Issue

Land and Property Rights

Across the globe, rising demand for food, energy and natural resources such as timber, water, and minerals, has created enormous pressures on land— and access to it. Vast tracts of land are being snatched up by both public and private investors; most frequently in low-income and middle-income countries. The impact of these often secretive land deals on local communities is huge.

In frontier markets, where property rights are weak, unclear, or poorly governed, there is an increased likelihood of corruption, human rights abuses, conflict over resources, and environmental degradation. And it is often the most vulnerable groups, including minorities, indigenous people, the poor, and women, who bear the brunt of the problems created by poor land governance.

To investigate this growing crisis, Pulitzer Center-funded journalists are following stories that will increase transparency about land deals, expose weak land governance systems, and highlight the risks to stakeholders who invest in bad land deals. Their reporting illuminates fresh, new approaches to securing land rights that might promote, rather than erode, local development priorities.

The Pulitzer Center’s reporting on land rights issues is made possible through the support of the Omidyar Network's Property Rights Initiative, American Jewish World Service, the Kendeda Fund, and other Pulitzer Center donors.

 

 

 

 

Land and Property Rights

The Next Yellowstone

Are the super rich better equipped than the federal government to save America's disappearing wildlands?

Land, Logs, and Blood

The stateless south of the Brazilian Amazon is the theatre for the explosive combination between unbridled land-grabbing and massive illegal logging.

Dominion: Land Grab in the Name of Conservation

Land reform, or sleight of hand? Who benefited from the multimillion-dollar MalaMala deal in greater Kruger National Park? Oxpeckers Investigative Environmental Journalism follows the money trail of South Africa's most expensive land settlement.

Meet the Journalist: Estacio Valoi

Oxpeckers Investigative Environmental Journalism's Estacio Valoi discusses Kruger's contested borderlands and how he overcame the challenges of reporting in a remote zone by using new media tools.