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The acquisition of large tracts of land for agricultural investment from developing countries, including Ethiopia, by commercial firms has been aggravated after global food crisis in 2007–2008. Given the current attention to large‐scale land acquisition or land grabbing phenomenon, contract farming has been identified as a participatory and inclusive farming model which does not require agricultural firms to purchase or lease land in order to operate agricultural investments. Contract farming enables local smallholder farmers to produce agricultural products on their own land and ensure the benefits of land‐based agricultural investments remain with them. Unfortunately, the understanding and practice of contract farming as an alternative to large‐scale land acquisition to protect the land rights of the local people is underexplored in Ethiopia. This study, therefore, is aimed to examine the practice and conceptual understanding of contract farming in the context of agricultural investment in Ethiopia. To achieve this objective, mixed research approach was employed. Intensive document reviews, questionnaire, key informant interview and FGD were used as data collection tools. The results show that the practice of contract farming in Ethiopia is very insignificant and commercial farming is almost entirely relied on land acquisition. Moreover, gaps in policy and legal framework to guide contract farming has made difficult to effectively implement contract framing at national level. Finally, this study advised to introduce contract framing as a viable alternative to land acquisition for agricultural investment that fosters local smallholder farmers' participation in agricultural production and contributes to sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of contract farming of sugarcane in an outgrower scheme in Tanzania, this paper explores how the scheme has fundamentally altered people's relationships with the land over the last 50 years, in particular, since 1999, when, after three decades, the sugar parastatal was privatized. The paper reviews the literature on the mutual relationship between contract farming and land ownership and examines the scheme with a focus on long‐term changes in the forms of land acquisitions and land use. We argue that the meaning and importance of landownership in contract farming schemes needs to be reassessed if participation in contract farming entails a departure from previous forms of acquiring land, generates new spatial patterns of agricultural production, and necessitates additional economic and social resources in order to transform land into an economic asset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resource allocation for land acquisition is a common multiobjective problem that involves complex trade‐offs. The National Wildlife Refuge System (NWRS) of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service currently uses the Targeted Resource Acquisition Comparison Tool (TRACT) to allocate funds from the Migratory Bird Conservation Fund (MBCF; established through the Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Act of 1934) for land acquisition based on cost–benefit analysis, regional priority rankings of candidate land parcels available for acquisition, and the overall biological contribution to duck population objectives. However, current policy encourages decision makers to consider societal and economic benefits of lands acquired, in addition to their biological benefits to waterfowl. These decisions about portfolio elements (i.e., individual land parcels) require an analysis of the difficult trade‐offs among multiple objectives. In the last decade the application of multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) methods has been instrumental in aiding decision makers with complex multiobjective decisions. In this study, we present an alternative approach to developing land‐acquisition portfolios using MCDA and modern portfolio theory (MPT). We describe the development of a portfolio decision analysis tool using constrained optimization for land‐acquisition decisions by the NWRS. We outline the decision framework, describe development of the prototype tool in Microsoft Excel, and test the results of the tool using land parcels submitted as candidates for MBCF funding in 2019. Our results indicate that the constrained optimization outperformed the traditional TRACT method and ad hoc portfolios developed using current NWRS criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urbanization and informal settlements are a prevalent phenomenon in most African regions; they play an important role in the real estate market and the housing supply. This study examines the process and mechanism of land acquisition and land tenure security in informal settlements in Nairobi. We found that pseudo‐customary and pseudo‐formal systems work together in land acquisition and land tenure security. The former system derives from land acquisition and land tenure security under the authority of a traditional chief in rural areas, whereas the latter refers to the modern land registration procedure and urban planning standards. To ensure land acquisition and land tenure security, people use each of these systems and sometimes combine them. Moreover this study demonstrates that these land‐related systems are closely connected to the governance structure and site layout planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to global habitat loss, many governmental and non‐governmental organizations have implemented land acquisition programs to protect critical habitats permanently for priority species. The ability of these protected areas to meet future management objectives may be compromised if the effects of climate change are not considered in acquisition decisions. Unfortunately, the effects of climate change on ecological systems are complex and plagued by uncertainty, making it difficult for organizations to prioritize research needs to improve decision‐making. Herein, we demonstrate the use of qualitative value of information analysis to identify and prioritize which sources of uncertainty should be reduced to improve land acquisition decisions to protect migratory birds in the face of climate change. The qualitative value of information analysis process involves four steps: (i) articulating alternative hypotheses; (ii) determining the magnitude of uncertainty regarding each hypothesis; (iii) evaluating the relevance of each hypothesis to acquisition decision‐making; and (iv) assessing the feasibility of reducing the uncertainty surrounding each hypothesis through research and monitoring. We demonstrate this approach using the objectives of 3 U.S. federal land acquisition programs that focus on migratory bird management. We used a comprehensive literature review, expert elicitation, and professional judgement to evaluate 11 hypotheses about the effect of climate change on migratory birds. Based on our results, we provide a list of priorities for future research and monitoring to reduce uncertainty and improve land acquisition decisions for the programs considered in our case study. Reducing uncertainty about how climate change will influence the spatial distribution of priority species and biotic homogenization were identified as the highest priorities for future research due to both the value of this information for improving land acquisition decisions and the feasibility of reducing uncertainty through research and monitoring. Research on how changes in precipitation patterns and winter severity will influence migratory bird abundance is also expected to benefit land acquisition decisions. By contrast, hypotheses about phenology and migration distance were identified as low priorities for research. By providing a rigorous and transparent approach to prioritizing research, we demonstrate that qualitative value of information is a valuable tool for prioritizing research and improving management decisions in other complex, high‐uncertainty cases where traditional quantitative value of information analysis is not possible. Given the inherent complexity of ecological systems under climate change, and the difficulty of identifying management‐relevant research priorities, we expect this approach to have wide applications within the field of natural resource management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze a complex techno‐economic project of the Indian Bullet Train system, under construction via the High‐speed Rail lines in India, with an estimated speed of the train in 350 kmph and covering a distance of 500Km, the project is in collaboration with Japan and estimated cost is to be at Rs.1080 Billions. The groundwork for the Bullet Train Project started in December 2017 and the project dead line is set as August 2023 with land acquisition dead line to be completed by December 2018. The land requirement is 1400 Hectares which is divided into 7000 plots in 195 villages in Gujarat and 104 villages in Maharashtra. Despite location of bullet train project being in India's most economically and industrially developed states, the land acquisition got delayed. In this paper, we develop a systemigram to depict the whole problem. Based on the data available, CLD (Causal loop diagram) is created indicating cause and effect relation and feedback loops. On the application of system thinking approach, this study can be further explored for identifying archetypes. It was identified that the land acquisition process is more influenced by the coordination and interaction between policy makers and locals. It can be said that, if these two are on the same page with regards to the various terms and conditions such as conditions of compensation, then land acquisition will be done on time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protests and opposition to land acquisition from displaced peasants for fair compensation occur on a daily basis in China and have become the most prominent social problem in rural parts of the country. Employing a procedural perspective on conflict, this paper aims to uncover the complexities and tensions that are triggered in the process by drawing on a case of a land confiscation in Jining City, a medium‐size city in Shandong Province, China. Our research shows that conflicts exist at various scales: both between the local governments and rural households and between the village officials and villagers. The paper argues that ambiguity in de jure and de facto land acquisition procedures has resulted in both an escalation of conflict and increasing inequality in the outcomes and benefits of the process. We discuss and conclude that the differences between de jure and de facto procedures in the process of land acquisition are a significant institutional barrier in the resolution of conflict in this important issue for rural China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Very few studies have captured the full complexity of land acquisition processes at the agricultural frontier. Specifically, the different stages in the land acquisition process and the changing responses of local communities to plantation development have not been adequately described and explained. Based on a detailed empirical case study of a land acquisition process in a village at the oil palm frontier in West Kalimantan, Indonesia, we address this knowledge gap. To comprehensively capture reactions 'from below' to large‐scale land acquisition, we use the interlinked concepts of access, property and authority. We show that the land acquisition process is basically a process of transforming and obscuring customary property rights and local authority. In our case, this process is characterised by an initial recognition of customary rights and local authority by the oil palm company. However, in the course of the process, these property rights and local authority are being transformed and eventually obscured. We call for a more interventionist state to prepare a less uneven playing field at the very beginning of land acquisition processes. This could slow down the nearly irrevocable obfuscation of customary rights and the erosion of local authority at the oil palm frontier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Indian state is empowered to acquire land on behalf of private companies by virtue of ‘eminent domain’ outlined in the Land Acquisition Act 1894. Several amendments to the 1894 Land Acquisition Act have broadened the purview of the ‘public purpose’ clause and have facilitated more state intervention in land acquisition on behalf of private capital. Rather than questioning the legitimacy of the prevailing practice of state intervention to resolve the glitches of access to land by private corporations, the New Act of 2013 has expanded the ambit of ‘public purpose’ to include public‐private‐partnership projects. This paper seeks to look into the political economy of why the neoliberal state must continue to acquire land on behalf of the capitalists in the liberalized economy. This paper also attempts to bring out the implications of divergent livelihood outcome under state acquisition and direct corporate land purchase for the land acquisition framework in India through the case study of Rajarhat New Town in West Bengal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The output from the hydraulic vibrators typically used for land seismic surveys is controlled by monitoring the acceleration measured by accelerometers mounted on the reaction mass and baseplate. The considerable energy output by such vibrators, which are coupled with the sensitivity of the accelerometers used, results in crosstalk if more than one vibrator is being used. In this paper, we present the results of a field experiment in which we measured the crosstalk between two adjacent vibrators. We found that the level of crosstalk was approximately -20 dB when the vibrators were adjacent but decreased with increasing frequency and separation. This result has implications for measurements of vibrator performance, source-signature deconvolution, and in particular, estimates of the total energy output by a fleet of vibrators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Special Economic Zones (SEZs) are important vectors of neoliberal globalization in India. Despite facing widespread resistance against the proposed land acquisition for these zones, they are still being promoted across the country. We argue that the wealth redistribution to the country's elites and the fractured resistance movements enable neoliberalism and its practices to grow in the countryside. Using a private sector SEZ in Gurgaon as a case study, this article explores how special economic zoning, as a neoliberal policy, has been implicated in the spatialized production of poverty. We also show that the main actors who promote neoliberalism in India (the state and the large-scale urban private sector) have found a seemingly unlikely ally in rural India in the form of farmers with large landholdings, rural elites who are willing to let go of their land under certain conditions. The data for the article was collected in India in 2009-10. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land acquisition in suburban China is not merely the administrative means through which land is transferred from collectively owned rural land to state-owned urban land; it is also a process of unlawful profit grabbing by rent-seeking stakeholders. This licentiousness has been the source of intense controversy in recent years, becoming a major source of social unrest in contemporary China. Although standards of compensation are legally governed by strict policies, these standards are rarely followed as prescribed. As a result, we know very little about how revenue from land acquisition is shared in practice. This is because, as a contentious political issue rife with corrupt practices, accurate data are extremely difficult to obtain. This paper aims to address this vast empirical gap by tracing the flow of profit proliferation and distribution in a land acquisition case, using a suburban village in Shandong province, China, as an example. To expedite the drawn-out acquisition process, the local government permits the corrupt behaviour of the village party secretary, who exploits his position to amass a great personal fortune. In contrast to previous research, which emphasises low compensation standards or excessive profit grabbing by local government, we find that villagers' protests are triggered by the corrupt practices of the village party secretary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change poses a serious global challenge in the face of rapidly increasing human demand for energy and food. A recent phenomenon in which climate change may play an important role is the acquisition of large tracts of land in the developing world by governments and corporations. In the target countries, where land is relatively inexpensive, the potential to increase crop yields is generally high and property rights are often poorly defined. By acquiring land, investors can realize large profits and countries can substantially alter the land and water resources under their control, thereby changing their outlook for meeting future demand. While the drivers, actors, and impacts involved with land deals have received substantial attention in the literature, we propose that climate change plays an important yet underappreciated role, both through its direct effects on agricultural production and through its influence on mitigative or adaptive policy decisions. Drawing from various literature sources as well as a new global database on reported land deals, we trace the evolution of the global land rush and highlight prominent examples in which the role of climate change is evident. We find that climate change-both historical and anticipated-interacts substantially with drivers of land acquisitions, having important implications for the resilience of communities in targeted areas. As a result of this synthesis, we ultimately contend that considerations of climate change should be integrated into future policy decisions relating to the large-scale land acquisitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For countries dependent on agriculture, the recent wave of investor interest in farmland could, in principle, help set in motion a virtuous cycle of economic growth and poverty reduction. A large literature documenting failure of such investments documents the risks involved. To appreciate associated opportunities and challenges, we review past experience, quantify country-level potential for area expansion versus intensification, and identify determinants of countries' attractiveness for investors in the initial stages of the 'land rush.' The fact that weak land governance seems to increase, rather than reduce, land demand justifies an emphasis on improving institutions, transparency, and accountability while at the same time providing concrete suggestions for policy and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a dramatic increase in the number of conservation organizations worldwide. It is now common for multiple organizations to operate in the same landscape in pursuit of different conservation goals. New objectives, such as maintenance of ecosystem services, will attract additional funding and new organizations to conservation. Systematic conservation planning helps in the design of spatially explicit management actions that optimally conserve multiple landscape features (e.g., species, ecosystems, or ecosystem services). But the methods used in its application implicitly assume that a single actor implements the optimal plan. We investigated how organizational behavior and conservation outcomes are affected by the presence of autonomous implementing organizations with different objectives. We used simulation models and game theory to explore how alternative behaviors (e.g., organizations acting independently or explicitly cooperating) affected an organization's ability to protect their feature of interest, and investigated how the distribution of features in the landscape influenced organizations' attitudes toward cooperation. Features with highly correlated spatial distributions, although typically considered an opportunity for mutually beneficial conservation planning, can lead to organizational interactions that result in lower levels of protection. These detrimental outcomes can be avoided by organizations that cooperate when acquiring land. Nevertheless, for cooperative purchases to benefit both organizations' objectives, each must forgo the protection of land parcels that they would consider to be of high conservation value. Transaction costs incurred during cooperation and the sources of conservation funding could facilitate or hinder cooperative behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatially explicit information on the financial costs of conservation actions can improve the ability of conservation planning to achieve ecological and economic objectives, but the magnitude of this improvement may depend on the accuracy of the cost estimates. Data on costs of conservation actions are inherently uncertain. For example, the cost of purchasing a property for addition to a protected-area network depends on the individual landholder's preferences, values, and aspirations, all of which vary in space and time, and the effect of this uncertainty on the conservation priority of a site is relatively untested. We investigated the sensitivity of the conservation priority of sites to uncertainty in cost estimates. We explored scenarios for expanding (four-fold) the protected-area network in Queensland, Australia to represent a range of vegetation types, species, and abiotic environments, while minimizing the cost of purchasing new properties. We estimated property costs for 17, 790 10 × 10 km sites with data on unimproved land values. We systematically changed property costs and noted how these changes affected conservation priority of a site. The sensitivity of the priority of a site to changes in cost data was largely dependent on a site's importance for meeting conservation targets. Sites that were essential or unimportant for meeting targets maintained high or low priorities, respectively, regardless of cost estimates. Sites of intermediate conservation priority were sensitive to property costs and represented the best option for efficiency gains, especially if they could be purchased at a lower price than anticipated. Thus, uncertainty in cost estimates did not impede the use of cost data in conservation planning, and information on the sensitivity of the conservation priority of a site to estimates of the price of land can be used to inform strategic conservation planning before the actual price of the land is known. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few empirical studies examine how conservation organizations distribute the resources that they have available for habitat conservation, despite numerous theoretical studies that recommend how these resources should be directed. Here we examine the distribution of conservation investments made over 49 years by a major conservation nongovernmental organization (NGO), The Nature Conservancy (TNC). We measured the level of conservation effort across U.S. states by the area protected and the upfront cost of protection, accounting for easements and land acquisitions. While correlated, we show that two measures of conservation effort (area and amount invested) cannot be used as reliable proxies for one another. The distributions of both measures of conservation effort are explained by combinations of one biological (species richness) and three socioeconomic (land price, rate of development and action of other NGOs) factors, revealing a generally strategic pattern of investment by TNC. Finally, we identify examples of underinvestment in particular states by TNC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the course of urbanization and industrialization, a growing number of farmers have become landless as local governments have bought out their land for non-agricultural uses. Even in the localities where the industrialization process absorbs a vast majority of rural labor, the questions of how to compensate for the economic shock on the rural landless and how to alleviate and eliminate mental suffering as a result of losing land have always been a challenge to government capacity in social stabilization and a yardstick to measure social justice in local communities. In the administration areas of Suzhou City in Jiangsu Province, governments at all levels have successfully coped with this challenge. By means of “swapping land for old-age support” and income redistribution, Suzhou municipality has not only met the demand on land for urbanization and industrialization while maintaining social stability, but also laid a foundation for establishing an integrated pension system for both urban and rural residents. Such a system has changed the tradition of farmers' households relying on land to deal with economic risk and of the aged depending on their sons for livelihood support in rural society. Edited by Xinyu Fan [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been assumed that strategies for estuarine and marine conservation must be substantially different than those for terrestrial conservation because the seas are all publicly owned. This is an unfortunate misconception. We explored the leasing and ownership of submerged lands as tools for marine conservation and provide examples of the implementation of these tools from The Nature Conservancy's work in Texas, Washington, and New York (U.S.A.). We found that the leasing and ownership of submerged lands are viable new tools for marine conservation. There is a significant amount of submerged land available for lease and ownership in the United States and other countries that includes a diverse array of ecosystems (e.g., kelp forests, marshes, seagrass meadows, oyster reefs, tidal flats, clam beds, scallop beds, sponge, and coral reefs). From our review of policy and experience in practice, we have identified some key benefits and considerations for the use of these tools. Conservation benefits for the leasing and ownership of submerged lands include opportunities to restore ecologically and economically important species, protect diversity in sanctuaries, draw on substantial terrestrial experience in leasing and ownership, buy land cheaply, develop ecologically sustainable harvest practices, partner with fishers and local communities to improve water quality, create control areas for research, and partake in local management forums as a direct stakeholder. Bivalve shellfish are particularly amenable to conservation with these tools because existing policy is well established for leasing and ownership rights to sessile animals that exist on the sea floor. Conservation buyers need to consider that community sentiment does not always favor private rights to submerged lands, conservation interest in submerged lands could affect prices, association with incompatible aquaculture practices will be detrimental, enforcement of restrictions can be difficult, and there may be concerns about setting the precedent of paying for conservation of submerged lands. Policy makers should be encouraged to include more opportunities for conservation and not just exploitation of natural resources on submerged land leases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the mid-1950s Professor R. Gerard Ward carried out his first significant research project as a graduate student in the ‘Taupo country’ – a diverse volcanic landscape with a rich Maori history in the central North Island of New Zealand. This paper traces my own ‘journeys’ into the Taupo country and my association with the complexities of both historical and contemporary understandings and realities of Maori land tenure. I use several specific examples, and draw on a variety of experiences to argue that the ‘Taupo country’ cannot be understood without an appreciation of the enduring Maori values which still permeate society and land tenure in New Zealand’s ‘volcanic desert’ landscape. Despite legislative efforts to impose on Maori a title system derived from British property law, and all the subsequent pressures to assimilate, enduring Maori values intertwined with ancestry and identity cannot be ignored either in reconstructions of the history or in current planning for the future of the Taupo region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biodiversity conservation requires space where conservation measures are implemented for a desired purpose. Setting land aside for conservation has been widely applied, while novel conservation modes (private–public partnerships, private multipurpose land management) may be fundamental to achieve conservation goals. We perform an economic analysis of the cost development for two conservation options in California, in‐fee and easements, from 1970 to today. We find that in‐fee options have lower costs than easements in the long run. While there are high costs of purchase for in‐fee, ultimately they even‐out or generate profits. Costs of easements continue growing exponentially overtaking costs of purchase. Sensitivity analysis shows increases in purchasing prices and opportunity costs positively influencing conservation costs, while increasing interest rates negatively influence them. The results suggest that easements are not yet an economically viable alternative for in‐fee conservation purchases. Our analysis is a first step to assess economic viability of choosing easements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]