Abstract:
Available empirical evidence about the impacts of large-scale agricultural investments (LAIs)
in low-income countries is skewed towards the assessment of economic benefits. How LAIs
affect land use and the environment is less understood. This study assesses how small-scale
farmers living close to an LAI perceive the changes LAI's inflict on land use, land management,
and tree cover in Kenya, Mozambique, and Madagascar. It also investigates their
perceptions regarding LAI's impacts on the general environment and people's health, as
well as on employment opportunities, infrastructure, and conflicts. 271 small-scale farmers
were interviewed and their perceptions supported by a remote-sensing-based analysis of
land use and land cover changes. Results show that LAIs contributed both directly and
indirectly to deforestation in Mozambique, triggered changes in small-scale farmers’ agricultural
land management in Kenya, and caused pastoralists to lose access to grazing land in
Madagascar. Despite some benefits from employment opportunities and infrastructure
improvement, the majority of respondents perceived the overall impacts of LAIs as negative,
highlighting reduced access to land and water, pollution, health issues, and unsatisfactory
working conditions. We urgently need to invest in devising concrete transformative options
to improve LAIs’ contribution to sustainable development in their host countries.
Description:
The research for this publication was conducted as part of the BELMONT Forum and FACCE–JPI project “African Food, Agriculture, Land and Natural Resource Dynamics, in the context of global agro-food-energy system changes (AFGROLAND)”.
