Miscellaneous Knowledge Notes
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Publication
Introduction to Responsible Agricultural Investment
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-03)The United Nation Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) - World Bank knowledge into action note series is a compendium of practical, thematic guidance documents for use by governments, investors, and other stakeholders in the implementation of responsible agricultural investment principles. This document provides background to the knowledge into action note series and the underlying research; it also explains the logic, structure, and sequence of the notes, and suggests some guidance for their use. -
Publication
Respecting Land Rights and Averting Land Disputes
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-03-01)This note provides guidance on how to ensure that agricultural investments respect existing land rights, both formal and informal, and thereby avert land disputes. Failure to respect land rights - in particular country - or region-specific land tenure systems and history, including use by pastoralists - has negative consequences for communities and other stakeholders. It is also financially damaging for investors who shortcut due process and end up spending time and money dealing with land disputes. -
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Outgrower Schemes
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-03)This note provides guidance on the design and implementation of outgrower schemes to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes for investors and smallholders. Outgrower schemes have gained prominence as a business model that can benefit both smallholders and investors. Such schemes can improve smallholders’ access to markets, finance, infrastructure, and improved growing techniques; can enhance investors’ access to land, labor, and quality produce; and can improve investor-community relations. Associated risks include overdependency, exploitation of power differences, entrenchment of inequalities, lower-than-expected production, and side-selling. Achieving the potential benefits and minimizing the associated risks requires careful design and implementation. -
Publication
Monitoring Investments
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-03)This note provides guidance on how to monitor the performance and impact of agricultural investments, and on which aspects to observe. Ongoing monitoring of investments is a key way to hold investors accountable for contractual commitments and deliver the expected benefits to the country and surrounding communities. It also facilitates early identification of emerging negative impacts or of failing investments, enabling remedial actions. Monitoring is often deficient because of a lack of resources and systematic procedures, which allows negative impacts to escalate beyond what will otherwise be the case. Internal monitoring is likewise good practice for investors and their financiers, though the field research indicated room for improvement. -
Publication
Food Security and Nutrition
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-03)This note provides guidance on how to ensure tan agricultural investment makes a positive contribution to local and national food security and nutrition. Investments can play a critical role by introducing technologies to increase productivity, by providing demonstration effects, by creating quality jobs, by catalyzing modernization of the sector, and by linking small-scale producers with global markets—all of which, in the right circumstances, contribute to food securityand nutrition. Yet, investments can have a negative impact and be detrimental to food security and nutrition, especially where investments reduce local access to land and water. The challenge for policymakers and investors is how to design policy and business models that maximize the positive benefits to food security and nutrition but minimize the associated risks. -
Publication
Public Transparency
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-03)This note provides guidance on the type of information about agricultural investments that investors and governments can make publicly available. Transparency about certain aspects of investments can improve relations between investors and communities, enable external stakeholders to hold investors to commitments, and improve investors’ public image. Although some information should be kept private to protect commercial interests, in general the amount of publicly available information is insufficient for transparent, accountable conduct of agricultural investments. This has often led to fear, mistrust, and resentment, and created operational and financial difficulties for investors. Some investors and governments have recently shifted toward a more transparent approach, but the risk of misuse of information needs to be managed. -
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Relocation and Resettlement
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-03)This note provides guidance on approaches to relocation and resettlement of people. Although resettlement is ideally avoided, the complexities of unclear, unrecognized, informal, and overlapping land claims in many areas means that it is an issue that investors and governments often need to address. Field research suggests room for improvement in processes and outcomes where resettlement had been undertaken. Critical factors for success included how resettled people perceived that their living situations had changed after resettlement, which includes compensation, access to livelihood opportunities, and social services. Also important was the extent to which people were consulted, where involved in decision making, and had access to grievance mechanisms. -
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Empowering Women
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-03)This note addresses practices for reducing gender inequalities and for empowering women to make a positive contribution to development through agricultural investments. Women make a crucial contribution to the agriculture sector and account for over 40 percent of agricultural labor in developing countries. However, they are frequently marginalized and their contributions under-acknowledged. Agricultural investments may perpetuate or accentuate gender inequalities if proactive gender policies are not adopted. There are significant economic and social gains to be had from closing the gender gap in agriculture. This note provides investors and governments with guidance on how to do so. -
Publication
Water Access and Management
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-03)This note provides guidance on how to ensure that the impact of agricultural investments on water resources is effectively measured, monitored, and regulated. Water is essential to agricultural production and processing, and has been a driving factor in private and public decisions on where to locate investments. Despite global concerns about water scarcity and pollution, the water use of agricultural investments is in many cases not rigorously measured, monitored, or regulated. Where regulations exist, enforcement is often weak. Some investors improve local water access with community development programs, but such schemes require consultation and careful management. -
Publication
Environmental and Social Impact Assessments
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-03)This note provides guidance on the conduct of environmental and social impact assessments (ESIAs) and the implementation of associated environmental and social management plans (ESMPs). Crop and livestock production, forestry, fisheries, and aquaculture all depend on the use of land, water, and other natural resources that are inextricably linked to rural livelihoods, social systems, values, and culture. ESIAs and ESMPs are key tools for identifying and assessing social and environmental risks and benefits at the planning stage of an investment, and for building risk mitigation measures into project design and implementation. Although usually legislative requirements, too often they have been treated as box-ticking exercises. There remainssignificant room for improvement in the conduct of assessment and the rigor with which findings are incorporated into management plans.