Resource information
How to manage China’s farmland for sustainable development has become a crucial issue of concern for both policy-makers and the wider public. Rural land acquisition has been widely recognized as a complex process of managing conflicts among stakeholders, which has been a major constraint to equitable development and good governance. In this process, how to define and set limits to the role of public interest for land-takings has become a pertinent issue. Moreover, there have been few explorations and discussions on the role of stakeholder participation in land use and management with a view to safeguarding farmers’ rights and benefits in the policy research circle.
This book, edited by Yongjun Zhao, Leon Verstappen and Wilbert Kolkman, introduces and analyses the major economic, social, legal and institutional constraints to the improvement of land policies as well as relevant theoretical issues from a multidisciplinary perspective. It provides rich case studies of the practices, experiences and lessons learnt from different experiments on farmland acquisition in different parts of China. It also illustrates several other countries’ experiences in farmland acquisition to explore their relevance for the case of China.
This book is a significant outcome of the Farmland Acquisition and Governance in China: Participatory Learning and Experimentation Project (LANGPLE, 2011-2013). This project has brought a group of leading land experts from China and the Netherlands in developing an enhanced understanding of the social, economic, political and institutional factors for sustainable farmland use and management with a strong focus on the role of stakeholder participation in the Chinese context. Through supporting innovative research and local experimentation, LANGPLE has published a guideline on how to involve different stakeholders especially the farmers in farmland acquisition, which is also included in this book.
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This book, as well as mr. Zhao's book about "China's disappearing countryside", is the result of a project titled "farmland acquisition and governance in China - participatory learning and experimentation (LANGPLE)", started by the University of Groningen since May 2011, funded by the Ford Foundation.
For more information on this project or either of the publications, please feel free contact Yongjun Zhao.
