Recent years have seen a new wave of large-scale acquisitions of farmland for plantation agriculture in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Less tangible changes are also taking place. In a globalised world, land governance is increasingly shaped by international law, developments in which law are shifting the balance between competing land claims and between private interests and public authority. International developments are also creating new spaces for contestation and accountability.

This guide is for organisations and individuals working to support communities whose land rights, lives and livelihoods have been negatively impacted by agricultural investments. It provides guidance on strategies for holding the actors involved in agricultural investments accountable for human rights violations and all sorts of malpractices, such as:

● Mapping investment chains

● Formal accountability mechanisms

● Complementary advocacy strategies

Training volunteers to help their communities defend their land rights has proved an effective approach for promoting land justice in Tanzania. Report documents how Hakiardhi, a Dar-es-Salaam based research institute working on land governance issues, has established and trained a 600-strong network of male and female ‘Land Rights Monitors’ (LRMs) operating in 300 villages on various aspects of the land law, so they can help people and local governments to exercise and ensure respect for their legal rights in land disputes, particularly in relation to large-scale agricultural investments.

Provides a backdrop of relevant policies and practice; a gender analysis of the policy framework governing land and investments; and recommendations on how to work towards land rights securing and better inclusion in land governance processes for women in Tanzania. Concludes that implementation of laws, including key gender equality principles, has been weak, and gender inequality in land access persists largely due to the continued dominance of (patrilineal) customary land laws and practice.

Includes colonial rule and land frontiers, late colonialism and modernisation, post-colonial nation-building and state-led development, community participation and community-based solutions, harmonising and devolving land administration, women’s land rights, pastoral land rights, market-led land redistribution in Southern Africa, foreign direct investment in land.

5 chapters: introduction; features, triggers, and drivers of the global rush for land; impacts; factors shaping the land rush; conclusions and policy considerations. Africa is the prime target, the best land is often being targeted for acquisition, national elites are playing a major role, the rural poor are frequently being dispossessed, compensation for resource loss is rarely adequate, women are particularly vulnerable.

In Liberia it is estimated that around half the country’s land mass has been promised to foreign companies and investors. From 2009-11 the Sustainable Development Institute and NAMATI embarked on an action research project to support rural communities to protect, document, and manage their customary lands and natural resources. Drawing from lessons learned in the field, they sought to bring the voices and realities from rural Liberia to influential policymakers.

A brief on the need to secure land rights for the world’s pastoralists, who manage rangelands that cover a quarter of the world’s land surface but have few advocates. Covers the different paths pastoralists take; resource scarcity in the face of uncertainty; pastoralism and land use; loss and fragmentation of pastoralist lands and blocking of livestock routes; managing climatic variability and climate change; initiatives for securing pastoralists rights to land (Niger, Tanzania, India, Ethiopia).

Paper introduces the rationale for focusing on women’s land rights and explains the Learning Route methodology and the preparation of this Route in particular, before providing background information on land tenure and women’s land rights in Rwanda and Burundi.

The 3 case studies are located against the backdrop of changing land governance, tenure policy and legislation in Botswana, Madagascar and Mozambique. They examine how power and authority over decision-making and resources or functions is distributed between central, regional and local levels of governance. They explore the roles and perspectives of other actors such as non-governmental bodies, traditional governance institutions, user associations or village committees, the private sector and other organisations of civil society.

Summarises highlights from the first two and a half years of the programme, including insights on the legal levers that can be used to maximise local voice and benefit from local land rights to investor-state contracts through to community-investor partnerships, as well as a few milestones in IIED’s work on legal literacy training, exchange of experience and policy advocacy.

Includes what is the problem and what can be done?; the law and customary land rights; how does Forest Law treat customary land rights?; lessons from other African states; the way forward. Argues that the current de jure reality is that most rural Cameroonians are little more than squatters on their own land with regard to forests and other land assets.