Pushing accountability boundaries for transnational land investments

Abstract

Land deals worldwide persist in reinforcing the dispossession of traditional communities, facilitating the transfer of public lands to private entities, and contributing to violence. Land control remains opaque and financial capital shows a growing interest in land as an ‘alternative asset’. A prevailing trend in land investments is the anonymity of ultimate beneficiaries and major investors within these corporate and financial firms. Merging observations on land investments from the Land Matrix with information on shareholding structures from the Orbis database, we uncloud the nature of investors and relate the type of investors with their respective impacts on human rights and environmental change.