Burundi’s population has been expanding
far faster than its economy. And while the
agriculture sector contributes around 40%
of GDP and to over 95% of food supplies,
high pressure on land is leading to soil
fertility depletion, eroding the country’s
capacity to ramp up food production for a
growing population.
The Flagship project: “Improving food
security, nutrition, incomes, natural
resource base and gender equity for better
livelihoods of smallholder households in
sub-Saharan Africa” between 2015 and

Economic globalization promotes the economic development of underdeveloped regions but also influences the ecological environments of these regions, such as natural forest degradation. For inland developing regions with underdeveloped traffic routes, are the effects on the ecological environment also as obvious?

This paper explores the political processes that activists engaged in contesting land grabbing have triggered to connect claims across borders and to international institutions, regimes and processes. Through a review of cases of land-grab resistance that have led to project cancelation or suspension, I argue that contextual elements of the land grab and shifting geopolitics highlight the need for adaptation and refinement of models of transnational advocacy, historically structured in North–South patterns.

Concessions granted to investors in Cambodia have generated a deep sense of insecurity in rural forested areas. Villagers are not confined to a passive “everyday resistance of the poor,” as mentioned by James Scott, insofar as they frequently engage in frontal strategies for recovering land. Such has been the case in the northeastern provinces, where indigenous livelihoods are recurrently threatened by foreign and national companies. But what happens when a land conflict ends up in a stakeholder dialogue?

Since the early 2000s the Lao government has dramatically increased the number of large-scale land concessions issued for agribusinesses. While studies have documented the social and environmental impacts of land dispossession, the role of Vietnamese labour on these Vietnamese-owned rubber plantations has not previously been investigated. Taking a political ecology approach, we situate this study at the intersection between ‘land grabbing’ studies and work on ‘labour geographies’.

ABSTRACTED FROM WEBSITE: What is happening with the land and natural wealth around the world, and to the people who depend on them? How are people responding to these trends, threats, and challenges?

We assess the extent of access and degree of participation by smallholder tenants in the land rental market in Malawi. Our study is based on three rounds of nationally representative Living Standards Measurement Surveys collected in 2010, 2013 and 2016, from which we construct a balanced panel. We apply the transaction cost theory, which suggests transaction costs to be non-linear and depend on resource as well as socioeconomic characteristics within the customary tenure system that determines who hold, use and transfer land.

Continued strong population growth in already densely populated rural areas in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa makes it harder for youth to choose agriculture as their main source of income. We investigate whether near landless youth still can access rented land as a complementary source of income. We utilize a unique data of rural youth that have been allocated rehabilitated communal land to form formalized business groups for joint business activity. They rely on complementary sources of income and land renting is one of these.

We study how social preferences and norms of reciprocity are related to generalized and particularized trust among members of youth business groups in northern Ethiopia. Members of these groups are recruited among land-poor rural youth. The Ethiopian government promotes youth employment among land-poor rural youth by allocating them rehabilitated communal lands for the formation of sustainable businesses. The groups are organized as primary cooperatives, elect their own board, make their own bylaw and prepare a business plan that has to be accepted by the local government.

A new report developed by GIZ highlights success factors and 7 practical entry points for mainstreaming Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA) into policies and planning, based on 16 case studies from Mexico, Peru, South Africa, Philippines and Viet Nam in the following contexts:
1. National climate change policies (NDC, NAP)
2. National public investment allocation and project screening
3. Sectoral adaptation plans (water resources, protected areas, disaster risk reduction)
4. Land-use planning (spatial planning & landscape management)

This report details practical lessons on how to approach responsible land based investments in agriculture, derived from the experiences of LEGEND challenge fund projects and other pilots in Africa.

This briefing note presents the Executive Summary of a LEGEND paper that synthesises the key lessons from recent partnership projects in sub-Saharan Africa that explored how private business can partner with civil society stakeholders to demonstrate how agricultural investments can operate responsibly by respecting the legitimate land rights of local communities.