Join us as we welcome Jonathan Sullivan, a candidate for the Nelson Institute’s RISE-EARTH hiring initiative.
Sullivan is an assistant professor in the School of Geography, Development & Environment at the University of Arizona. Focusing on the intersection of land rights, climate hazards, and human well-being Sullivan explores how socio-political and environmental shocks give rise to new injustices and inequalities.
In his talk, Sullivan will present “Examining the Causes and Consequences of Increasing Land Consolidation and Inequality.”
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Abstract
Land and the benefits from it are unequally distributed and trends are anticipated to worsen over the course of the 21st century. The wealthiest 10% of rural populations capture approximately 60% of agricultural land value, whereas the poorest 50% capture only 3%. The implications for society and the environment of changing land distributions include food insecurity, climate change, human health, culture and identity, and concentration of resources and power. It is vital to understand how land inequality changes in response to social-environmental disturbance, such as land grabs.
Large-scale land acquisitions, often referred to as land grabs, have occurred across as much 100 million hectares in smallholder and indigenous communities globally. Do these large-scale changes in land rights represent a promising path to agricultural development and poverty reduction? On the one hand, privatization and infusions of capital may modernize production methods and thereby greater productivity and farmer incomes. On the other hand, the legal framework and negotiation of land rights favors powerful actors potentially making the distribution of benefits uneven.
I address these debates in Tanzania with three central questions:
- How do large-scale changes in land ownership affect agricultural production?
- Who benefits?
- What are the implications for inequality?
Using household survey, remote sensing, and causal inference methods, this research demonstrates that the examination of land grabs in relation to agricultural development requires greater consideration of distributional impacts. Land inequality and the implications of property rights reverberate beyond land grabs and agricultural development.
Turning to the United States, I will share future research plans that examine how insecure property rights, in the form of heirs’ property valued at $41-billion USD, represent a key axis of climate vulnerability and eventual land loss. Together, my talk shows how land inequality and changing property rights shape human-environment systems, and the need for data-driven research to inform equity-focused policy.