Teachers: Annemiek Pas Schrijver

Time: 13.15 - 15.00

Place: Zoom

Content

Climate change and biodiversity loss are increasingly presented as an interconnected environmental crisis in need of global scaling up and investments for its mitigation. While the urgency is based on ecological evidence and receives state, corporate and civil society support, the rolling out of green investments at the local level can be highly problematic. Green initiatives tend to be implemented in already economically and politically marginalized regions and reproduce existing social and environmental injustices through dynamics of appropriation, conflict and dispossession. This lecture uses a case study to provide insights into emerging conflict dynamics over land-based resources in the wake of ‘modern’ green investments in northern Kenya. In this lecture, we will discuss potential dynamics that emerge at the intersection of recent green investments and pastoralist community’s control over communal resources with a particular focus on land.

Today's slides

Mandatory readings:

1) Boone, Catherine, Alex Dyzenhaus, Ambreena Manji, Catherine W Gateri, Seth Ouma, James Kabugu Owino, Achiba Gargule, and Jacqueline M Klopp. 2019. ‘Land Law Reform in Kenya: Devolution, Veto Players, and the Limits of an Institutional Fix’. African Affairs 118 (471): 215–37. https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/ady053

How and why to read: This paper introduces the concept of a land reform and the context in which this can take place. Try to generally capture the politics of land reform.

2) Borras JR, Saturnino & Jenniger Franco (2012) “Global Land Grabbing and Trajectories of Agrarian Change: A Preliminary Analysis”, Journal of Agrarian Change, 12(1): 34-59

How and why to read: This paper is to provide insights into the wider land grab debate. The authors lay out an analytical proposal for the understanding of land grab through a number of mechanisms. Try to grasp these different mechanisms.

Do you want more to read?

Alonso Serna, Lourdes. "Land grabbing or value grabbing? Land rent and wind energy in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca." Competition & Change 26.3-4 (2022): 487-503.

Peluso, Nancy Lee, and Christian Lund. "New frontiers of land control: Introduction." Journal of peasant studies 38.4 (2011): 667-681.

Greiner, Clemens. 2012. ‘Unexpected Consequences: Wildlife Conservation and Territorial Conflict in Northern Kenya’. Human Ecology 40 (3): 415–25. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-012-9491-6