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Oakland Institute: Our Take

Rigorous research and policy analysis on critical world issues from the Oakland Institute.

Who Really Benefits from the Creation of a Land Market in Ukraine?

Farmer protests against the land reform, December 2020.

August 6, 2021

Ben Reicher and Frederic Mousseau

Imposing the creation of a land market in Ukraine will further concentrate control of land in the hands of oligarchs and large agribusinesses, while favoring the interests of foreign investors and banks.

Indigenous Peoples Must Be at the Center of Global Conservation Efforts
July 21, 2021 Ben Reicher
At its annual meeting on July 16-31, 2021, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee will discuss protection of the world’s most priceless cultural landmarks. A critical issue for this discussion is whether the voice of Indigenous communities, for whom some of these protected areas are home, will be audible and considered.

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Amid the Political Crisis in Nicaragua, Foreign Gold Mining Companies Amplify the Repression
July 13, 2021 Josh Mayer and Anuradha Mittal
Indigenous and Afro-descendant people in Nicaragua's Caribbean Coast region face violence fueled by an alliance between the government and mining companies.

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Security for the Big Polluters: Plantation Forestry for Carbon Offset Delays Action on Climate
July 6, 2021 Kristen Lyons
Kristen Lyons investigates how climate policies such as carbon offsets simply provide security for big polluters, while leaving our planet in danger.

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Ghana’s Farmers Aren’t All Seeing the Fruits of a Green Revolution
July 1, 2021 James Boafo and Kristen Lyons
Realities on the ground tell a different story from the claim that a Green Revolution ensures food security and increased income for smallholder farmers in Ghana.

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Fuel on the Fire: The World Bank’s Complicity in Duterte’s War on Farmers in the Philippines
January 26, 2021 Andy Currier
The government’s development strategy prioritizes a "modern" export-oriented commercial agriculture system that directly threatens farmers' and Indigenous Peoples' right to land and life. Those who organize and resist are killed or imprisoned with impunity in President Rodrigo Duterte's Philippines.

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Land Unchained?
September 16, 2020 Andy Currier
Shifting land registries onto blockchain is a part of the broader move to "unlock the economic potential of land" in order to put more land and natural resources into exploitation by private interests.

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Who pays the price of King Leopold’s Bugatti?
September 4, 2020 Frederic Mousseau
On September 5, 2020, a private collection of some of the world’s fanciest cars, belonging to Hubert Fabri, a Belgian millionaire, will be auctioned at a sale at the Hampton Court Palace in London.

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New Laws Threaten Family Farmers and Ethnic Communities in Myanmar
August 25, 2020 Katherine O'Neill
The VFV Law, the Farmland Act, and the LAAR Law are designed to encourage the legal takeover of lands that millions of farmers and Indigenous people rely on for their livelihoods. The three laws are a potent combination which ensure that the practice of land grabbing – widespread in Myanmar under its previous military dictatorship – can continue, now concealed by false promises of 'economic development.'

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Land Privatization: Why Sri Lanka Must Reject the MCC Compact
August 17, 2020 Janhavi Mittal
A recent report by the Oakland Institute examines the MCC compact with Sri Lanka and raises alarm over the irreversible consequences of embarking on land privatization – when most of the land is public in the country.

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An Interview with Daniel Kobei of the Ogiek Peoples' Development Program
August 11, 2020
On June 27, 2020 a heavy contingent of security officers from the Kenya Forestry Service (KFS) started an operation to flash out grazers at the Logoman Forest station, one of the blocks in the Eastern section of the Mau Forest Complex in Kenya.

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