Dispossession by neglect: Agricultural land sales in Southern India

Active land markets in the periphery of Chennai have resulted in large tracts of agricultural land being bought by non‐agricultural actors seeking returns primarily from speculation. We argue in this paper that the financialization of land and consequent spurt of agricultural land sales are central to what scholars have termed land grab. Recent literature on land grabs has focused primarily on processes of accumulation by dispossession and the coercive role of the state. Our contention is that land grabs more commonly occur due to the state underinvesting in agriculture, resulting in “dispossession by neglect” of especially marginal and small farmers. Dispossession by neglect better captures the fluid boundary between the coercive and voluntary in contemporary land grabs.     

Large-scale agricultural investments under poor land governance in Zambia

This paper looks at how large-scale land acquisitions made by foreign investors in Zambia are implemented. It scrutinizes both the steps that an investor has to go through in order to attain land within the Zambian land governance system as well as the actors shaping the acquisition process.As the most important formal change introduced to the Zambian land governance system, the Lands Act 1995 paved the way for foreign investments in land. The new actor “investor” on the other hand has emerged as a result of rising prices for food and non-food commodities. The study finds that the enforcement of formal rules in the process of acquiring land is currently weak and largely determined by a number of actors: while investors, local authorities and government officials have strong leverage, local land users are excluded from the process. If the process of transformations of customary land into state land continues, land administration will be inevitably shifted toward statutory jurisdiction. As a result, local chiefs will lose their discretionary power thereby further marginalizing local land users. As it stands, welfare implications are chiefly down to the individual actors. However, it is only the government that can issue a guarantee that local land users will also benefit from land acquisition.     

Pastoralism within land administration in Kenya—The missing link

In land administration (LA), the right to exercising property/ownership rights on land is based on cadastral processes of adjudication, survey and rights registration. Private ownership rights are now being taken up in pastoral areas, where they must contend with pastoralists’ land rights. Pastoral land use requires seasonal migrations determined by climatic conditions. This study aimed to find out how well the existing land laws and property rights in LA are able to serve the requirements of pastoralists land use, identify mismatches and put forward possible solutions. A case study was carried out in the Samburu–Laikipia–Isiolo–Meru landscape in Kenya. Data on the degree of livestock dependency among pastoralist communities, the spatial extent and patterns of dry season migrations, the resulting encounters between herders’ and non-pastoralist land use actors, and the perceptions of land rights held by actors were collected through a variety of methods and analysed. The results show that pastoralism is still active. The migration corridors reveal that herders maintain extensive dry season mobility, even though some of the corridors currently overlap with areas where land is privately owned by non-pastoralist land use actors. Moreover, the results show that most non-pastoralist land use actors have their land rights registered, but seasonal encounters with migrating pastoralists persist as pastoralists continue to exercise customary rights of communal use. We conclude that existing land laws and property rights in LA are suitable for sedentary land use, but do not address how to serve pastoralists land rights in time and space. The pastoralist's migration routes and patterns obtained indicated that it is possible to predict where pastoralists will be at a given time/drought period. This information could be used by decision makers and land administrators to identify where and when pastoralists’ land rights apply. This could provide the foundation for including pastoralists’ spatiotemporal land rights in LA. Arguments emphasize that adjudication, surveys and registration of rights should focus not only on ownership and full control of land, but also on defined periods when spatiotemporal mobility and access rights could be granted to pastoralists.     

Commercial Farm Workers and the Politics of (Dis)placement in Zimbabwe: Colonialism, Liberation and Democracy

The widespread land occupations of 2000 demonstrate the uneasy fit of commercial farm workers within the politics and development of Zimbabwe. Not only have farm workers borne the most violence at the hands of land occupiers, but their current socio-political situation on predominantly white-owned commercial farms has either been reduced by a nationalist liberation war binary of exploitation/abuse by racist white settlers or totally elided through human rights and democracy discourses anchored in the liberal subject. Based on periodic fieldwork research with commercial farm workers from 1992 to 2000, this paper analyses how farm workers have been represented by the various public actors during the current land occupations and the complex ways some farm workers have responded to these events. The emphasis is on how political actors need to rethink the situation of commercial farm workers if they are to take an active role in the improvement of their living and working lives.     

Whose land? The political economy of land titling in transitional economies

During processes of economic reform and transition, decision-makers are facing questions with potential far-reaching consequences, such as what institutions should be established, how to determine the relationship between state and market, and in what time frame and order. Against this background, this special issue has brought together four articles that analyze the type of institutional arrangements that emerge over time in relation to one of the basic means of production: land. The various contributions pay particular attention to an often-contested institutional development, the registration of land holdings. By proceeding with land titling under conditions of low socio-economic development, the state risks creating what is here termed as an “empty institution” rather than a “credible institution.” In other words, the new institution remains nothing more than a paper agreement or a hollow shell with little or even a negative effect on the actions of social actors. It is what might be called the “collective trust” in the system. As land becomes increasingly marketized and commodified, the state should ensure that the emerging land market does not result in a rapid concentration of land in the hands of a mighty few. This implies the control of market forces through the restriction or prohibition of land sales or land rental. In this context, effecting institutional change through land titling should be done with the utmost care.     

State land policy,land markets and geographies of manufacturing: The case of Beijing,China

The aim of this article is to explore the relationship between state land policies, land markets and geographies of manufacturing in Beijing. Industries have decentralised moving from the centre, and agglomerating in various types of development zone in the outer city. The new patterns of industrial location in Beijing are to a significant extent due to state land policies that impact on manufacturing geographies through land prices, the land supply system and land property reforms. However, industrial relocation involves not only negotiations between government and firms, but is also a game played among different levels of government. National, provincial, municipal, county and even rural level governments bargain with each other to shape and gain from the relocation of industries.     

Trajectories of large-scale land acquisition dynamics in Angola: Diversity,histories, and implications for the political economy of development in Africa

Numerous large scale land acquisitions have occurred in Angola since partial political and economic liberalization in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and further increased after 2002 and the end of armed conflict. They have occurred in conjunction with the emergence of a range of large state-coordinated agricultural projects, often by foreign contractors, for domestic food, and involving plans for backwards and forwards linkages to agro-processing and manufacturing initiatives. Altogether such land allocations and projects involve several billion dollars and several million hectares. These activities appear to often also involve high-level officials and/or wealthy Angolans and are often interpreted as neo-patrimonialism, state-sanctioned private accumulation, and instances of continuity in extractive institutions. Yet examining specific agrarian transformations illustrates how land and rural poverty in Angola are much more complex than a zero-sum game of elite accumulation of private land concessions. Key are Angola’s geo-historical trajectories of colonialism, war, socialism and liberalization, which the article examines in two concessions in Malanje Province We address the relationships between international enterprises and domestic elites, and the relevance of land dynamics within a long-term political economy perspective on capitalist industrialization and structural transformation in Angola and Africa.     

Breaking with the past? The politics of land restitution and the limits to restitutive justice in Myanmar

Land reforms, which include restitution and redistribution of land, often accompany political transitions, as new regimes attempt to break with the past by establishing new modes of governance. The political transition that began in Myanmar in 2011 provides one such example. In Myanmar’s ‘rice bowl’, the Ayeyarwady Delta, widespread land confiscations during the 1990s and 2000s facilitated the establishment of large fish farms, often at the expense of smallholder cultivators who worked agricultural lands without formal use rights. Reforms initiated in 2011 appeared to offer the prospect of restitutive land justice for rural households affected by land confiscation, but this promise has been slow to materialize. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in the Delta, this paper analyzes the narratives and strategies deployed by different groups of state and societal actors advocating for and against land restitution, focusing on the competing uses of two concepts: legality and legitimacy. In doing so, we explore how state-society relations in Myanmar have been reworked through these processes of contestation, and examine possibilities for, and limits to, progressive land reform during political transition.     

Accumulation by and without dispossession: Rural land use,land expropriation,and livelihood implications in China

Land expropriation and peasant resistance in China have been widely noted, but the many cases in which peasants consent to give up land have drawn less attention. This paper conceptualizes and examines an alternative development practice: accumulation without dispossession (AWD), a concept first developed by Gillian Hart and Giovanni Arrighi. AWD may arise if accumulation takes place without (completely) depriving rural producers of the right to assets and benefits. The paper examines multiple forms of AWD and makes two main arguments. First, land expropriation does not necessarily lead to dispossession if peasants are compensated with valuable flats, commercial venues, and/or secure jobs. Due to its positive effects on social equality and livelihood security, AWD may offer an alternative vision in the era of neoliberal dispossession. Second, the outcome of land expropriation in China has varied substantially across space and time. In general, there has been a shift away from AWD in the 1980s following the neoliberal reform in the 1990s, but in the recent decade, there has been some movement back towards AWD due to peasant protests, though only to a limited degree. Nevertheless, the majority of peasants losing land have not received compensation sufficient to sustain a secure livelihood.     

Exclusive versus inclusive devolution in forest management: Insights from forest land allocation in Vietnam's Central Highlands

The devolution of forest management is high on the agenda in international forest policy. Devolution is generally conceived as a policy that aims to include a more diverse set of actors in forest management. One of the most problematic outcomes of devolution policies, therefore, is their tendency to exclude the claims of some local actors. This paper examines the exclusionary effects of devolutions in settings characterized by overlapping state and customary regulations and links these effects to exclusive notions of property and governance contained in particular devolution policies. The paper draws on insights gained in a pilot initiative of forest devolution in Vietnam's Central Highlands. Forest land allocation, as the initiative is called in Vietnam, took an exclusive approach to devolution by assigning ownership-type rights on forest to local actors, obliging those to protect the forest against encroachment by other actors, and centering governance in the state. In this particular case, exclusive devolution failed to diminish the gap between state and customary regulations, created conflicts among local actors, and contributed to forest loss. The unintended outcomes of exclusive devolution suggest the need for an inclusive approach to devolution that accommodates diverse kinds of overlapping claims made by multiple actors. The key elements of inclusive devolution are proprietary but not ownership rights granted to individual users and nested governance relations involving state and customary actors.     

Land questions in the 21st Century Postcolony

The question of land, its commodification and role in capital accumulation has come to occupy centre stage in political economy since the last decade of the 20th century. Such concerns are however not confined to the agrarian question as in classical political economy but have emerged primarily in the wake of land being integrated into circuits of speculative capital accumulation constituting novel processes of dispossession. This financialization of land and accompanying processes of dispossession, often justified through neoliberal developmentalism, not only has consequences for agrarian actors and ecologies but also poses questions about the role of land in current accumulation dynamic, especially in transitioning economies in the global South. Based on a review of three recently published books on the contemporary land question and politics around it in India, this essay explores how such incorporations and dispossessions are driven by multiple developmental imperatives and asks what such logics mean for conceptualizing the land question in the 21st century.     

The land sparing – land sharing controversy: Tracing the politics of knowledge

Feeding 9 billion people by 2050 on one hand, and preserving biodiversity on the other hand, are two shared policy goals at the global level. Yet while these goals are clear, they are to some extent in conflict, because agriculture is a major cause of biodiversity loss, and the path to achieve both of them is at the heart of a public controversy around ‘productive’ land use and biodiversity conservation. Over the years, the scientific, policy, civil society and agri-business communities have been engaged in producing evidence that can support a land sparing policy (separating intensive agricultural production from biodiversity conservation) or a land sharing policy (integrating the two in larger and more extensive landscapes). This paper contributes to this debate by analyzing land sparing and land sharing (LSS) as a socio-technical controversy. Through the analysis of large and small corpora of scientific, policy, corporate social responsibility and sustainability standards documents we explore the ethical underpinnings and social networks that support the opposing sides of this controversy. We explore these linkages in order to explain how the concept of land sparing achieved dominance in the scientific literature and how the concept has been taken up in international policy, business and civil society circles. We examine the convergences and divergences in alliances between actors in this controversy in order to map how specific actors have promoted the concept of land sparing as the best way to used land for biodiversity and food production.     

This land is your land,maybe: A historical institutionalist analysis for contextualizing split estate conflicts in U.S. unconventional oil and gas development

In the 21st century, the U.S. has experienced a boom in unconventional oil and gas development (UOGD). In part due to advances in technology, this rapid increase in UOGD has moved extraction practices into geographic areas that have previously seen little or no oil and gas development. As a result, conflicts over property rights have erupted—particularly in relation to split estate situations. To understand this controversy, we must situate it in the conditions which have shaped land use and mineral rights. We argue that past federal and state level governance decisions have created the conditions for UOGD conflicts today. Here, we utilize historical institutionalism (HI) to review the historical actors, processes, and institutions that have shaped how mineral rights have developed in the context of split estates in the U.S. We suggest that tracing this legislative and judicial history through HI is an essential foundation for exploring issues related to UOGD. Most importantly, we highlight these processes of governance as a bedrock for understanding spatial inequality inherent in current split estate law that grants the mineral estate dominance over the surface estate. We suggest that this codification of spatial inequality is problematic both in and beyond the context of split estates in UOGD.     

“Let's try to get the best out of it” understanding land transactions during land use change

This article investigates land transactions in relation to intended land use change from a micro-scale perspective. A better understanding of land transactions is important for understanding and influencing how land is used. The aim is to explore how the different aspects and their interrelations influence landowner behaviour during land transactions initiated by the government. The study draws on 42 explorative interviews with land purchasers, land policy experts, planning professionals and local farmers.The study shows that uncertainty, and feelings of justice are pivotal aspects during land transactions. Moreover, land transactions are co-evolving with the planning process. Landowners exhibit strategic behaviour based on their personal situation and their expectations on uncertain aspects. The strategies are strongly interrelated with the evolution of land use change. Land use changes are both input on which actors base their strategies, as well as the outcome of those strategies. The aspects found in this study were strongly interrelated and changed over time. Some aspects were context dependent, while others are expected to influence land transactions in general. In this light, the strength of a successful planner is twofold: on the one hand a planner needs to be a good communicator; on the other hand a planner should be able to deal with uncertainty and expectations during plan processes.     

Assessing land use plan implementation: Bridging the performance-conformance divide

The assessment of land use plan implementation is a contentious issue. The debate centers on whether the crucial evaluation element is conformance of development to plan directives or alternatively, plan performance, i.e. the degree to which the plan is actually used. An analytic framework combining both conformance and performance in the evaluation of (regional) land use plans is applied to the case of the Central District Plan in Israel. Qualitative and quantitative simulation methods are exploited. Qualitative analysis reveals that both performance and conformance are greater than indicated by non-contextualized, numeric evaluations. Additionally, high conformance does not necessarily imply good plan performance. Quantitative simulation suggests that plan performance with respect to land values and densities is initially pronounced as expectations for development are subdued but subsequently tends to wane merging with the counterfactual trend. Findings imply that plan assessment needs to consider the transaction costs of land use re-designation and actors’ perceptions of the probability that plan amendments will be approved. These perceptions differ across actors as a function of the political influence that they wield.     

Factors influencing land fractioning in the context of land market deregulation in Ecuador

Land fractioning is a continuous process that could lead to land abandonment. In this work, the relationship between the speed of land market dynamics and land fractioning were studied and compared in two rural parishes of Ecuador. For this study, a database with relevant information extracted from land property deeds was generated for both study areas. Additionally, 193 land buyers and sellers were surveyed to determine the factors influencing/motivating land transactions. We observed a gradual increment of land fractioning with the mean ‘fractionated parcel surface’ independent of the speed of land market dynamics. Instead, the purpose assigned to the land by the actors involved in the land market seems to be the factor influencing the mean fractionated parcel surface and average parcel surface the most. The similarities of the studied areas with others inside and outside Ecuador makes the study relevant in a wider context. Our results could aid local governments in improving their land administration strategies in a deregulated land market context.     

How do planners manage risk in alternative land development models? An institutional analysis of land development in the Netherlands

While risk is a key concern in property development, it tends to be discussed by planners only relative to the effects of regulatory planning on private sector risk. Yet planning encompasses a broad range of activities that go beyond its function of regulating private sector development. Despite active approaches to land development being commonly used across different planning contexts, frameworks for analysing public sector strategies to address risk are rarely discussed. We attempt to redress this deficit by investigating the actions of public sector development actors with regard to risk across three different land development models: public land development, land development by public-private partnership, and land readjustment. Using recent Dutch experience, we conduct an institutional analysis of each land development model in order to highlight the effects of alternative governance structures on risk as a particular transaction attribute, from the perspective of public sector planning. Our findings indicate the importance of highlighting the role of public risk in alternative models of land development where there may be a tendency to adopt institutional arrangements without due regard to this, and point to possible future applications of institutional analysis at the particular, rather than the general, level.     

Fragmentation of land ownership in Slovakia: Evolution,context, analysis and possible solutions

Land ownership fragmentation is currently a very topical issue in Slovakia. In particular, small farmers complain that even 30 years after the end of the previous (“real socialist”) regime, there has been no significant change in the structure of agricultural land use. The subject of the article is not the land fragmentation in terms of use. In Slovakia, the problem is rather the opposite. This contribution deals with fragmentation of ownership that is mostly invisible in the landscape. Usage still dominates over the ownership and the real landowner cannot get his or her own property in a simple way. The reason for this is huge fragmentation of land ownership, which makes it virtually impossible to actually claim it. Well known solution is the land consolidation that does not advance at a rate that would guarantee the rights (and obligations) of all owners in the foreseeable future in Slovakia. Neglecting the land fragmentation by authorities leads to tense situations between landowners and land tenants and also co-causes a stagnation of rural development and issues with landscape protection. The paper describes the specific state of land ownership in Slovakia and attempts to explain this complicated situation on a sample of 50 historical and modern ownership documents. This contribution has the ambition to specify the largely yet unresolved problems that arise from the current state of massive fragmentation of land ownership. The aim of the paper is also to fill in the information gap on the topic, not only in the national context.     

Changing land use in the countryside: Stakeholders’ perception of the ongoing rural planning processes in Flanders

Rural areas in densely populated regions face increasing competition for land. Consequently, land use planning processes must attempt to balance the goals of diverse stakeholders and the process of reaching consensus becomes more complicated. By investigating the perception of the actors involved in rural planning, this research contributes to the knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of such processes. We have focused on the case of rural planning processes in Flanders in which proponents of nature and agriculture are competing for land. Data are collected through open interviews with key actors such as farmers, representatives of nature preservation organisations, farmers’ unions, and employees of the relevant governmental policy areas. Data analysis according to the grounded theory approach resulted in six categories and 26 concepts that represent the stakeholders’ perception of difficulties in the Flemish rural planning approach. Three points where difficulties arise are (1) the link between envisioning, drawing up the plan and implementation, (2) the need for data, and (3) the role of sectors. We use three concepts from literature (procedural justice, distributive justice and value conflicts) to frame the difficulties observed. Based on this analysis, we discuss several ways to improve rural planning processes.     

The interrelations of land ownership,soil protection and privileges of capital in the aspect of land take

The novelty of this study lies in the analyses of legislation concerning land use policies by examining the specific boundary between land ownership and land take. The basic motive was that the European Commission (EC) withdrew the Soil Framework Directive (SFD) in 2014 following the objections of certain Member States (MS) who countered that as most lands are privately owned, they should not fall under the remit of public governance. Since the withdrawal of the SFD land take is an issue receiving more attention. The legal content of ownership rights has been subjected to constant debate in the context of land-use policies and planning practices, which raises the questions of who decides how the land can be used and whether administrative authorities give priority to non-agricultural uses. Our study seeks to explore these issues through the lens of property law by comparing different legislations on access to land on three levels of policy implementation: the EU, the national, and the local levels. MS legislations are highlighted through the example of Hungary in two aspects: (1) regulation regarding Access to Land and Land Ownership Rights (ALOR), and (2) legislation and results of the LANDSUPPORT decision support system concerning Land Take Changes (LTC). We designed figures to demonstrate how policymakers can use the new LANDSUPPORT platform to show the gaps and inconsistencies among the above aspects. We found that the legislative regulations concerning private land use to achieve soil protection objectives remain the weakest link in the environmental protection legislation of the EU. Anxieties concerning built-in legal guarantees on each of the studied levels actualise our research. Currently, global land management is not on the political table although common European legislation might be able to preserve land for agricultural use.