing as a threat is being replaced by a new story line, promoted by, amongst other, the World Bank—that of new land deals as a potential opportunity for rural development. But this supposed win-win formula raises many problems, doubts and concerns.
Harold Liversage, the Land Tenure Adviser for the International Fund for Agricultural Development argues that responsible investment in agriculture is possible if voluntary guidelines are backed up by an empowered civil society.
This introduction to Land Grabbing and agrarian political economy looks at various issues in the debate, the different theoretical perspectives, as well as the relations between state, capital and society, and the politics of change, resistance and mobilisation for alternatives.
Transnational Agrarian Movements (TAMs) have emerged in the last decade, resisting and contesting unfair land policies; but how do they differ from region to region, and how do their ideological, political and institutional differences affect their relationship to international development agencies?
Calls for codes of conduct for landgrabbing not only fail to tackle the main drivers of land dispossession but also legitimise a new wave of land enclosures that will affect many vulnerable rural communities.
This working paper reviews the latest experiences of land grabbing in Southern Africa, detailing questions of scale and duration, initiation, negotiation processes, production sectors, employment, natural resource use and more.
Coinciding with the Global Land Grab conference held at the University of Sussex, three leading commentators debate the politics of land deals; contrasting a World Bank "code of conduct" perspective with more critical analysis looking at human rights and labour issues.
The vacant land discourse, promoted by some land deals, is fundamentally flawed. Cases of deals made for land that is unclaimed, unused or unoccupied by local people is simply untrue.
New research on the global rush for agricultural land shows that small-scale farmers will increasingly lose out to major corporations as land deals ignore local tenure rights.
Wealthy interests are pushing to normalise the concept of "responsible agricultural investment" but this corporate lingo masks the mass appropriation of land at the cost of local inhabitants (often forcibly removed), the destruction of livelihoods and the environment.
Worsening climate change and the emergence of new economic powers is leading to a renewed scramble for resources, with negative consequences for many impoverished communities.
Two papers analysing the recent experience of Latin America, and Cuba in particular, support arguments that a shift from industrial-large scale farming to small-scale farming can bring environmental, economic and political benefits.
In the midst of a raging famine in the Horn of Africa and continuing expansion of land grabbing across the Global South, a new and critical report has been released by the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition, of the Committee on World Food Security.
