Large-scale land acquisitions, or 'land grabbing', has become a key research topic among scholars interested in agrarian change, development, and the environment. The term 'land acquisitions' refers to a highly contested process in terms of governance and impacts on livelihoods and human rights. Focusing on South-East Asia, this book presents a series of thematic papers and detailed case studies to put this phenomenon into specific historical and institutional contexts.
This book examines land acquisition and resettlement experience in Asian countries, where nearly two-thirds of the world’s development-induced displacement currently takes place. Faced with the complexity of balancing legal frameworks and resettlement needs, along with increasing demands for safeguarding displaced peoples, in recent years many countries within Asia have adopted integrated land and resettlement laws. This book presents a comparative review and assessment of the impact of the new land and resettlement laws and regulatory frameworks for expropriation, compensation and resettlement. Written by an international, interdisciplinary team of experts from both practice and academia, the book demonstrates the ongoing challenges and struggles associated with social and resettlement risk assessments, the social and cultural exclusion of indigenous/vulnerable groups in some countries, and the lack of institutional capacity to adequately deal with resettlement management and administration. The case studies and comparative analyses of laws and practices relating to expropriation, compensation and resettlement make significant contributions to advancing resettlement knowledge and management practices. The book will be useful as a reference for development practitioners and for researchers across the fields of global development, political science, Asian studies, planning and law. The book also has potential use as a resource for resettlement management training programs and graduatelevel courses/seminars in development studies.
Developing Asia's demand for high-quality, integrated infrastructure requires a steady but equitable supply of land. However, obtaining rights over land can be complicated by hurdles imposed by geography, settlement patterns, conflicting cultures, sociopolitical factors, and land use problems unique to each country. This timely volume identifies policies that can balance the rights and interests of first nations' peoples, informal settlers, and rural landowners against the development imperatives of land procurement for the greater public good. It provides instructive case studies of the state of Asian land registration, eminent domain, and redevelopment in situations of vulnerable communities. The collected chapters also propose and assess some promising models that might be customized to local conditions, such as long-term land leasing with options to buy. This is a companion volume to ADBI Press' pioneering series of titles (all available through Brookings Press)--Infrastructure for a Seamless Asia; Financing Infrastructure in Asia and the Pacific: Capturing Impacts and New Sources; and Principles of Infrastructure: Case Studies and Best Practices. This volume will be of interest to policymakers, practitioners, academics, and students.
This book explores the existing and diverse institutional bottlenecks of land acquisition, ranging from legal and social to political and even environmental within the Asian context. It identifies the short- and long-term risks associated with land sale through regional case studies and aims to propose a more sustainable policy framework. One such policy framework proposed is that of Land Trust for mitigating some of these risks. For instance, recent studies argue that land trust or land lease is one of the best ways to increase the rate of return to invite private investors into infrastructure investment and industrialization. A rare snapshot of a continent in the process of rapid development, this book offers an invaluable resource for scholars, activists and politicians alike.
Land Acquisition, 7th edition is an examination of the principles of the law governing the compulsory acquisition or resumption of land in Australia. It summarises the principal legislative provisions and the case law that has emerged over 150 years. Reference is made to nine federal, state and territory states and to approximately 450 reported cases.
Indonesia was founded on the ideal of the “Sovereignty of the People”, which suggests the pre-eminence of people’s rights to access, use and control land to support their livelihoods. Yet, many questions remain unresolved. How can the state ensure access to land for agriculture and housing while also supporting land acquisition for investment in industry and infrastructure? What is to be done about indigenous rights? Do registration and titling provide solutions? Is the land reform agenda — legislated but never implemented — still relevant? How should the land questions affecting Indonesia’s disappearing forests be resolved? The contributors to this volume assess progress on these issues through case studies from across the archipelago: from large-scale land acquisitions in Papua, to asset ownership in the villages of Sulawesi and Java, to tenure conflicts associated with the oil palm and mining booms in Kalimantan, Sulawesi and Sumatra. What are the prospects for the “people’s sovereignty” in regard to land?
The problem of escalating population displacement demands global attention and country co-ordination. This book investigates the particular issue of development-induced displacement, whereby land is seized or restricted by the state for the purposes of development projects. Those displaced by these schemes often risk losses to their homes, livelihoods, food security, and socio-cultural support; for which they are rarely fully compensated. Bringing together 22 specialist researchers and practitioners from across the globe, this book provides a much-needed independent analysis of country frameworks for development-induced displacement spanning Asia, Africa, Central and South America. As global competition for land increases, public and private sector lenders are lightening their social safeguards, shifting the oversight for protecting the displaced to national law and regulations. This raises a central question: Do countries have effective ways of addressing the risks and lost opportunities for their people who are displaced? While many countries remain impervious to the problem, the book also shines a light on the few who are pioneering new legislation and strategies, intended to address questions such as: should the social costs to those displaced help determine whether a project meets the public interest and merits financing? Does the modern state need powers of eminent domain? How can country laws, systems, institutions and negotiations be reformed to protect citizens better against disempowering public and private sector development displacement? This book will interest those working on forced and voluntary migration, property and expropriation law, human rights, environmental and social impact assessment, internal and refugee displacement from conflicts, environment change, disasters and development.
This book discusses development and land acquisitions in India and analyzes a conceptual framework based on “paradox of values” and “plural value of land.” The research links the issue of valuation to its roots in classic economic theory and to its individual perception. The project offers an insightful perspective on current challenges of urbanization and development in the Global South, where land use regimes are in a highly dynamic transition to allow for urban amenities, housing and industrial land. The author concludes with a derived scheme or framework that addresses various potentials to better address values of land during land acquisition. It is an ideal book for anyone interested in land markets, land appraisal and land economics and land acquisition in the Global South.
Economic corridors—ambitious infrastructural development projects that newly liberalizing countries in Asia and Africa are undertaking—are dramatically redefining the shape of urbanization. Spanning multiple cities and croplands, these corridors connect metropolises via high-speed superhighways in an effort to make certain strategic regions attractive destinations for private investment. As policy makers search for decentralized and market-oriented means for the transfer of land from agrarian constituencies to infrastructural promoters and urban developers, the reallocation of property control is erupting into volatile land-based social conflicts. In Shareholder Cities, Sai Balakrishnan argues that some of India's most decisive conflicts over its urban future will unfold in the regions along the new economic corridors where electorally strong agrarian propertied classes directly encounter financially powerful incoming urban firms. Balakrishnan focuses on the first economic corridor, the Mumbai-Pune Expressway, and the construction of three new cities along it. The book derives its title from a current mode of resolving agrarian-urban conflicts in which agrarian landowners are being transformed into shareholders in the corridor cities, and the distributional implications of these new land transformations. Shifting the focus of the study of India's contemporary urbanization away from megacities to these in-between corridor regions, Balakrishnan explores the production of uneven urban development that unsettles older histories of agrarian capitalism and the emergence of agrarian propertied classes as protagonists in the making of urban real estate markets. Shareholder Cities highlights the possibilities for a democratic politics of inclusion in which agrarian-urban encounters can create opportunities for previously excluded groups to stake new claims for themselves in the corridor regions.
