A view from the top: examining elites in large-scale land deals

Abstract

A rise in large-scale land acquisitions has been documented in the popular media and scholarly literature, but with little attention to elite actors and their motivations. In this introduction to the special issue, we expand upon commonly held understandings of the drivers of global land acquisitions to explore the complex, dynamic and sometimes contradictory motivations of elites directly and indirectly involved in land deals. Focusing on the relationships between state actors, private investors, transnational corporations and scientific experts, we outline some principal ways in which elites with diverse interests shape land negotiations. We then introduce the articles in this issue and their contributions to the literature on land deals. RÉSUMÉ La croissance des acquisitions foncières de grande échelle a fait l'objet de nombreux articles tant dans les journaux que dans les publications universitaires. Cependant, les élites qui y jouent un rôle et leurs motifs ont très peu retenu l'attention. Dans cette introduction au numéro spécial, nous élargissons les interprétations usuelles des dynamiques de l'acquisition de terres à l'échelle mondiale en explorant les motifs complexes, dynamiques et souvent contradictoires des élites directement et indirectement impliquées dans les transactions foncières. En mettant l'accent sur les relations entre les acteurs étatiques, les investisseurs privés, les sociétés multinationales et les scientifiques, nous présentons certaines des principales avenues qu'empruntent les élites, qui ont des intérêts variés, pour orienter les négociations. Puis, nous présentons la contribution que les articles de ce numéro font à l'avancement des connaissances sur les transactions foncières.

Archetypical pathways of direct and indirect land-use change caused by Cambodia’s economic land concessions

“…We present the first attempt at such a synthesis to integrate multiple, heterogeneous data sources and methods to produce bounded generalizations of the processes and outcome of LSLAs in Cambodia. Our aim is to construct archetypical pathways causally linking fluctuations in global commodity prices, the timing of At national and subnational levels, government development strategies and legal and regulatory regimes (Cotula 2012, Messerli et al 2014, titling programs (Dwyer 2015), elite struggles (Keene et al 2015), and even illicit activities (e.g., money laundering; Baird 2014) shape the particular ways that LSLAs are implemented and condition consequences for local livelihoods. Countries may further incentivize or otherwise create favorable policy environments to encourage foreign direct investment (FDI; Baird 2011, Carter et al 2017 in hopes of improving investment in undercapitalized agricultural sectors and reaping positive spillover effects, such as access to improved techniques (if cultivating the same crop as smallholders), factor and outputs markets, and direct employment, as a means of broad-based poverty alleviation (Deininger and Xia 2016).…”

Sustainable livelihoods in the global land rush? Archetypes of livelihood vulnerability and sustainability potentials

“…Since 2008, large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) have spread rapidly worldwide (van der Ploeg et al, 2015). The drivers of this global land rush range from global dynamics, such as increasing demand and prices for food and non-food agricultural commodities (Zoomers, 2010;Borras et al, 2015) and financial derivates , energy system transitions (Scheidel and Sorman, 2012), biodiversity conservation (Meyfroidt et al, 2016), climate change responses (Davis et al, 2015), and geopolitics (Oliveira, 2016) to national and subnational drivers, such as national development strategies (Cotula, 2012), land titling programmes (Dwyer, 2015), and elite struggles (Keene et al, 2015). Investments come from countries across the global North, South, and East (Zoomers et al, 2016), and their target regions are similarly dispersed around the globe, with most of them located in Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe (Land Matrix, 2016).…”

Gendered redistribution and family debt: The ambiguities of a cash transfer program in Brazil

“…The idea that women are more responsible for distributing income for children's education and health is not exclusive to BF. The Brazilian discourses find resonances with those promoted by economists and nongovernmental organizations worldwide: When the subject is distributing money to the poor either via a public program or a private initiative, scholars consider women as a safer investment than men because they are perceived as more cautious and more prone to collective thinking (Buser, Putterman, and Van Der Weele ; Karim ; Keene et al ; Roy ). The particularity of BF is that it associates gender roles both to a private economic role (manager of family budgets, purchaser of food) and to public tasks (guarantor of children's access to rights like schooling and health care; redistributor of income).…”