Miscellaneous Knowledge Notes
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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. -
Publication
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
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. -
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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. -
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. -
Publication
Community Engagement Strategies
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-03)This note provides guidance on the overall approach to consulting, engaging, and partnering with local communities, to bridge gaps in information and expectation between communities and investors and create the social license to operate. Engaging with local communities and other stakeholders is both socially responsible and a business imperative; investors that are well integrated with the local community are more likely to be financially successful. Effective engagement is necessary across all phases of the investment project, from the initial mapping, consultations withcommunities, and contract negotiations to the establishment of a grievance mechanism, ongoing community dialogue, and monitoring of both environmental and social impacts. Aligning the expectations and understanding of investors and communities creates the necessary environment for mutual benefit. -
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Investment Contracts
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-03)This note provides guidance on the form and content of contracts between investors and governments pertaining to agricultural investments. The best guarantee of positive benefits from foreign investment is a solid foundation of domestic laws that are properly enforced. In many developing countries, however, the necessary domestic laws may not be in place or may not be sufficiently detailed. Even when they are in place, they may not be implemented or enforced. Contracts can help fill the gaps in domestic laws by providing more detailed guidance on what should be contained in the assessments, and using international standards and best practice as the reference points. However, contracts need to be drafted carefully to maximize benefits and reduce risks. -
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Additional Resources
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-03)This document provides introduction by providing overall guidance on the use of terms and abbreviations across the entire notes series. Common overarching principles on responsible agricultural investment which underlie the approach and tenor of the series are also introduced. Note 2 complements others in the series by offering additional resources over and above those provided in each of them. -
Publication
Choosing Appropriate Business Models
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-03)This note provides guidance on considerations in the selection of an appropriate business model through which to conduct an agricultural investment. Agricultural investments have a wide range of impacts, positive and negative. The choice of business model is one, but by no means the only, determining factor of the financial success of the investment, as well as its socioeconomic and environmental impacts on the economy and local communities. This note outlines the general types of models available and the considerations for selecting and or designing a blended model to suit the context of the investment. -
Publication
Tools for Screening Prospective Investors
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-03)This note supplements note 6: screening prospective investors. The investment screening process requires suitable tools for assisting government agencies in their work. This note provides examples of tools that government agencies can adapt to their national context and use to develop the technical capacity to screen and select investors.