Includes Mozambique – war, land and poverty; land law, investors and peasants; land concessions – forests, agrofuels and other crops; are reckless land investment deals over? Traces the history of previous land concessions. A current intense debate on the proper balance between small and large-scale, foreign and domestic investment, food and other crops. Civil society and peasant organizations have successfully exposed many failures relating to recent land investments and are now working to register community lands.

Includes land reform and customary tenure in sub-Saharan Africa: a brief review; methodology; the statutory underpinnings of large-scale land acquisition; land acquisition in practice: evidence from case-study countries – Ghana, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia; discussion and conclusions – legal protection of customary rights, customary rights in the context of large-scale land acquisitions, evidence from implementation.

5 briefs analyse the roots of African land tenure systems, recent policy trends and the phenomenon of large scale land acquisitions. The briefs are: Customary Land Tenure in the Modern World; Putting 20th-Century Land Policies in Perspective; Land Reform in Africa: A Reappraisal; The Status of Customary Land Rights in Africa Today; The Global Land Rush: What this Means for Customary Land Rights.

Includes the approach of this study; land and governance; large-scale land deals; open door policy and land to investors; land deals; processes and outcomes; findings from Gambella Region and Bako Woreda in Oromia Region; conclusions; partial list of large-scale land transfers in Ethiopia; notes on Ethiopia’s administration.

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.

A surprising number of large-scale land acquisitions have taken place in Southern Sudan in recent years. Presents preliminary data on Central and Western Equatoria, examining company-community engagement and the extent to which communities are being involved. Presents a number of case studies illustrating the complex interplay between cultural sovereignty and post-war reconstruction. Makes recommendations.

Includes situation prior to acquisition, contract negotiations, employment, environmental impacts, crop production, ancillary services, responsibilities of key actors – the international community, national governments, local governments, communities and civil society, domestic and international investors.

An analysis of the gendered impacts of commercial pressures on land, based on a review of the literature and ILC’s country case studies, including Ethiopia, Zambia, Rwanda and Benin. In the present global context of increasing pressures, women are both likely to be affected differently to men by large-scale land deals and disproportionately more likely to be negatively affected than men because they are generally vulnerable as a group.

Includes overview of phases of land deals and their gender implications, further evidence using recent case studies from Indonesia and Mozambique, promising initiatives and recommendations, identification of knowledge gaps.

Covers world agriculture, a changing context; scale and geography of the phenomenon, key players; the nature of the land deals, process and terms; implications for local land access; conclusion and recommendations.

This case study draws on research that aimed to provide greater understanding of the small-scale private rental market in South Africa. The

Widely occurred woody encroachment in grass-dominated ecosystems has the potential to influence soil organic carbon (SOC) and total nitrogen (TN) pools at local, regional, and global scales. Evaluation of this potential requires assessment of both pool sizes and their spatial patterns. We quantified SOC and TN, their relationships with soil and vegetation attributes, and their spatial scaling along a catena (hill-slope) gradient in the southern Great Plains, USA where woody cover has increased substantially over the past 100 years.