Browsing by Author "Leonard, Rebeca"

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Land Grab or Development Opportunity? Agricultural Investment and International Land Deals in Africa
(2009) Cotula, Lorenzo; Vermeulen, Sonja; Leonard, Rebeca; Keeley, James
"Large-scale acquisitions of farmland in Africa, Latin America, Central Asia and Southeast Asia are making headlines in a flurry of media reports across the world. Lands that only a short time ago seemed of little outside interest are now being sought by international investors by the tune of hundreds of thousands of hectares. And while a failed attempt to lease 1.3 million hectares in Madagascar has attracted much media attention, deals reported in the international press constitute the tip of the iceberg. Despite the spate of media reports and rare published research, international land deals and their impacts still remain little understood. This report is a step towards filling this gap. The outcome of a collaboration between IIED, FAO and IFAD, the report discusses key trends and drivers in land acquisitions, the contractual arrangements underpinning them and the way these are negotiated, and the early impacts on land access for rural people in recipient countries. While international land deals are emerging as a global phenomenon, this report focuses on sub-Saharan Africa. The report draws on a literature review, on qualitative interviews with key informants internationally, on national inventories of ongoing and proposed land acquisitions since 2004 in five African countries (Ethiopia, Ghana, Madagascar, Mali and Sudan) and qualitative studies in Mozambique and Tanzania, and on legal analysis of national law and of a small sample of investor-state contracts."
Thailand's Land Titling Programme: Securing Land for the Poor?
(2003) Narintarakul Na Ayutthaya, Kingkorn; Leonard, Rebeca
"The World Bank's Land Titling Programme in Thailand was one of the largest land titling programmes implemented throughout the world. The Bank has praised itself for what it sees as the success of the programme in several of its own reports, and this has served as model for Bank programmes in other countries in the region (e.g. Indonesia, Lao PDR, and the Philippines) and around the world. We will examine the scope of this success, with emphasis on the impact of this programme for the alleviation of poverty in the North of Thailand. "After describing the context of land and the rural poverty in the North of Thailand, the paper will provide an outline of the Bank's land policy objectives and identify the main elements and achievements of the Land Titling Programme. In the second section, the paper explores the impact of the programme on the poor based on the real experiences of groups of farmers in Lamphun province, and challenges the broadly positive conclusions reported in the final evaluation of the 3rd phase of the LTP. As an example of the impact of the programme on local communities, the case of the District of Baan Hong will be presented, comparing expected benefits of land market stimulation, increasing land prices and access to institutional credit with the reality experienced by farmers in the area. There are many questions to be followed up which could provide some interesting areas for additional research."