On 24 November 2020 the Land Inequality Initiative (International Land Coalition, OXFAM, Welthungerhilfe) launched its new research report "Uneven Ground: Land Inequality at the Heart of Unequal Societies", and a series of groundbreaking studies that reveal new insights and data proving that land inequality is rising.

In the new study released today, researchers say that land inequality is rising in Africa and globally. Worse, the unfettered realisation of land inequality trends would create a social and economic disaster of massive proportions on the continent.

This Topic Guide covers: the trends in and drivers of large-scale land acquisition, and the associated costs, risks and benefits; the provision of and access to more accurate data on large-scale land acquisitions, and key international and regional initiatives to provide guidelines to enhance security of tenure and promote good quality investment; land reform issues such as land tenure regularisation and land administration systems; and land issues in the context of fragile states, and conflict and post-conflict situations.

The purpose of the UNEP Foresight Process is to produce, every two years, a careful and authoritative ranking of the most important emerging issues related to the global environment.

The first years of the twenty-first century will be remembered for a global land rush of nearly unprecedented scale. An estimated 500 million acres, an area eight times the size of Britain, was reported bought or leased across the developing world between 2000 and 2011, often at the expense of local food security and land rights. When the price of food spiked in 2008, pushing the number of hungry people in the world to over one billion, the interest of investors spiked as well, and within a year foreign land deals in the developing

“Land matters” – more than ever! Can land be dealt with like other resources or – in terms of an economic perspective– forms of capital. Or does it attract particular meanings, sentiments, interests, acquisition strategies or social relations?

Land Degradation Neutrality is a new way of approaching land degradation that acknowledges that land and land-based ecosystems are affected by global environmental change as well as by local land use practices. Achieving the target of a land degradation neutral world encourages adaptive management during planning, implementation, and monitoring of LDN-related activities and follows the LDN response hierarchy of avoiding, reducing, and reversing land degradation.

Large-scale land acquisitions have increased in scale and pace due to changes in commodity markets, agricultural investment strategies, land prices, and a range of other policy and market forces. The areas most affected are the global “commons” – lands that local people traditionally use collectively — including much of the world’s forests, wetlands, and rangelands. In some cases land acquisition occurs with environmental objectives in sight – including the setting aside of land as protected areas for biodiversity conservation.

The multiple forms of land acquisitions show direct and indirect implications on water. The motive to utilize, control or grab water is devised through acquiring land. There are embedded water issues in almost all land acquisitions. Practical challenges are explored especially in keeping the balance of water securities. The paper is done with the objective of analyzing the water implications, balance, priority and extent of security given to users in lieu of water security indicators and then examined against the regulatory frameworks and responses.

This paper analysed land governance and crop commercialization in Nigeria. General Household Survey (Living Standard Measurement Survey) panel data for the post-planting and post-harvest periods of 2015 and 2016 cropping seasons were used. Descriptive statistics, Crop Commercialization Index (CCI) and Tobit regression model were used to analyse data.