Global finance and the land grab: mapping twenty-first century strategies

Knuth, Sarah

doi:10.1080/02255189.2015.1046373

Cited by 46 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…2 I do not mean that financialization is limited to urban settings; important work on finance and farmland, food systems, and sustainable development (cf. Clapp, 2014;Knuth, 2015;Ouma, 2014), among other themes, attests to the relevance of financialization beyond the urban.…”

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confidence: 99%

Urban struggles with financialization

Fields

2017

Geography Compass

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The 2008 financial crisis and its impacts on the urban landscape contributed to a proliferation of research on the financialization of urban space, particularly of housing. Today, financialization is a mainstream focus of study within geography. But while scholars have responded to earlier calls to center space and place in their research, it has only been quite recently that geographers have taken up efforts to politicize and contest the financialization of urban space. This essay assesses the emerging body of literature on urban struggles with financialization. It first draws on historical materialist perspectives to situate financialization within urban contexts, showing why there is a particular relationship between this process and urban space, and how moments of crisis reveal tensions in this relationship. Reviewing literature focused on places exposed to the most systemic housing–financial crises in 2008, the essay then explores how residents, activists, and movements have grappled with financialization. It argues that a key aspect of such struggles is the ability to make their presence felt within chains of financial intermediaries or the corporate headquarters of foreign investors. The essay also highlights how moments of crisis open space for more radical tactics that disrupt the dominant production of space and emphasize the social value of housing. It suggests ways to fruitfully expand geographic inquiry into urban struggles with financialization through focusing on the formation of political subjectivities and engaging geographies beyond the global north.

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confidence: 99%

Urban struggles with financialization

Fields

2017

Geography Compass

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“…The transformations of this type are conditioned by such socio-economic factors, as the growth in the number of population, food production, income, wood production and recognition of land ownership. Knuth (2015) describes the interest in land as land ownership-related rights, responsibilities and restrictions. Land cadastres usually hold such data as geometrical descriptions of land plots, ownership interests, control, land plot value and possible improvements (Enemark, 2001).…”

Section: Review Of the Theoretical Peculiarities Of Land Investmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The novelty of this article lies in the comprehensive analysis of the opportunities to invest in land in the global and local contexts, identification of the theoretical and practical motives to invest in land, identification of the general risks and the risks faced by Lithuanian land investors, and assessment of the factors that have the most significant impact on the value of land. Previous land studies mainly focused on the logic of the general investment in land (Knuth, 2015), investment in argicultural land (Gunnoe & Gellert, 2011;Gunnoe, 2014), and the role of financial institutions in land funding (Bergdolt & Mittal, 2012;Buxton, Campanale, & Cotula, 2012). Nevertheless, the investment in land as in a specific type of real estate is hardly analysed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Specificity of the Investment in Land as in Real Estate

Remeikienė

Gasparėnienė

Ginevičius

2019

International Journal of Strategic Property Management

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The main purpose of this article is to identify the motives of investing in land and arable land and determine the choices of such investment. The empirical research, based on the method of expert evaluation, fills the gap of the investment in land observed in scientific literature. The expert evaluation has allowed to develop a profile of a land investor, identify the determinants of the value of land and arable land and clarify the motives of investing in land in a small open economy (the trends in one small economy may reflect similar trends in other small open economies, for instance, Latvia or Estonia). The novelty of the article lies in the disclosure of the general and Lithuania-inherent land investment risks and assessment of the impact of the main land value determinants. The practical implications of the article lie in submission of the guidelines to real estate policy and practice makers, investors, real estate developers, buyers and other parties concerned that want to get a better understanding of the expediency or inexpediency of the investment in land.

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“…Beyond the "green economy", there has been a large volume of work that considers financial actors as land managers, particularly in regard to large-scale land acquisitions (land grabbing) across the global North and South (Fairbairn 2014;Gunnoe 2014;Knuth 2015;Ouma 2014). Within this work, there exists a range of explanations for how financial actors accumulate profit from owning land, ranging from straight neorentierism (Gunnoe 2014) to more hybrid approaches that combine rent and commodity production (Knuth 2015). David Harvey, in his discussion of landed property, argues that despite the diversity of institutions and types of owners, the "central, guiding feature in the behavior of all economic agents" is "the increasing tendency to treat the land as a pure financial asset" (1982:347).…”

Section: Financializing Property Financializing Naturementioning

confidence: 99%

A Hostile Takeover of Nature? Placing Value in Conservation Finance

Kay

2017

Antipode

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Conservation finance is a nascent field that claims to “deliver maximum conservation impacts, while, at the same time, generating returns for investors” (Credit Suisse/WWF). While geographers have questioned the ability of conservation finance to play a significant role in international biodiversity conservation, an emerging cohort of boutique private equity firms are actively generating returns on North American conservation projects. This raises the question: how are these firms generating profits, and in turn, returns for their shareholders? Drawing from a Marxian understanding of finance as redistributive, I argue that these firms are generating profits through a process similar to a corporate hostile takeover. Using the examples of ranchland and timberland investment in the United States, I show that (1) the materialities and historical geographies of these landscapes play a crucial role their monetization, and (2) shareholder returns are generated through a combination of traditional real estate sales and revaluations, public monies, and commodity production.

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Global finance and the land grab: mapping twenty-first century strategies

Cited by 46 publications

References 38 publications

Urban struggles with financialization

Urban struggles with financialization

The Specificity of the Investment in Land as in Real Estate

A Hostile Takeover of Nature? Placing Value in Conservation Finance

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