Sweden

A new Swedwatch report shows a lack of transparency and inadequate auditing of ethics and environmental impacts in AP2’s investment in farmland in Brazil. For business reasons, the investment is surrounded by a high level of secrecy, which makes scrutiny from the outside impossible.

Mats Widgren provides an update on a Swedish company's land grab for sugar cane production in Tanzania.

"I’ve put together a table with what I think are the main Swedish land investments in Russia and Ukraine," writes Brian Kuns. "In doing this, I ran into some of the known difficulties associated with monitoring the phenomenon of large-scale land-acquisition."

Bagamoyo villagers are up in arms over the government supporting an investor they accuse of grabbing about 6,000 hectares of their land in the district.

In New Zealand, an opposition party is demanding hard figures on how much farmland is owned by foreigners, but the government says it can't produce the figures.

The 16,000-hectare farm which Första AP-fonden bought in Australia in December was one of a clutch of purchases of farmland, worth some $100m, by the pension fund.

Major asset managers, cowed by the cost, the risk and the controversy involved in investing in farmland, are joining forces to increase investment in the historically under-capitalised sector.

Executive summary of Swedwatch's report on the Swedfund-supported Addax Bioenergy project in Sierra Leone

“In the very short term land will became scarcest for Mozambicans because the government is attracting foreign investors arguing that we have huge unused land“, a spokesperson for UNAC told IPS. “What happens, in fact, when investors come, their appetite is centered on land already being used by locals.”

Sweden's second buffer fund hopes to increase its agricultural and timberland investments beyond the current 10% strategic benchmark for real estate, the fund's chief investment strategist has told IPE

Land grabbing i fattiga länder har ökat dramatiskt under senare år. Det visar den nya rapporten ”The race for land” som Forum Syd, Afrikagrupperna och Kooperation Utan Gränser lanserade i december.

This report from Afrika Grupperna, Forum Syd and Swedish Cooperative Centre examines different drivers behind the recent escalation of land deals as well as common arguments legitimating land grabbing, looking at case studies from Cambodia and Mozambique.