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Land Rights

The purchase and lease of vast tracts of land from poor, developing countries by wealthier nations and international private investors has led to debate about whether land investment is a tool for development or force of displacement.

Overview

Secure land tenure is not just crucial to have a place to call home — it is also the basis of the livelihood for billions of people, especially Indigenous communities, farmers, herders, and fisherfolk. For the majority in this world, land is the common good, which communities share, preserve, and manage collectively.

However, following the 2007-2008 high food price crisis and financial crisis. looking for the next commodity to invest in, “investors” including multinational corporations, private equity firms, and pension funds, swarmed in to take over lands around the world. Their goal has been to convert smallholder farms, grasslands, and forests into monoculture plantations, cattle ranches, and mines.

Faced with this threat, local communities and Indigenous groups have been on the frontline in the struggle against land grabbing and destructive practices. Their claim over land and their resistance to its takeover is viewed as an obstacle to investment and business. This is why many governments around the world are encouraged to adopt the Western capitalist notion of private land ownership. Adopting this notion would make land a commodity and lead to the creation of land markets so that land can be leased or sold and put into so-called “productive use” to “unlock its value.” The World Bank is a key actor in the push to privatize and commodify land. In 2017, its Enabling the Business of Agriculture report prescribed policy measures to governments in order to “enhance the productivity of land use” and encourage agribusiness expansion. These included formalizing private property rights, easing the sale and lease of land for commercial use, and systematizing the sale of public land by auction.

However, the lack of evidence of development outcomes associated with the introduction of private title systems makes it clear that the privatization of land has nothing to do with fighting poverty or improving livelihoods. The “creation” of land markets has actually been repeatedly found to solidify existing inequalities in access to land. Within a market system where land is nothing more than a commodity, corporations and wealthy individuals can price farmers and herders, who rely on land for their livelihoods, out of the markets.

Whether it is through large-scale extractive or agricultural projects, urban expansion, or privatization schemes that transform land into a marketable commodity, the threats to land rights are multiple and severe, driving the displacement of local communities and the destruction of their livelihoods.

What we are doing about it
  • The Oakland Institute is a leading voice on land rights issues, working on the front line of the struggle to defend land rights, uncovering the drivers, the actors, and the impacts of land grabbing around the world.

  • Through research, policy analysis, and advocacy campaigns, we work directly with communities to defend their land rights when threatened by governments, private corporations, and international development institutions.

  • On the policy level, the Institute produces research and evidence that promote tenure systems, which ensure the land rights of communities, Indigenous Peoples, farmers, and pastoralists.

Publications

War and Theft report cover

War and Theft: The Takeover of Ukraine’s Agricultural Land

The report from the Oakland Institute exposes the financial interests and the dynamics at play in Ukraine leading to further concentration of land and finance.

Report cover

Dam and Sugar Plantations Yield Starvation and Death in Ethiopia's Lower Omo Valley

The report sounds the alarm on the severe humanitarian crisis faced by Indigenous tribes in Ethiopia's Lower Omo Valley and urges government and aid agencies to provide relief assistance.

Summit Carbon Solutions report cover

The Great Carbon Boondoggle: Inside the Struggle to Stop Summit's CO2 Pipeline

The Great Carbon Boondoggle: Inside the Struggle to Stop Summit’s CO2 Pipeline , unmasks the billion-dollar financial interests and high-level political ties driving the Midwest Carbon Express. Led by Summit Carbon Solutions, the project intends to build a 2,000-mile pipeline to carry CO2 across Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota, to eventually inject and store it underground in North Dakota. Having failed to...

Flawed Plans report cover

Flawed Plans for Relocation of the Maasai from the Ngorongoro Conservation Area

Flawed Plans for Relocation of the Maasai from the Ngorongoro Conservation Area builds on field research conducted at two relocation sites — Msomera village in Handeni district and Kitwai A and B villages in Simanjiro district — to reveal that the sites lack adequate water resources and grazing land while promises of improved social and health services by the government remain unfulfilled. Additionally, the report exposes the failure...

Report cover

The Midwest Carbon Express: A False Solution to the Climate Crisis

The report debunks the world’s largest proposed carbon capture and storage (CCS) pipeline project and reveals the checkered history of the man behind it — Bruce Rastetter.

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Blog

Maasai herders with their cattle inside the Ngorongoro Conservation Area

This Human Rights Day, Stand with the Maasai to End Fortress Conservation

Friday, December 9, 2022

The Western conservation industry is advancing plans that threaten to eliminate the basic rights of millions of Indigenous Peoples around the world.

Community members of Mwingi

Comment l'exploitation coloniale se perpétue dans les Plantations de Palmiers à Huile PHC en RDC

Tuesday, May 3, 2022 Andy Currier

Les communautés de Lokutu, Yaligimba et Boteka ont attendu trop longtemps que leurs droits à la terre et à la vie soient restaurés. Les investisseurs doivent être mis devant leurs responsabilités pour leur inaction.

Community members of Mwingi

Colonial Legacy of Exploitation Thrives Today on the PHC Oil Palm Plantations

Tuesday, May 3, 2022 Andy Currier

The Lokutu, Yaligimba, and Boteka communities have waited far too long for their rights to land and life to be restored; investors must be held responsible for their continued inaction

Samburu communities in Nantudu, Olidonyiro fearing evictions from community lands.

Protecting Human Rights is Essential to Conserving Nature

Thursday, December 9, 2021 Ben Reicher

So-called “conservation” — in the guise of tourism dollars as a development strategy — is denying basic rights for Indigenous pastoralists in Northern Kenya

Farmer protests against the land reform, December 2020.

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

Friday, 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.

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