Abstract
Lorenzo Cotula and Sonja Vermeulen examine the extent to which local people have control over the land allocation processes which have such enormous impacts on their livelihoods and cultures. They examine the procedural issues of consultation and consent, to examine how accountable current processes are to differentiated local interests, and at the distributive issues around compensation.
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Notes
Anonymous personal communications.
The lowest recordable level on the records sheet; most are likely to offer significantly fewer than 50 full-time employment (FTE) jobs.
See ILO Convention No. 169 of 1989 and the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The UN Declaration is not a legally binding document, while ILO Convention 169 has been ratified by about 20 countries, none of which is in Africa. On free prior and informed consent (FPIC), see Colchester and Ferrari (2007).
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Acknowledgements
This is a revised and updated version of an earlier article published in the Journal of Peasant Studies (Vermeulen, Sonja and Lorenzo Cotula (2010) ‘Over the Heads of Local People: Consultation, consent, and recompense in large-scale land deals for biofuels projects in Africa’, Journal of Peasant Studies 37: 899–916). The original empirical work was coordinated by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), with funding from IIED's multi-donor framework agreement (Danida, DFID, DGIS, Irish Aid, Norad, SDC, Sida), FAO and IFAD. The authors thank anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on earlier versions.
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Examines the problem of inadequate compensation for local people in Africa
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Cotula, L., Vermeulen, S. Contexts and Procedures for Farmland Acquisitions in Africa: What outcomes for local people?. Development 54, 40–48 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1057/dev.2010.94
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/dev.2010.94