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Growing global resource scarcities and increasingly unstable commodity markets have in recent years encouraged large numbers of investors to seek access to the cheap and fertile farmlands of sub-Saharan Africa. Though potentially providing its often neglected agricultural sector with much-needed investment capital, with many of these investments threatening to deprive the rural poor of vital livelihood resources and contribute to environment degradation, these investments have become a topic of heated debate in the public, political, and academic arenas. Amidst a rapidly growing body of research on particularly trends and outcomes, The Governance of Large-Scale Farmland Investments in Sub-Saharan Africa examines a critically under researched aspect of this trend, namely, host country governance. With an absence of sufficiently comprehensive international regulatory frameworks, the investment governance burden often falls solely on host country governments, which in the African context are typically ill-equipped or disinclined to provide adequate oversight. This exacerbates the risk of adverse local social, economic, and environmental impacts and undermines the effective capture of investments' potential developmental contributions. The primary aim of the book is to deepen our understanding of the regulatory conditions under which large-scale farmland investments can contribute to sustainable development in sub-Saharan Africa. It does this by identifying the different factors that shape local outcomes. In so doing, it examines and links a range of issues that have to date often been evaluated in isolation - ranging from the formal laws and policies in host countries to institutional dynamics and local community responses. The analysis is based on original field research conducted by the author in Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, and Zambia. Findings show a remarkably uniform array of adverse effects across the case study countries. This poses an interesting conundrum: can these outcomes be attributed to systematic deficiencies in the content of the law aimed at regulating these impacts, or is the law rendered meaningless by poor implementation and enforcement, or do other structural social and economic factors outside formal governance structures explain outcomes? The Governance of Large-Scale Farmland Investments in Sub-Saharan Africa shows that an answer can be found in all three options, but highlights in particular the important mediating influence of institutional issues. Through systematic, in-depth analysis of the conflicts and interactions between a diversity of stakeholders it highlights how investment capital tends to attach itself to and strengthen powerful established domestic coalitions to the detriment of the rights of the rural poor. Such trends are reinforced by high-modernist ideologies and discriminatory perspectives on rural systems of production. Although this calls for a reevaluation of the formal rules that govern and protect Africa's land-based resources, this book shows that any legalistic reforms to that effect must be preceded by far-reaching institutional reforms that address institutional mandates, enforcement and implementation capacities, incentives, and accountability structures.

Since the confluence of the food and oil price crises of the mid 2000s, Ghana has become a prime destination for large-scale farmland investments. While this trend could make valuable contributions to an ailing agricultural sector, the alienation of rural land for commercial ends could conversely have far-reaching implications for customary land rights. Through an analysis of the legislation protecting customary land rights and governing such the alienation of those rights and by contrasting this with practice, this article highlights some of the fundamental challenges in translating legal rights into tenure security in contemporary Ghana. It shows that despite the legal recognition of customary land rights, in practice customary land users are ultimately responsible for contesting infringements upon these rights. With traditional authorities able to capture substantial rents from the alienation process and government institutions offering scant oversight as a result of fragmented responsibilities, capacity constraints, and political disincentive, the protection of customary land rights is becoming increasingly contingent on community ‘capacity to claim’. Since poor access to information, unrealistic expectations and deference to traditional authority tends to quell disputes over alienation, the limited mechanisms for protecting citizen access to resources gives reason to reconsider the importance of direct state involvement in the customary land domain.

Concerns about domestic energy security and global climate change mitigation have led the European Union, the United States, and others to introduce policies to enhance the use of biofuels in the transport sector fuel mix. While countries throughout the global South are positioning themselves to capture the economic benefits of this fuel transition, their capacity to do so is highly variable. This paper reviews the early evolution of the biofuel sector in Zambia to explore the extent to which the country is positioned to leverage future benefits of the emerging industry while forestalling negative social and environmental costs. In doing so, it sheds light on an under-researched dimension of the ongoing debate over large-scale land acquisitions and foreign investment: the role of legal and institutional frameworks in host countries in shaping outcomes. The analysis draws on the following: policy documents; stakeholder interviews with government departments, investors, and civil society stakeholders; and published and reported data on investments. Findings suggest that while existing and incipient policies and legislation provide an important foundation for attracting investors and achieving diverse sector aims, a number of gaps remain that are likely to hinder efforts to leverage meaningful benefits while minimizing negative impacts.

The challenges of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, while feeding a growing population and meeting global demand for fibre and energy, are attracting increasing attention (Kissinger 2011; Wollenberg et al. 2011). This chapter presents an overview of current trade and investment-related drivers of deforestation and forest degradation in the tropics and the ways in which they serve as obstacles to REDD+ implementation, with a closer look at three regions. In addition, we suggest policy options that could help tackle these global drivers by making economic growth more compatible with forest conservation. The discussion is organised around three questions: 1. What are the main economic drivers and trends shaping deforestation and forest degradation in the tropics that represent major obstacles to REDD+? 2. Which aspects of these economic drivers represent the greatest challenges to reducing deforestation and forest degradation in Indonesia, the Brazilian Amazon and East Africa? 3. What policy approaches would be most effective for reducing the effects of these forces on forests and what are the implications for REDD+? Deforestation has historically been linked to economic development, population growth and the associated demands for food, fibre and energy. We argue that there are a number of contemporary drivers, strongly related to global markets and investment, that lead to increased competition for land, including forestland in the tropics. These drivers include the increased integration of food, fibre, energy and financial markets; high price volatility and higher commodity prices; and a transnational land rush. They make attempts to reduce carbon emissions through REDD+ more challenging since, directly and indirectly, these drivers stimulate the conversion of forestland to agricultural use and increase logging activities that often lead to forest degradation. Nonetheless, there are important regional variations in how these drivers affect forests, as our assessments from Indonesia, the Brazilian Amazon and East Africa show. We adopt a broad definition of REDD+ to mean the array of policies that primarily aim to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and may also include result-based incentives and compensation (see Chapter 1). Many factors affect the implementation of REDD+. In this chapter, we focus on the global economic drivers and trends shaped by markets and public policies – in consumer and producer countries – that bring about changes in land use, thus affecting forest cover and quality. In order to make REDD+ policies more effective, we must consider global economic dynamics and their interactions with political and institutional conditions at the national level. On the supply side, a realignment of market incentives and regulations is needed to reorient economic development in tropical developing countries in order to reconcile food and energy provision with forest conservation, along with policy actions on the demand side.

This study is part of a broader research process assessing the local economic, social and environmental impacts from feedstock expansion for the growing biofuel sector (see German et al. 2011). Nonetheless, in the Malaysian context, biofuel production volumes are negligible despite government interest in promoting sector expansion. Since Malaysia is the second largest palm oil producer in the world, palm oil is slated to become the primary feedstock for biofuel production in the country. Since palm oil consistently outperforms all other substitute vegetable oils on price, it is also becoming an important feedstock globally. While a rapidly growing global biofuel sector could develop into an important new market outlet for Malaysia, it does carry a number of risks. This paper aims to reflect on these risks by exploring the local social and land-use impacts of oil palm in the Beluran District of Sabah State. This is based on household surveys to discover the perception of impacts among relevant local stakeholder groups, and remote-sensing analysis. While the impacts of oil palm in the study site cannot be attributed to the biodiesel industry per se, lessons learnt will be directly applicable to the biodiesel sector in Malaysia, and relevant for the whole Southeast Asia region.

Agricultural development is an important focus for many Sub-Saharan African countries, including Tanzania. There has been a focus on promoting agricultural interventions that allow smallholder farmers opportunities to increase their productivity, reduce poverty, and become part of the commercial agricultural sector. Contract farming is one such intervention, and despite its popularity, it still remains a debated intervention in terms of its ability to contribute positively to smallholders and agricultural development. This study looks at four large-scale agricultural investments in contract farming in the sugar and rice sectors of Tanzania. The aim of the study is to explore and identify the exchanges and outcomes present in these cases and to explore power, relationship and differentiation. In doing so, this study shows how contract farming investments impact the entire local-level population in different ways, which gives key insights into what drives contract farming schemes. This study draws on and situates itself in contract farming literature. It explores three phases of contract farming’s popularity and identifies specific gaps in the literature around power and relations. The study builds an analytical framework in order to address these two gaps. The study proposes an analytical framework for looking at relationships within and outside the contract farming schemes. It looks at three key relationships: that between contract farmers and the investors; that between contract farmers and the excluded local population; and that between the excluded local population and the investors. The model characterizes these relationships by identifying the exchanges and outcomes that occur within the relationships. The second part of the analytical framework applies Khan’s concept of holding power to understand how power is distributed both within and outside the contract farming scheme and to identify how power might change over time and in the face of conflict. This study is based on empirical evidence from four cases: two cases of contract farming in the rice sector and two in the sugar sector in Tanzania. The study uses a mixed-methods approach and draws on household surveys, interviews, and focus group discussions. The four cases are Kilombero Sugar Company Limited, Mtibwa Sugar Estates, Kapunga Rice Plantation Limited, and Mtenda Kyela Rice Supply Company Limited. For all four cases, contract farmers receive exchanges through engaging in contract farming. These exchanges include access to inputs, credits, loans, and markets. For all of the cases, except the case of Mtibwa Sugar Estates, many contract farmers benefited from contract farming and were able to reinvest income from contract farming into different activities. The Mtibwa case is marked by conflict and tension with the investor, which has resulted in farmers starting to leave the scheme. The study also shows that the excluded local populations face a mixture of positive and negative impacts from the contract farmers and the investors. Holding power is explored for each of these cases.