Contemporary large-scale land transactions (LSLTs), also called land grabs, are historically unprecedented in their scale and pace. They have provoked robust scholarly debates, yet studies of their gender-differentiated impacts remain more rare, particularly when it comes to how changes in control over land and resources affect women's labor, and thereby their livelihoods and well-being.

Across the world, ‘green grabbing’ – the appropriation of land and resources for environmental ends – is an emerging process of deep and growing significance. The vigorous debate on ‘land grabbing’ already highlights instances where ‘green’ credentials are called upon to justify appropriations of land for food or fuel – as where large tracts of land are acquired not just for ‘more efficient farming’ or ‘food security’, but also to ‘alleviate pressure on forests’.

The intersection between land grabs and climate change mitigation politics in Myanmar has created new political opportunities for scaling up, expanding and deepening struggles toward ‘agrarian climate justice’. Building on the concepts of ‘political opportunities’ and ‘rural democratization’ to understand how rural politics is relevant to national regime changes in the process of deepening democracy, this paper argues that scaling up beyond the local level becomes necessary to counter the concentration of power at higher levels.

To combat climate change and hunger, a number of governments, foundations and aid agencies have called for a ‘New Green Revolution’. Such calls obfuscate the dynamics of the Green Revolution. Using Arrighi's analysis of capital accumulation cycles, it is possible to trace a Long Green Revolution that spans the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

The most recent ‘land rush’ precipitated by the convergent ‘crises’ of fuel, feed and food in 2007–2008 has heightened the debate on the consequences of land investments, with widespread media coverage, policy commentary and civil society engagement. This ‘land rush’ has been accompanied by a ‘literature rush’, with a fast-growing body of reports, articles, tables and books with varied purposes, metrics and methods. Land grabbing, as it is popularly called, is now a hot political topic around the world, discussed amongst the highest circles.

Since 2007, capital markets have acquired a newfound interest in agricultural land as a portfolio investment. This phenomenon is examined through the theoretical lens of financialization. On the surface the trend resembles a sort of financialization in reverse – many new investments involve agricultural production in addition to land ownership. Farmland also fits well into current financial discourses, which emphasize getting the right kind of exposure to long-term agricultural trends and ‘value investing’ in genuinely productive companies.

Much of rural Myanmar remains under local Customary Tenure Systems (CTS), particularly in upland ethnic areas. Yet CTS lack legal recognition and are increasingly vulnerable to appropriation. This paper examines how, since 2016, communities and civil society organisations (CSOs) across Shan State have organised to document their CTS as a basis for advocacy. Findings confirm CTS remain prevalent and valued, but communities are experiencing increasing pressure, through both gradual erosion, and direct appropriation. Communities and CSOs demand statutory recognition and protections.

This paper highlights how farmers in a northern Lao village transformed their customary land rights – in the face of incoherent overlapping state territorialization attempts – into a territorial strategy to secure their land tenure. By planting rubber, some villagers have engaged in a crop boom to lay claim to land which has recently been zoned for upland rice cultivation (and conservation) as part of a state-led land use planning initiative.

In 1999 the Canadian Federal government passed the First Nations Land Management Act, ratifying the Framework Agreement on First Nation Land Management signed by the government and 14 original signatory First Nations in 1996. This Agreement allows First Nations to opt out of the 34 land code provisions of the Indian Act and develop individual land codes, and has been promoted as a means of increasing First Nation autonomy and facilitating economic growth and development on reserve lands.

The paper highlights that land degradation in India has been approaching a crisis level in spite of repeated emphasis on wasteland development and existence of apex level organisations for that purpose. One reason has been the policy emphasis on ownership and control rather than appropriate management of the land. It is set in the context of i) the 1988 Forest Policy, and ii) the recent amends to the Forest Conservation Act.