Landmark Asian People's Land Rights Tribunal Held in the Philippines

Private sector investments in large-scale, industrial agriculture have been increasing in Asia since the 2008 food crisis, often resulting in the conversion of small-scale and subsistence agriculture and forests into monoculture plantations and widespread violations of human and peoples' rights. To further explore these issues, Holly Jonas (Natural Justice) attended the Asian People's Land Rights Tribunal from 16-17 January at the University of the Philippines in Manila. The Tribunal included consideration of four cases by a panel of eminent experts from the Philippines, Indonesia, and Bangladesh and was hosted by the Asian NGO Coalition (ANGOC), Land Watch Asia Campaign, the University of the Philippines, the Pimental Institute for Leadership and Governance, and Oxfam's East Asia GROW Campaign.

The cases concerned issues with farmers, fisherfolk and Indigenous peoples being threatened and displaced by an industrial economic zone in Casiguran, Philippines; families having their subsistence farms destroyed to make way for large-scale sugar plantations in Koh Kong, Cambodia; Indigenous peoples being forcibly evicted from nearly 18,000 hectares of forested and small-scale agricultural land for oil palm plantations in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia; and Mamanwa Indigenous peoples opposing mining exploration in their ancestral domains in and around Lake Mainit, Agusan del Norte, Philippines. Together, these cases, presented by members of the affected communities and supporting non-governmental organisations, showcase an alarming situation of human rights and environmental violations in the three Southeast Asian countries, involving powerful local and foreign interests alike.

New Research on Large-scale Agricultural Investments in Zambia

Photo courtesy of ifad-un.blogspot.com

The German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA) recently released a new working paper by Kersten Nolte entitled "Large-Scale Agricultural Investments under Poor Land Governance Systems: Actors and Institutions in the Case of Zambia". According to GIGA's abstract, "[t]his paper reveals how the outcomes of large‐scale land acquisitions made by foreign investors in Zambia are determined by the characteristics of the country’s land governance system. Proposing a conceptual framework adapted from Williamson (1998), and using evidence constituted by expert interviews and focus group discussions, we scrutinize the nature and evolution of the Zambian land governance system, the steps that an investor has to go through in order to attain land and the actors shaping the acquisition process. Shedding light on the acquisition process for land, we find that enforcement of formal rules is currently weak. Depending on how the actors “play the game,” land acquisitions can feature aspects of both “land grabs” and of “development opportunities.” If customary land is targeted, consultation, displacements and compensations become especially problematic issues. Moreover, we find that the power balance between actors has been altered by the presence of these investors. In particular, local authorities have gained greater power and influence."

The working paper is available for download in English; other GIGA working papers are available here.