The Land Matrix is an independent land monitoring initiative that promotes transparency and accountability around large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) in low- and middle-income countries across the world. By capturing data on its website, the initiative aims to stimulate debate on the trends and impacts of LSLAs, facilitate wide participation in collecting and sharing data about these deals, and contribute to the growing movement towards open data.

This guide provides companies involved in wind and solar projects with information and strategies to identify, prevent, mitigate, and account for adverse human rights impacts that they cause, contribute to, or are directly linked to through their operations, products, or services, by virtue of their business relationships. It may also be useful for investors, business partners, government actors, civil society organizations, communities, and other stakeholders.

This legal risk primer provides the general counsels and corporate legal teams of commercial wind and solar companies with an overview of the key legal risks that may arise from the above community-related human rights impacts. It is a companion to CCSI's business guide on the same topic.

Writers have guest-edited an African Studies Review forum on Understanding Land Deals in Limbo in Africa which examines the contentious politics of incomplete land grabs in Senegal;Tanzania and Zambia. These studies show that even when land deals are cancelled;stalled;downsized;transferred to new owners;or stay dormant and speculative for many years;they can still produce far-reaching consequences that often go unnoticed. The complex interplay of land governance;local political dynamics and capital’s own contradictions can push land deals in different and unexpected directions.

Africa’s Catholic bishops have criticized the appropriation of land;natural resources and other economic assets by private companies and called on national governments to show greater concern for local community rights and needs. They said: ‘The impunity of corporate and elite capture of African land and natural resources and the damage this is doing to Africa’s food systems;to our environment;our soils;lands and water;our biodiversity;our nutrition and health is a major concern.

The attractiveness of agricultural land available in developing countries has markedly increased in the last few years. Driven by rising and highly volatile prices for agricul- tural commodities, large land acquisitions have been undertaken by foreign investors. We formalize the discussion surrounding such large scale land deals through a dynamic stochastic programming model. Within this framework, we first determine the value of a land development project under uncertainty about prices for agricultural commodi- ties, political risk and irreversible capital investment.

Much African land currently has low productivity and has attracted investors purchasing (or leasing) land as a speculative option on higher future prices or productivity. If land deals are to be beneficial they need to induce productivity enhancing investments. Some of these will be publicly provided (infrastructure, agronomic knowledge), and some can only be provided by ‘pioneer’ investors who discover what works and who create demonstration effects.

Much African land currently has low productivity and has attracted investors leasing land as a speculative option on higher future prices or productivity. To be beneficial land deals need to induce productivity enhancing investments. Some of these will be publicly provided (infrastructure, agronomic knowledge), and some can only be provided by ‘pioneer’ investors who discover what works and create demonstration effects. Such pioneers can be rewarded for the positive externalities they create by being granted options on large areas of land.

There is wide engagement with large-scale land deals in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly from the perspectives of development and international political economy. Recently, scholars have increasingly pointed to a gendered lacuna in this literature. Engagement with gender tends to focus on potential differential impacts for men and women, and it also flags the need for more detailed empirical research of specific land deals.

This guide aims to help community organisers and paralegals to use the method of “ground-truthing” to collect information about operations that might be illegal, prohibited or causing harm. It is a useful tool to monitor the impacts of investments and the proper implementation of agreements and contracts.

This resource is part of the CCSI’s Directory of Community Guidance on Agreements Relating to Agriculture or Forestry Investment.