Contains country context, study of land investment, benefits and impacts. Finds wide discrepancies between public positions and laws and what is happening on the ground, an absence of environmental controls, widespread displacement from farmland without compensation, little local benefit, many land deals involve small-scale investors with limited agricultural experience.

Examines various grievances against Socfin in Sierra Leone including lack of proper consultation, transparency and compensation, pressure and intimidation, destruction of livelihoods. Argues it is critical that the Socfin’s deal is urgently reviewed.

Women disproportionately bear the negative impacts of large-scale land investments (in agribusiness, extractives, logging) in the global South.

The LANDac Conference 2018 looked at land governance through the lens of mobility. Land acquisitions trigger migration and yield other types of mobility such as capital, goods and ideas. Ensuing land claims raise new questions for land governance. So far, the discussion has focused on respecting land rights, informing local residents and offering fair compensation. The conference explored the question: Given the variety of mobility, what are good ways forward in land governance?

One of the world's major buyers of farmland is under fire for their involvement in land conflicts, environmental destruction and risky investments. A new report by GRAIN and Rede Social de Justiça e Direitos Humano presents, for the first time, a comprehensive analysis of Harvard University's controversial investments in global farmland.

The report finds that:

Kilombero Plantations Ltd (KPL) is a 5,818 hectare (ha) rice plantation located in the heart of the fertile Kilombero Valley, Tanzania. In addition to developing a large-scale rice farm, KPL works with local smallholder farmers through an outgrower model based on System of Rice Intensification (SRI) technologies.

For the last 60 years, the Korean economy has achieved an astounding development that is called “the Miracle of the Han River.” Korea was one of the world’s poorest countries at the time of the national liberation in 1945 and it went through a three-year long Korean War from 1950. However, it grew into one of the world’s leading trading powers. Its per capita income, which was merely 255 USD in 1970, reached 22,000 USD as of 2012.

The injustices of the land issue in South Africa under apartheid are well documented. A programme of land reform since then has had varied success. The authors argue that there is a great deal of empirical evidence to show that the private sector and markets make major contributions to South Africa’s development in general and to land reform in particular. It is in this light that this report looks at the contribution made by the private sector to land reform, both through organised land reform initiatives and in the ordinary course of their business.

The key question in this article is the extent to which current real property expropriation practices in Kigali city promote spatial justice. Current studies focus on the ambiguous manner in which real property valuation had been regulated by the expropriation law of 2007, leading to unfair compensation and various conflicts between expropriating agencies and expropriated people. Following its amendment in 2015, the law currently provides clearer procedures for valuation and fair compensation, based on the market prices.

The Voluntary Guidelines on Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGGT), was developed under the Committee on World Food Security as a result of collaboration among different groups of stakeholders – governments, civil society, private sector, academia. The VGGT is intended to provide a framework for responsible tenure governance that supports food security, poverty alleviation, sustainable resource use and environmental protection.

The Annual Country Reviews reflect upon current land issues in the Mekong Region, and has been produced for researchers, practitioners and policy advocates operating in the field. Specialists have been selected from Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam to briefly answer the following two questions:

1. What are the most pressing issues involving land governance in your country?

2. What are the most important issues for the researcher on land?

The Organising Committee of the Dutch Land Governance Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue has commissioned an investigation into the need and possibility to develop a protocol on fair compensation in cases of legitimate land tenure changes, with a focus on expropriation. This is in line with the Ministry’s role in the Land Governance Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue. This dialogue involves government, civil society, business, finance and academia.