From Land to Water Grabbing : A Property Rights Perspective on Linked Natural Resources

Recently, studies focused on the effects of large-scale land acquisitions on the local agricultural water sectors have multiplied, yet a conceptual framework designed to disentangle the interlinkages across natural resource systems is missing. To fill this gap, we suggest a property rights perspective, and provide eight patterns that depict the relationships between land- and water-related bundles of formal property rights and perceived claims of involved actors. These eight patterns allow a more systematic comparison of case studies. We apply it to two cases. In Ethiopia, the use pattern and the governance pattern are most crucial in describing the inter-sectoral links triggered by a flower farm investment. In the Tajikistan example – a Chinese land acquisition to produce rice – the most important patterns explaining the changes in property rights and claims for agricultural water use are the infrastructure and land use patterns. The empirical application shows how individual bundles of property rights and claims create disadvantages for certain actors and can serve to reveal a water-grabbing phenomenon. Using the patterns approach facilitates the understanding of the social role property rights play, and identifies important dimensions within social-ecological complexity