​The Global Land Rush: A Socio-Environmental Synthesis

This project conducts an integrated global synthesis of large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs), a growing phenomenon in the global South as governments and transnational investors seek to secure access to land in developing countries to produce food, bio-fuels, and non-agricultural commodities. Distant connections between land systems are not new, but rising evidence indicates that such cross-scaled telecoupled socio-economic and environmental interactions as a result of LSLAs have grown stronger, with more rapid feedbacks.  Consequences of LSLAs vary widely across the globe, ranging from land improvement and creation of new livelihood opportunities to land degradation and dispossession of land from local inhabitants. Thus far, we have conducted field work and/or data synthesis for LSLAs in Cambodia, Argentina, and Laos PDR.
Reasearch Team
Senior Personnel: Ariane de Bremond (University of Maryland/University of Bern, PI), Nicholas R. Magliocca (UA, co-I), Evan Ellicott (University of Maryland, co-I)
Student Researchers: Alaina Makowski, Kate Pitts
Funding: NASA Land Cover Land-Use Change (LCLCU)  ​NNX17AI15G (2017-2021)
Publications

• ​Magliocca, N.R., Khuc, Q.V., de Bremond, A., Ellicott, E. (2019). Archetypical pathways of direct and indirect land-use change caused by Cambodia's large-scale land acquisitions. Ecology & Society, 24(2): 25. [online] URL: https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol24/iss2/art25/.
• Magliocca, N.R., Khuc, Q.V., de Bremond, A., Ellicott, E.A. (2020). Direct and indirect land-use change caused by large-scale land acquisitions in Cambodia. Environmental Research Letters. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab6397.
• Magliocca, N.R., de Bremond, A., Ellicott, E., Seghezzo, L., Venecia*, C.D., Moscario*, M.J., Nolte, C. (accepted). Two of a kind? Large-scale land acquisitions and commodity frontier expansion in Argentina’s Dry Chaco. Ecology & Society.
  

---