TAINTED LANDS CORRUPTION I N LARGE-SCALE LAND DEALS
Olivier De Schutter
In recent years, there has been an unprecedented rise in the sale and leasing of large
areas of land, particularly in developing countries. The regions concerned are those
where natural resources and land suitable for agriculture, extractive activities, timber
concessions, or infrastructure projects is abundant; workforces are cheap; and access
to global markets is relatively easy. The investors in these large-scale land leases or
acquisitions—referred to as “land deals” or “land investments” throughout this report are local government and business elites, foreign investment funds, corporations, or governments of cash-rich but resource-poor countries.
This report focuses on one major driver of the adverse human rights impacts of these
increasing land investments—corruption. Corruption taints land deals in multiple
ways, most notably when investors pay bribes to public officials in exchange for
favorable land leases or acquisitions that violate the rights of local communities, elites capture the titling process through illegal means and at the expense of local land
users, or investors rely on weak rule of law or corrupt remedial schemes to deny land
users’ access to remedy.
Event: Land Governance in an Interconnected World_Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty_2018
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