Azadi, Hossein

Gebremeskel, Dereje Teklemariam

Haile, Mitiku

Nyssen, Jan

Witlox, Frank

English

Ghent University Academic Bibliography

Geophysical Research AbstractsVol. 15, EGU2013-3498, 2013EGU General Assembly 2013© Author(s) 2013. CC Attribution 3.0 License.International land deals, local people’s livelihood, and environment nexus(How to create win-win land deals in Ethiopia?)Dereje Teklemariam Gebremeskel (1,2), Frank Witlox (1), Hossein Azadi (1), Mitiku Haile (3), and Jan Nyssen(1)(1) Ghent University, Department of Geography, Gent, Belgium, (2) Department of Management, Mekelle University,Ethiopia, (3) Department of Land Resources Management and Environmental Protection, Mekelle University, EthiopiaFollowing the global raise in demand for food and biofuel production, transnational companies are acquiringlarge scale agricultural land in developing countries such as Ethiopia. Considering land as one of the factors to beoutsourced for development, the government of Ethiopia is supplying millions of hectares of land to transnationalcompanies in the form of longterm lease. Many of the companies which engage in large scale land acquisition areof Indian, Chinese, Ethiopian diaspora, German, Malaysian, Italian, British, Dutch, Turkish, and Saudi-Arabianorigin. The boom in the acquisition of farm land in the country has sparked an all-rounded debate among civilsociety groups, international institutions, nongovernmental organizations and independent development experts.The common reflections concerning the land deals in Ethiopia and elsewhere contain much rhetoric and hypewhich lack analysis of the real situation “on the ground” giving different connotations such as ‘land grabbing’,‘agricultural outsourcing’, ‘neo-colonialism’, ‘agrarian colonialism’, and ‘land underdevelopment’. However,deforestation, soil degradation, marginalization of local indigenous communities, and minimally unfair gainsfrom investment by the host country are among the real points of concern arising out of the long term landlease contracts. Scientific evidence is lacking concerning the pragmatic impacts of large scale agricultural landacquisitions by transnational companies upon the natural environment (forest and land), local peoples’ livelihood,and the contacting parties (the host country and the companies). The major objective of this study is to investigatethe impacts in the context of Ethiopia, orienting to reinvent win-win land use models which constitute sustainableland use, local peoples’ livelihood and the company-host country interests. To achieve this overall objective,the study employs a number of methods and methodologies constituting both qualitative and quantitative dataanalyses at different levels of focus ranging from household and farm levels to national and transnational. Thestudy focuses on the western lowlands of Ethiopia where there are many companies engaged in large scale com-mercial farming, where 75% of it is below 1500 m a.s.l with average annual temperature of 20-25◦C and annualrainfall of 500-1800 mm. Some preliminary exploratory findings indicate that there is massive land use conver-sion (deforestation) and ‘voluntary’ displacement of indigenous communities, which requires further triangulation.Key words: agricultural outsourcing; environmental services; land grabbing; sustainable livelihood; soilconservation

International land deals, local people's livelihood, and environment nexus (How to create win-win land deals in Ethiopia?)

https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/3198799/file/3210517

International land deals, local people's livelihood, and environment nexus (How to create win-win land deals in Ethiopia?)

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