Paper short abstract:

Large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) have emerged as an important policy issue in development discourse. As a form of extractivism where land changes hands, LSLA deals transform resource use and livelihoods in ways that reinforce pre-existing socioeconomic conditions of communities

Paper long abstract:

Large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) have emerged as an important policy issue in development discourse. Governments in host countries engineer policy landscapes for enclosing local community resources for capital accumulation. Supported for food security, biofuels, financial investments, eco-tourism etc., opponents of LSLAs raise concerns regarding the fate of local communities suffering from (potential) land dispossession and involuntary displacements, environmental degradation, diminished local food security and sovereignty and casualisation of farm workers. Scholarly efforts to understand socio-economic and environmental impacts of LSLAs grapple with methodological challenges related to lack of (reliable) baseline data. Some case studies have highlighted failed implementation of LSLA deals, resulting in cancellations, scaling down, abandonment or change of investment business models. Few attempts have been made to: i) understand what accounts for such failures and what happens when both state policy and private sector implementation of land deals fail; and ii) to understand how local communities cope with failed LSLA deals. Taking Nansanga farm block, a government of Zambia-led LSLA deal, this article presents a study to: i) understand LSLA deals as forms of extractivism; and ii) examine how local communities cope with failed LSLA deals. Overall, results indicate diminished role of the government in the land deal; creating a development vacuum that tobacco production and open pit manganese mining opportunistically filled in. The findings suggest pre-existing socio-economic status and household labour are key to understanding coping strategies. Finally, LSLA deals transform resource use and livelihoods in ways that reinforce pre-existing socio-economic conditions of communities.