land deals

The Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI), a joint center of Columbia Law School and the Earth Institute at Columbia University, is the only university-based applied research center and forum dedicated to the study, practice and discussion of sustainable international investment.

MISSION

Our mission is to develop practical approaches for governments, investors, communities and other stakeholders to maximize the benefits of international investment for sustainable development.

The Land Matrix is an independent global land monitoring initiative that promotes transparency and accountability in decisions over large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) in low- and middle-income countries across the world. The initiative actively collects information about land deals from publicly available sources (such as media, internet, research, contracts, and government and company websites), while partner organisations contribute through their own field research.

The Land Observatory is a pilot project by some partners of the Land Matrix, designed to provide greater context and deeper insight on land deals, from a more local perspective.

We are co-creating software with partner organizations in pilot countries that will allow for them to

OpenLandContracts.org is an online repository of publicly available contracts for large-scale land, agriculture, and forestry projects. The repository includes the full text of contracts; plain language summaries (also referred to as "annotations") of each contract’s key social, environmental, human rights, fiscal, and operational terms; and tools for searching and comparing contracts.