Water availability is a major factor constraining humanity's ability to meet the future food and energy needs of a growing and increasingly affluent human population. Water plays an important role ...

/pdf/the-global-food-energy-water-nexus-4em7xks6ik.pdf

The Global Food-Energy-Water Nexus

https://escholarship.org/content/qt423537fg/qt423537fg.pdf?t=p2n8ga

The Global Water Grabbing Syndrome

Land finance in China: Analysis and review

Foreign investors have acquired approximately 90 million hectares of land for agriculture over the past two decades. The effects of these investments on local food security remain unknown. While additional cropland and intensified agriculture could potentially increase crop production, preferential targeting of prime agricultural land and transitions toward export-bound crops might affect local access to nutritious foods. We test these hypotheses in a global systematic analysis of the food security implications of existing land concessions. We combine agricultural, remote sensing, and household survey data (available in 11 sub-Saharan African countries) with georeferenced information on 160 land acquisitions in 39 countries. We find that the intended changes in cultivated crop types generally imply transitions toward energy-rich, but nutrient-poor, crops that are predominantly destined for export markets. Specific impacts on food production and access vary substantially across regions. Deals likely have little effect on food security in eastern Europe and Latin America, where they predominantly occur within agricultural areas with current export-oriented crops, and where agriculture would have both expanded and intensified regardless of the land deals. This contrasts with Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where deals are associated with both an expansion and intensification (in Asia) of crop production. Deals in these regions also shift production away from local staples and coincide with a gradually decreasing dietary diversity among the surveyed households in sub-Saharan Africa. Together, these findings point to a paradox, where land deals can simultaneously increase crop production and threaten local food security.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/118/4/e2020535118.full.pdf

Impact of transnational land acquisitions on local food security and dietary diversity.

Author(s): Davis, KF; Rulli, MC; D'Odorico, P | Abstract: Climate change poses a serious global challenge in the face of rapidly increasing human demand for energy and food. A recent phenomenon in which climate change may play an important role is the acquisition of large tracts of land in the developing world by governments and corporations. In the target countries, where land is relatively inexpensive, the potential to increase crop yields is generally high and property rights are often poorly defined. By acquiring land, investors can realize large profits and countries can substantially alter the land and water resources under their control, thereby changing their outlook for meeting future demand. While the drivers, actors, and impacts involved with land deals have received substantial attention in the literature, we propose that climate change plays an important yet underappreciated role, both through its direct effects on agricultural production and through its influence on mitigative or adaptive policy decisions. Drawing from various literature sources as well as a new global database on reported land deals, we trace the evolution of the global land rush and highlight prominent examples in which the role of climate change is evident. We find that climate change - both historical and anticipated - interacts substantially with drivers of land acquisitions, having important implications for the resilience of communities in targeted areas. As a result of this synthesis, we ultimately contend that considerations of climate change should be integrated into future policy decisions relating to the large-scale land acquisitions.

/pdf/the-global-land-rush-and-climate-change-28iafxghjr.pdf

The global land rush and climate change

Large-scale foreign investment in Africa's abundant but largely underutilized arable land has been criticised by international NGOs and social movements as ‘land grabbing’, which limits access of smallholder farmers to land, deprives local people of their livelihoods and threatens local and national food security across the continent. By way of contrast, many host governments and some leading international development agencies regard land-based investments as beneficial for development in terms of providing the necessary capital and technological know-how for modernising the region's neglected agriculture including take-off in agribusiness and agro-industrialisation, which is vital to much needed economic diversification in many African countries. East Asia's participation in the global land rush on Africa is examined from the standpoint of these two different perspectives: while China's growing presence and involvement in trade and investment in mining, energy and infrastructure in Africa is well...

‘Land grabbing’ or harnessing of development potential in agriculture? East Asia's land-based investments in Africa

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‘Land grabbing’ or harnessing of development potential in agriculture? East Asia's land-based investments in Africa