CIFOR–ICRAF publishes over 750 publications every year on agroforestry, forests and climate change, landscape restoration, rights, forest policy and much more – in multiple languages.

CIFOR–ICRAF addresses local challenges and opportunities while providing solutions to global problems for forests, landscapes, people and the planet.

We deliver actionable evidence and solutions to transform how land is used and how food is produced: conserving and restoring ecosystems, responding to the global climate, malnutrition, biodiversity and desertification crises. In short, improving people’s lives.

Transformative land investment: Trends in transnational governance

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Key messages

  • Land governance standards, regulations and ‘food systems transformation’ have very different meanings across different actors, and different perceived roles – from facilitating large-scale land investments to preventing them.
  • The promise that voluntary standards would mobilize significant additional investment has not materialized.
  • Challenges with corporate self-regulation have led many, including some private sector actors, to push for mandatory regulation. However, this also comes with specific weaknesses and risks (e.g., bias towards those with the resources to comply); corporate disclosure has been inadequate to date.
  • Under the right political and contextual conditions, even what appear to be weak land governance instruments can provide opportunities for the poorest farmers to protect their land rights.
  • It is essential to understand and make explicit the different visions and assumptions regarding ‘development’ behind standards and initiatives, and their implementation pathways, in order to identify common ways forward.

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DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17528/cifor-icraf/009135
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