Explore the vast range of titles available.

Land acquisition is an important strategy in some countries to grow the size, representation, and connectivity of protected area networks, and to contribute to the 30 × 30 protection target. Here, I outlined newly emerging trends in Australia where philanthropy is partnering with governments to enable the purchase of significant properties for conservation, and the importance of dedicated government land purchase funds to attract philanthropy. The Australian experience provides lessons for other countries with tenure systems that enable the purchase of land for the purpose of conservation. The Convention on Biological Diversity's Kunming‐Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, finalized in December 2022, saw 196 nations commit to the target of protecting at least 30% of the world's terrestrial and inland water areas and coastal and marine areas by 2030 (the “30 × 30 target”). The experience from Australia, past and present, is that when governments are willing to partner with philanthropic donors, it enables more land and larger properties to be purchased and protected, particularly in under‐represented regions and helps progress national 30 × 30 objectives. The Australian experience of the importance of dedicated land purchase funds provides lessons for other countries with fee simple tenure systems that purchase land for the purpose of conservation.

Access to land is one of the key factors of farm growth. However, related research is characterised by important gaps, in particular, facing the change over time in the nature and role of drivers of the land market. The objective of this paper is to identify the endogenous and exogenous factors that affect the decision to purchase land in Italy between 2013 and 2020. Five probit regression models were implemented to understand the role of a set of different determinants in land investment decision. The results show that factors related to capital in machinery and plant, energy production and the presence of a successor or young farmer are endogenous factors that positively influence the purchase decision. The ratio of rented land to utilised agricultural area and of family work units to total work units are endogenous factors that negatively affect the purchase decision. Exogenous factors related to the cost of capital and inflation rate affect the purchase of land in an opposite way, negatively and positively respectively. The role of Utilised Agricultural Area and Value Added per hectare varies depending on the specialisation considered. The research can support policymakers in designing policies to promote the survival and growth of farms, as well as to facilitate land investment by reducing barriers to land acquisition.

Based on resource dependency and signaling theories, this study examines how organizational status affects land purchasing behavior in listed real estate enterprises on China’s Shanghai and Shenzhen A-shares from 2006 to 2023. The findings indicate that the organizational status of real estate enterprises positively impacts their land purchase area, price, and quantity. Further analysis reveals that managerial overconfidence mediates this relationship. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the organizational status of state-owned real estate enterprises positively influences all three types of land purchasing behaviors, while for non-state-owned enterprises, it only significantly affects the area and price of land purchases, not the quantity. This study enriches the theory on land purchasing behavior of real estate enterprises, expands the application scope of organizational status, reveals the mechanisms through which organizational status affects land purchasing behavior and provides valuable insights for guiding rational competition among real estate enterprises, optimizing land resource utilization, and promoting the healthy and sustainable development of the real estate industry.

This paper explores the interplay of tourism activity, local expenditures on environmental protection, and the decisions to purchase apartments, family houses, and urban land. A random effects panel model is estimated by using data from cities and municipalities from 2012 to 2021 in Croatia, a European economy heavily dependent on tourism. The findings suggest that increasing tourism intensity at a destination motivates apartment purchase decisions but does not influence family house purchases as significantly. Municipal environmental expenditures show a positive relationship with apartment and family house purchase decisions, suggesting that investments in environmental protection may enhance the attractiveness of urban living spaces, leading to increased demand for apartments. Finally, the results reveal that growth in urban land purchases for housing construction is linked to increased short-term rentals and higher municipal housing expenditures. This research contributes to understanding housing market behavior. The results provide actionable insights for policymakers in tourism-dependent economies, emphasizing the need to balance tourism growth with housing affordability and sustainable urban development.

The study discusses the problem of land grabbing and state interventionism in agricultural land transactions in Poland, and presents the effects of active policy implemented by the state on limiting the flow of agricultural land. The research covers the period from the time of country’s accession to the European Union, starting from 2004. Poland introduced restrictions on the purchase of agricultural land for fear of mass land grabbing, and has currently tightened the restrictions on agricultural land purchase by foreigners and by non-owners of a family farm. The analyses concern the number of permits issued for foreigners to turn over agricultural land in Poland, the area of property eventually purchased by foreigners, the right of pre-emption exercised by the National Support Centre for Agriculture (NSCA), and the number of transactions concluded in an open market and in the form of a tender. Based on the collected data and their in-depth analyses, the following phenomena were interpreted: an extensive impact of interventionism exercised by the Polish state on restricting the sale of agricultural land to foreigners is observed, and interventionism of the Polish state affects the suspension of functional changes in rural areas and agricultural land transition to non-agricultural purposes. The research shows that the majority of property turnover by foreigners in Poland required permits issued by the Minister of the Interior Affairs and Administration. Moreover, priority is given to owners of family farms, which results in a reduction of the total number of transactions concerning agricultural land in Poland after introducing changes in legal transactions of agricultural land in 2016.

Tropical forests are vital for global biodiversity, carbon storage and local livelihoods, yet they are increasingly under threat from human activities. Large-scale land acquisitions have emerged as an important mechanism linking global resource demands to forests in the Global South, yet their influence on tropical deforestation remains unclear. Here we perform a multicountry assessment of the links between large-scale land acquisitions and tropical forest loss by combining a new georeferenced database of 82,403 individual land deals—covering 15 countries in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia—with data on annual forest cover and loss between 2000 and 2018. We find that land acquisitions cover between 6% and 59% of study-country land area and between 2% and 79% of their forests. Compared with non-investment areas, large-scale land acquisitions were granted in areas of higher forest cover in 11 countries and had higher forest loss in 52% of cases. Oil palm, wood fibre and tree plantations were consistently linked with enhanced forest loss while logging and mining concessions showed a mix of outcomes. Our findings demonstrate that large-scale land acquisitions can lead to elevated deforestation of tropical forests, highlighting the role of local policies in the sustainable management of these ecosystems.Tropical deforestation rates are linked to large-scale land investments, according to georeferenced land deal records and remote sensing of forest loss over the past two decades.

The ongoing agrarian transition from smallholder farming to large-scale commercial agriculture promoted by transnational large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) often aims to increase crop yields through the expansion of irrigation. LSLAs are playing an increasingly prominent role in this transition. Yet it remains unknown whether foreign LSLAs by agribusinesses target areas based on specific hydrological conditions and whether these investments compete with the water needs of existing local users. Here we combine process-based crop and hydrological modelling, agricultural statistics, and georeferenced information on individual transnational LSLAs to evaluate emergence of water scarcity associated with LSLAs. While conditions of blue water scarcity already existed prior to land acquisitions, these deals substantially exacerbate blue water scarcity through both the adoption of water-intensive crops and the expansion of irrigated cultivation. These effects lead to new rival water uses in 105 of the 160 studied LSLAs (67% of the acquired land). Combined with our findings that investors target land with preferential access to surface and groundwater resources to support irrigation, this suggests that LSLAs often appropriate water resources to the detriment of local users. Water scarcity associated with large-scale land acquisitions is exacerbated by adoption of water-intensive crops and expansion of irrigation, which in turn increases rival water uses.

The ongoing agrarian transition from small-holder farming to large-scale commercial agriculture is reshaping systems of production and human well-being in many regions. A fundamental part of this global transition is manifested in large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) by agribusinesses. Its energy implications, however, remain poorly understood. Here, we assess the multi-dimensional changes in fossil-fuel-based energy demand resulting from this agrarian transition. We focus on LSLAs by comparing two scenarios of low-input and high-input agricultural practices, exemplifying systems of production in place before and after the agrarian transition. A shift to high-input crop production requires industrial fertilizer application, mechanization of farming practices and irrigation, which increases by ~5 times fossil-fuel-based energy consumption compared to low-input agriculture. Given the high energy and carbon footprints of LSLAs and concerns over local energy access, our analysis highlights the need for an approach that prioritizes local resource access and incorporates energy-intensity analyses in land use governance. The global agrarian transition is characterized by a rise in large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs), whose energy impacts are unknown. Here, the authors assess how LSLAs change land use, finding that they necessitate greater investment in energy to meet demands, and greater greenhouse gas emissions.

Tropical and subtropical forests and savannas support millions of forest-dependent people. These ecosystems are under rising pressure from deforestation, primarily due to agricultural expansion. Yet, a large proportion of agriculture-driven deforestation does not lead to productive land use afterwards, potentially because of speculative, halted, or abandoned land investment projects. Our understanding of such apparently failed projects, their links to deforestation, and their impact on local people, however, remains limited. Here, focusing on failed land investment projects in tropical and subtropical woodlands (i.e., forests and savannas), we aim to understand how these projects failed, how they led to deforestation, and how access to land for local communities changed after failure. We identified and reviewed cases of failed projects that led to deforestation sourced from a systematic literature review and global databases on land investments and environmental conflicts. Our results show that resistance to land investment projects was the most common determinant of failure, suggesting prevailing misalignment of investments with local needs. We identified various configurations on how failed projects are linked to woodland loss, ranging from land clearing for an eventually abandoned project to illegal timber harvesting. Most of the projects targeted areas used by local, forest-dependent communities. Despite failure, some of these communities lost access to lands in the process, indicating that even failed projects can result in land grabs. Our multi-case analysis revealed the pivotal roles played by governments, socioeconomic agendas, and investors in these complex predicaments. This emphasizes the need to learn from failed projects to reevaluate priorities in land governance, enhance government enforcement capabilities, and adopt a more inclusive and comprehensive approach that amplifies local voices and safeguards tropical and subtropical woodlands.

Societal pressure on the global land and freshwater resources is increasing as a result of the rising food demand by the growing human population, dietary changes, and the enhancement of biofuel production induced by the rising oil prices and recent changes in United States and European Union bioethanol policies. Many countries and corporations have started to acquire relatively inexpensive and productive agricultural land located in foreign countries, as evidenced by the dramatic increase in the number of transnational land deals between 2005 and 2009. Often known as “land grabbing,” this phenomenon is associated with an appropriation of freshwater resources that has never been assessed before. Here we gather land-grabbing data from multiple sources and use a hydrological model to determine the associated rates of freshwater grabbing. We find that land and water grabbing are occurring at alarming rates in all continents except Antarctica. The per capita volume of grabbed water often exceeds the water requirements for a balanced diet and would be sufficient to improve food security and abate malnourishment in the grabbed countries. It is found that about 0.31 × 10 ¹² m ³⋅y ⁻¹ of green water (i.e., rainwater) and up to 0.14 × 10 ¹² m ³⋅y ⁻¹ of blue water (i.e., irrigation water) are appropriated globally for crop and livestock production in 47 × 10 ⁶ ha of grabbed land worldwide (i.e., in 90% of the reported global grabbed land).