Global land deals: what has been done, what has changed, and what's next?

Abstract

In 2010, we formed the Land Deal Politics Initiative to study the rising number of large-scale land deals taking place around the world. We organised small grant competitions and conferences to generate more empirical research and debate. In this article, we take stock of the current state of knowledge, as well as the ways in which the context has changed since 2010. We identify seven themes: the evident variety of land deals; the role of financial capital; new technologies; institutional reforms; green grabbing; authoritarian populism; and violence, consent, and resistance. Ongoing climate politics and profound geopolitical shifts demand further research.