The Global Land Grab : Beyond the Hype

274 Pages·2014·3.009 MB·English

by  Kaag, Mayke, Zoomers, Annelies

About the editors
Mayke Kaag is a social anthropologist and a senior researcher
at the African Studies Centre in Leiden, the Netherlands. Her
research focuses mainly on African transnational relations,
including land issues, engagements with the diaspora, and
transnational Islamic NGOs, on which topics she has published
widely. Within the African Studies Centre she is the convenor of a
collaborative research group on ‘Africa in the World – Rethinking
Africa’s Global Connections’.
Annelies Zoomers is professor of international development
studies (IDS) at Utrecht University and chair of LANDac. After
finishing her PhD in 1988, she worked for the Netherlands
Economic Institute (Rotterdam) and the Royal Tropical Institute
(Amsterdam) on long- and short-term consulting assignments for
various organizations (e.g. the World Bank, IFAD, ILO, EU, DGIS)
in various countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Between
1995 and 2007 she was associate professor at the Centre for Latin
American Research and Documentation (Amsterdam) and was
professor of international migration at the Radboud University
(Nijmegen) between 2005 and 2009. She has published extensively
on sustainable livelihoods; land policies and the impact of
privatization; tourism; and international migration.
The editors would like to thank the African Studies Centre and
the IS Academy of Land Governance for their assistance and
support.

The global land grab: beyond
the hype
edited by Mayke Kaag and Annelies Zoomers
Fernwood Publishing
halifax | winnipeg
Zed Books
london | new york
The Global Land Grab: Beyond the Hype was first published in 2014.
Published in Canada by Fernwood Publishing, 32 Oceanvista Lane, Black Point,
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Editorial copyright Mayke Kaag and Annelies Zoomers 2014
Copyright in this Collection © Zed Books, 2014
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
The global land grab : beyond the hype / edited by Mayke Kaag and Annelies
Zoomers.
Includes bibliographical references.
iSBn 978-1-55266-666-1 (pbk.)
1. Land use--Developing countries--Case studies. 2. Eminent domain--
Developing countries--Case studies. 3. Developing countries--Social conditions-
-Case studies. I. Kaag, Mayke, 1964-, editor of compilation II. Zoomers, E. B.,
editor of compilation
HD1131.G56 2014 333.73’13091724 C2013-908688-9 
iSBn 978 1 78032 895 9 hb (Zed Books)
iSBn 978 1 78032 894 2 pb (Zed Books)
iSBn 978 1 55266 666 1 pb (Fernwood Publishing)
Contents
Figures, tables and boxes | vii
Introduction: the global land grab hype – and why it is important
to move beyond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Mayke Kaag and Annelies Zoomers
Africa
1 Modernizing the periphery: citizenship and Ethiopia’s new
agricultural investment policies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
George Schoneveld and Maru Shete
2 Large-scale land acquisitions in Tanzania: a critical analysis of
practices and dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Jumanne Abdallah, Linda Engström, Kjell Havnevik and
Lennart Salomonsson
3 Kenya and the ‘global land grab’: a view from below . . . . . . . . 54
Jacqueline M. Klopp and Odenda Lumumba
Latin America
4 The rapid expansion of genetically modified soy production into
the Chaco region of Argentina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Lucia Goldfarb and Annelies Zoomers
5 Transnational land investment in Costa Rica: tracing residential
tourism and its implications for development . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Femke van Noorloos
6 Water grabbing in the Andean region: illustrative cases from Peru
and Ecuador. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Rutgerd Boelens, Antonio Gaybor and Jan Hendriks
Asia
7 Land governance and oil palm development: examples from Riau
Province, Indonesia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Ari Susanti and Suseno Budidarsono
8 Vietnam in the debate on land grabbing: conversion of agricultural
land for urban expansion and hydropower development . . . . . . 135
Pham Huu Ty, Nguyen Quang Phuc and Guus van Westen
9 ‘Land grabbing’ in Cambodia: land rights in a post-conflict setting . 152
Michelle McLinden Nuijen, Men Prachvuthy and
Guus van Westen
10 Beyond the Gulf State investment hype: the case of Indonesia and
the Philippines. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Gerben Nooteboom and Laurens Bakker
11 Tracing the dragon’s footsteps: a deconstruction of the discourse on
China’s foreign land investments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Peter Ho and Irna Hofman
12 Conclusion: beyond the global land grab hype – ways forward in
research and action. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Annelies Zoomers and Mayke Kaag
Notes | 217 About the contributors | 225
Bibliography | 231 Index | 256
vi
Figures, tables and boxes
Figures
1.1 Food price index and proportion of investments, projects in Ethiopia,
1992–2010 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
1.2 Topographical map of Ethiopia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.1 The number of new companies investing in agriculture, registered
by the TIC annually, 2001–12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
4.1 South American Chaco region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
4.2 Argentina: current soy-producing provinces . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
5.1 Planned/announced and completed residential tourism entities (plots,
houses and apartments) per type of town, research area (2011). . . . 91
7.1 Land administration and responsible land agencies . . . . . . . . 126
11.1 Chinese overseas land-based investments, 1949–99 . . . . . . . . . 191
11.2 Chinese overseas land-based investments, 2000–08. . . . . . . . . 193
11.3 Chinese overseas land-based investments, 2009–11 . . . . . . . . . 195
Tables
1.1 Area of farmland acquired by private investors by region, 1992–2010 . 19
1.2 Overview of the investment planning process . . . . . . . . . . . 22
1.3 Overview of case study investments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.1 Summary table of some recent large-scale land investments in
Kenya. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
6.1 Farm units, irrigated areas and number of irrigators in Peru . . . . 106
6.2 Largest buyers of lots in the Chavimochic Project, 1994–2006 period . 108
6.3 Buyers of lots in the Olmos Project in auctions on 9 December 2011
and 12 April 2012 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
6.4 Consumptive use of water according to rights . . . . . . . . . . . 111
6.5 Percentages of total and irrigated farmland in Ecuador, 2000 . . . . 112
6.6 Formalized concentration of well water . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
7.1 Land tenure forms as recognized by the Basic Agrarian Law
No. 5/1960 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
7.2 Forestland licensing recognized by P.50/2010, which was amended
by P.26/2012 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
7.3 The Indonesian economic corridors and their main economic
activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
8.1 Vietnam land deals in other countries and foreign deals in Vietnam . 137
8.2 Land use change between 2000 and 2009 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
8.3 The poverty rate of households living in resettlement sites . . . . . 150
vii
9.1 Timeline of indigenous communities, marking key events and
trends. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
10.1 Announced and realized foreign investments in food crops in the
Philippines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
Boxes
7.1 The economics of Riau Province . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
7.2 The roles of the forestry sector in Riau Province . . . . . . . . . . 128
7.3 Decentralization in Riau Province . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
12.1 The Voluntary Guidelines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
viii
Introduction: the global land grab hype – and
why it is important to move beyond
Mayke Kaag and Annelies Zoomers
Introduction: a twofold hype
The last few years have seen a huge number of publications, conferences
and campaigns on ‘land grabbing’, referring to the large-scale acquisition of
land most often in the global South. The term ‘land grabbing’ appears to be
very mediagenic and is attracting journalists, civil society organizations and
action NGOs, as well as concerned academics who have been working in local
communities in the South for years and are now being confronted with this
phenomenon against which locals seem defenceless. Multilateral organizations
like the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have
also felt the need to express themselves on the issue. The attention is such
that, without exaggeration, we can speak of a real ‘hype’.
However much we welcome the attention to these current large-scale land
acquisitions in the South, we feel that the hype is distracting and prevents
a proper discussion and in-depth debate on the issues at stake. We propose
therefore taking a step back in this volume and asking some basic questions:
Does the ‘global land grab’ exist? If so, how has it materialized in different
countries and what is actually new about it? And what, beyond the immediate
visible dynamics and practices, is/are the real problem(s) and the root causes?
We will explore these issues by way of selected country studies from Africa,
Asia and Latin America. Such a comparative perspective will enable us to
discover global variety and similarities and to indicate directions for further
research on current land grab issues, thus helping to improve the quality of the
public/academic debate and to develop practical solutions, beyond the hype.
Our contribution to the growing corpus of literature on ‘land grabbing’
aims to couple scholarly engagement with the phenomenon of large-scale land
acquisitions in the global South and a critical view of the coverage of this phen-
omenon in the media, policy and academic circles. What we actually observe
is a twofold ‘hype’: first of all, the rush towards land on a global scale since
the early 2000s appears to be one hype, in view of the huge appetite of large
investors for acquiring land and access to land. Secondly, the coverage in media,
policy and academic circles appears to also be a hype. Since the publication
of the much-cited report by GRAIN in 2008, an impressive number of policy
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