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Between 2005 and 2016, the Ethiopian Government leased about 2.4 million hectares of land
for commercial agricultural investments to private domestic and foreign investors as a means
of economic growth, food security and job creation. In order to steer these vast amounts of
large-scale agricultural investments towards the envisaged benefits, it is...
Citations
... Besides local participatory mapping of the area, which generally depends on timely, independent initiatives, few tools are available to communities and CSOs for the monitoring of land use changes. In this context, the use of remote sensing and EO to spatially map and detect changes in land use provides an opportunity to obtain information on these trends and fill a serious gap in data (GIZ GmbH, 2017;Hack et al., 2016). ...
Deforestation driven by international agricultural investments and mining operations are increasing in sub-Saharan Africa, often under a cloak of secrecy. Earth observation using satellite imagery and data allows us to track and report on rates of forest loss related to land concessions and empower communities and activists with evidence to resist unjust or harmful land deals. This paper looks at two case studies on artisanal mineral mining and rubber and oil palm plantations in Cameroon to demonstrate the value of satellite imagery in land governance. It finds that earth observation can serve to increase transparency in large land deals and provide a useful tool for organisations safeguarding the environment and communities defending their land rights.
