Includes water mining: the wrong type of farming, when the Nile runs dry, the Niger, another lifeline at risk, selected African land deals and their water implications, hydro-colonialism?, virtual water, grabbing carbon credits, stop the water grab.

Includes land tenure systems in Rwanda, the Land Tenure Reform Programme (LTRP), summary of the land policy and the organic land law, registration of eight million parcels in three years: a realistic ambition?, land tenure regularisation and housing development in Kigali, conclusions and policy implications.

A website link to a series of documents on the global political agreement one year on, land reform ‘success’ and ‘viability’ in Zimbabwe, myths and realities in Zimbabwe’s land reform, adding to the evidence base, policy dialogue – charting the way forward, a panel debate, photographs, interviews with beneficiaries.

International investment treaties are an important part of the legal frameworks governing foreign investment. This report measures the extent to which they apply to agribusiness investments initiated as part of the recent wave of large-scale land deals in low and middle-income countries. It finds that 70% of ‘land grab’ deals worldwide are protected by at least one investment treaty. Public action to terminate, renegotiate or regulate land deals could expose states to the risk of treaty-based arbitration claims.

Emphasises the need for donors, NGOs and governments to take a more comprehensive approach to women’s land rights that addresses underlying gender dynamics to bring about transformative gender change rather than token gains for women. To be effective, work to secure women’s rights to land must focus on tackling social relations to transform gender dynamics and needs to start at household level.

In Mozambique, changes in land access and use are shaping new landscapes, often at the expense of the poor. Despite progressive land legislation, elite groups and vested interests are consolidating land holdings while peasant producers are being dispossessed of their land and access to fertile plots is becoming increasingly difficult. As national and foreign investors seek land for housing, real estate, agriculture, tourism, mining and forestry, what is the state’s role in responding to these increased demands?

Large-scale agricultural investments impact upon men and women in different ways, yet women’s voices and interests are not always heard in decisions about land.

On the basis of work in Masvingo Province since 2000, and as part of an ongoing regional project on Livelihoods after Land Reform in Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe, offers challenges to 5 oft-repeated myths, that: Zimbabwean land reform has been a total failure; the beneficiaries of Zimbabwean land reform have been largely political ‘cronies’; there is no investment in the new resettlements; agriculture is in complete ruins; the rural economy has collapsed.

Since 2014, a set of initiatives in Cameroon, Ghana and Senegal has worked to help people harness the law in order to have greater control over decisions that affect them in a process of legal empowerment. In the three countries, the initiative developed diverse approaches, responding to different local contexts and theories of change. Each embodied a distinctive combination of grassroots action, public advocacy and private sector engagement – through supporting junior lawyers in Cameroon, grassroots committees in Ghana and locally negotiated “land charters” in Senegal.

A growing body of evidence points to the scale, geography, players and key characteristics of the global land rush phenomenon. Much of the data cannot be compared so improving the data and analysis is critical. All evidence indicates that land acquisitions are happening quickly and on a large scale, so we urgently need to det on with developing appropriate responses.

Includes setting the scene: accountability in large-scale land acquisitions; the role of the law in shaping pathways to accountability; citizen action – how effective are the bottom-up checks and balances?; under what conditions can citizens achieve justice and equitable outcomes in relation to land acquisitions?; what role for research?

The complaints procedure of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is one of the options available to communities threatened by the negative impacts of the palm oil industry. Drawing on direct experiences of supporting communities to use it in Indonesia and Liberia, the report summarises how communities can get the most out of this procedure. Realistic outcomes include a temporary freeze on plantation development while longer term solutions are negotiated. Advises that several advocacy strategies be pursued simultaneously to maximise chances of success.