Submissions Accepted for Presentation at the World Bank Land Conference 2024

Large-scale land investments are often pursued as pro-poor investments by governments in developing countries. However, empirical literature on the impact of these investments has reported mixed results. In order to understand the overall impact, we undertook a meta-analysis based on estimates of 37 primary studies. On average, we find that expansion of large-scale land investments leads to a favorable impact on welfare and livelihoods of local communities (with an average standardized mean effect size of 0.043). Asset building, increasing income and enhancing food security are the pathways that make these investments beneficial to welfare and livelihoods of local communities. However, the smaller mean effect size and the heterogeneous effects across host countries indicates that much remains to be done in the implementation of regulatory and guiding frameworks of large-scale land investments formulated with an aim to respect tenure rights, livelihoods and resources so that these investments benefit the local community.

Regulatory provisions aimed at addressing humanitarian concerns for landowners affected by land conversions, like prior consent, fair negotiation, and adequate compensation exist but in practice are wrought with challenges. This raises important questions on the nature of negotiation processes and factors that influence outcomes; questions which our paper pursues. Using a multi case study approach of two cases, the first involving conversions by a large-scale mine and the second, conversions by small-scale mines, we found that in both cases, compensations paid were below recommended and standard rates, a situation which was worse for outright payments but more favourable in share arrangements of mining proceeds in the second case. Factors affecting negotiations included information asymmetry, lack of sound financial valuations, threats and social pressures on farmers. We recommend that shared arrangements, in the form of a mining fund which are disbursed periodically to farmers would yield more sustainable outcomes.

Information about land tenure in Brazil is uncertain and controversial due to multiple reasons including a confusing legal framework that leads to institutional overlaps, the lack of a long-term land administration policy and an integrated land cadaster. We update and compare the new results from the Brazilian Land Atlas (Atlas Agropecuário) with Sparovek et al (2019) developing an integrated map of Brazilian land tenure encompassing all official datasets on land tenure from the different institutions and with data from both public and private lands. Moreover, we present an in-depth analysis for the states within the Legal Amazon, identifying the amount of public land still to be designated and estimate a time frame based on previous initiatives. At last, we propose policies for improving land use planning and governance in the near future.

Advancements in geographic information systems (GIS) and remote sensing technology in recent years have led to the development of decision support tools adopted by institutions globally to make prudent socio-economic planning, monitoring, and developments. In this study, we demonstrate how African countries can leverage these technologies to identify suitable land for private-sector investments in agricultural value chains using Malawi as our case study. Firstly, we mapped the suitable areas for growing priority crops for investment based on environmental conditions using a machine learning modeling framework. Secondly, we incorporated a multi-criteria decision analysis model to identify the optimum areas based on access to infrastructure, markets, and population density. Ultimately, this study aims to develop a robust methodology that can be replicated in other African countries to enhance their capacity to implement the AU Guiding Principles of large-scale land-based investment and protect the local communities while attracting private sector investments.