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Views that protected area (PA) expansion relies predominantly on land purchased by government are increasingly being challenged. The inclusion of privately owned PAs (PPAs) in national conservation strategies is now commonplace, but little is known about their long‐term persistence and how it compares to that of state‐owned PAs. We undertook the first long‐term assessment of the dynamics of a national system of terrestrial PPAs, assessing its growth, as well as its resilience to downgrading, downsizing, and degazettement (PADDD). Between 1926 and 2018, 6.2% of all private nature reserves established in South Africa were degazetted, compared to 2.2% of state‐owned nature reserves. Privately owned PA growth exceeded that of state‐owned PAs. Trends in PA establishment differed between privately owned and state‐owned PAs, reflecting different legislative, political, and economic events. Our findings highlight the value of enabling legislative environments to facilitate PPA establishment, and demonstrate the potential of PPAs as a long‐term conservation strategy.

Until now, most policy recommendations put forward to deal with the possible negative impacts of large-scale land acquisitions are either directed towards the legal recognition and formalization of land rights in order to secure the rights of historical land holders or the design and implementation of “voluntary” guidelines and codes of conduct that promote positive development outcomes of large-scale land investments. This paper argues that these types of recommendations tend to depoliticize the debate around access to land and natural resources, whether at local, national and international levels. This paper looks to bring this political dimension back by proposing an analytical framework in line with the legal pluralist tradition. From a legal pluralistic analysis of the process of land deals in Ethiopia, this paper finds out that socio-cultural identity and power structures, rather than market and regulatory failure alone, play a fundamental role in redirecting negotiations and determining losers and winners from such deals. With the above finding, this paper finally suggests that blueprint international standards or investment regulatory measures cannot be used as a panacea and that solutions need to be more profound than such conventional approach.

This article builds on the literature on property rights and associational life in Latin America during and after transitions to democracy by assessing participation in voluntary associations as a determinant of land title. It uses survey data collected from rural properties near Santarém, Para, to describe who participates in voluntary associations and, more important, whether participation in specific groups is aligned with possessing secure title, an important scarce resource in the Brazilian Amazon. This quantitative analysis shows that owners who participate in one union with state-controlled, corporatist roots are more likely to possess secure title to their land than those who do not participate. This systematic variation is important in an era of soy expansion, with a shift from small-scale subsistence farming to large-scale mechanized agricultural a subsequent increase in land value. Este artigo se baseia na literature acadêmica sobre os direitos de propriedade e o associativismo na América Latina durante e após as transições democráticas. O artigo avalia a participação em associações voluntárias como urna determinante de posse de títulos de terra. Utilizando dados de survey sobre propriedades rurais nos arredores de Santarém, Pará, descreve quem participa em associações voluntárias e, principalmente, visando determinar se a participação em grupos específicos é relacionada com a posse de títulos de terra, um recurso importante e escasso na Amazônia brasileira. Essa análise quantitativa mostra que proprietários que participam de sindicatos com origens corporativistas e controladas pelo estado têm maior probabilidade de possuir os títulos de suas terras do que os proprietários que não participam. Essa variação sistemática é relevante no contexto amazônico de expansão da soja, da transição de uma agricultura de subsistência para a agricultura mecanizada de larga escala, e do aumento subséquente do valor da terra.

The curtailment of irrigation on the Klamath Reclamation Project in 2001 is estimated to have cost farmers more than $35 million. This study examines how alternative water allocations among irrigators in the Upper Klamath Basin could have lowered those costs. Per acre marginal water values vary by a factor of 20 due primarily to variations in soil productivity, with the highest productivity lands concentrated in the federal Project. A linear programming model estimates costs for alternative allocations. Findings indicate that compared to the 2001 allocation, costs could be reduced by 75% with a market-based approach.

The survey results from a study designed to examine the supply response of rural landowners within a hypothetical development rights program are presented. The data used was from a survey of 22 agricultural landowners in the town of Hadley, Massachusetts. The supply of land and socio-economic factors which might explain a particular landowner's reservation price is also investigated. In a voluntary transfer development rights program or a purchase development rights program, the supply response of owners of development rights will depend on such socioeconomic factors as expected development value, variance of development value, residual agricultural use value, the age of the landowner, and the land use intentions of prospective heirs. Another finding was that there was a close relationship between the difference in expected market value and agricultural use value and development right reservation price. There was evidence to suggest that the reservation price increased as the landowner moved toward retirement age.