The papers in this panel analyse the impacts of global processes of an increased commodification of land – related to a scramble for land for large-scale agricultural production, the production of biofuels, and tourism – on local contestations over land and dispossession. The presenters demonstrate the need to carefully situate the influences and impacts of such global processes in local contexts.
Important aspects of these local contexts addressed in the papers are local market liberalization policies and land reforms, but also changing power relations, processes of marginalization, and corruption. The cases presented in this panel include contestations over land in Rwanda, Namibia, Ethiopia and Canada.
Chair: Marja Spierenberg, VU Amsterdam
- An Ansoms, Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium, The ‘bitter fruit’ of a new agrarian model: Large-scale land deals and local livelihoods in Rwanda (Presentation)
- Willem Odendaal, Legal Assistance Centre, Namibia, Land grabbing in Namibia
- Maru Shete, School of Graduate Studies, St. Mary’s University College, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Implications of land deals to livelihood security and natural resource management in Benshanguel Gumuz regional state, Ethiopia (Presentation)
- Melanie Sommerville, PhD Candidate, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, Canada, The Global Land Grab and Marginalization in Canada: the Case of One Earth Farms (Presenation)