Rift Valley Institute PSRP Briefing Paper 14
Rift Valley Institute PSRP Briefing Paper 14
This yearbook chapter discusses the link between international investment law and commercial pressures on the world’s natural resources. It argues that changes in legal frameworks are redefining control over natural resources, and facilitating transitions toward more commercialised land relations. As pressures on resources increase, many national laws undermine the rights of people impacted by investments. If not properly thought through, international treaties to protect foreign investment could compound shortcomings of local and national governance.
In Kenya, the pastoral Maasai’s districts have been the vanguard in rangeland tenure transitions and experimentation as pastoralists’ territory gave way to communal group ranches and to individual land holdings under diverse land-use activities. The tenure transformations have been accompanied by institutional and socio-economic changes that have had bearings on local communities’ capacities for collective action, pastoral livelihoods, and environmental sustainability.
Guinea’s 450 megawatt Souapiti dam, scheduled to begin operating in September 2020, is the most advanced of several new hydropower projects planned by the government of President Alpha Condé. Guinea’s government believes that hydropower can significantlyincrease access to electricity in a country where only a fraction of people have reliable access to power.
This article was submitted for the UN Economic Commission for Africa “2017 Conference on Land Policy in Africa” Nov. 14-17 2017, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
This article sheds light on a series of events that triggered escalating tensions over land and resources in the coastal communities of Lagos, Nigeria. This article provides an in-depth analysis of Nigeria’s laws on expropriation and the processes of acquiring land and compensating landholders in the Lekki Free Trade Zone (LFTZ) case. Specifically, the analysis addresses the following research questions:
A fraca produtividade agrícola e a insegurança alimentar são características persistentes de muitos países pouco desenvolvidos. Os governos e as agências internacionais de desenvolvimento têm tido razão ao considerar a intensificação agrícola como a principal forma de induzir alterações tecnológicas em países em desenvolvimento que têm elevada pressão populacional e baixa produtividade agrícola. Uma questão intrínseca deste crescente interesse global na intensificação agrícola é a da segurança da posse de terras (Holden et al. 2008).
In 2003, the Maputo Declaration of the African Union stated that, within five years, 10 per cent of budgets of member states would be dedicated to agriculture. Ten years on, despite spending increases by some countries African governments still allocate an average of only 4 per cent of their national budgets to agriculture. Only eight out of 54 countries under the African Union have consistently reached the 10 per cent target.
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