Large-scale land deals are among the most challenging development issues of today. They have attracted considerable attention for various reasons, including their implications for environmental justice and changes in local livelihoods. This phenomenon, also known as "land grabbing," is a significant driver of environmental change globally and, locally, it prompts a substantial reconfiguration of access to land and land-based social relations. While proponents frame the phenomena as a development opportunity, encompassing improvement in the livelihoods of local people, opponents counter-frame it as an impoverishing scheme. In Ethiopia, which is a primary target for large-scale land acquisitions, land is a major resource for state control and foreign direct investment. As the foundation of their livelihoods and anchor of their identity, it is simultaneously a vital resource for the local people. Many studies have indicated the adverse consequences of large-scale land transfers in terms of both procedural imperatives and outcome indicators. However, there is limited research that compares its processes and outcomes among countries characterized by different political histories, land policies, and state-society relations. In order to address this knowledge gap, this study attempts to answer questions of procedural justice (process) and distributive justice (outcome). Procedural justice is operationalized through the concepts of recognition, representation, and participation, whereas distributive justice relates to the (re)distribution of environmental benefits and burdens among stakeholders. The study applies a political-ecological approach as the overarching theoretical framework, complemented by analytical insights derived from recent advances in environmental justice conceptualizations. Methodologically, it will adopt a mixed-methods approach, involving the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods for data collection and analysis. Based on empirical evidence and contextualizing the local livelihood dynamics within broader structural and political-economic conditions, this study contributes to the ongoing debate on livelihood impacts and environmental justice implications of transnational land acquisitions.

The primary aim of the research is to analyze the effects of environmental change on vulnerable communities, and to suggest means of coping with this by way of co-management, bearing in mind the underlying power relations involved.

Scientific assessments and politics addressing environmental changes rarely involve local residents and their knowledge. Usually reasons of demographic growth and environmental mismanagement are used to justify local degradation; however, our aim is to understand the local perspective about causes and reasons of the degradation that causes insecurity, livelihood changes, migration trends and other decisions that bring into further environmental degradation. An ethnographic research has been conducted in two catchments of Taita Hills, South-East Kenya. Participatory mapping, observation, transect walks, historical timelines, semi-structured interviews with experts and civil society representatives, as well as focus groups were employed as main methods of data gathering.

UTU Geography Section has been working in Tanzania since 2003 with Tanzanian and international partners. Our collaborative research topics are broadly related to the analysis of human-nature dynamics with landscape and geospatial approaches. We link our research efforts with education in Geography and Landscape Science, Geographical Information Systems (GIS), Remote Sensing, Participatory GIS and Landscape Management. We collaborate with our partners in developing better spatial tools, methods and practices of sustainable landscape management and use and preservation of natural resources.

In Latin America indigenous peoples have turned into significant political actors. This project examines how the new forms of indigenous leaderships connect to the questions of power, and consider how they are interpreted from a native point of view. The studied groups are two Arawak-speaking groups living in Western Amazonia, Brazil. In looking at the way these two groups view their spokespeople and create new political, cultural, and economic partnerships, the aim is to explore the Amerindian way of producing different bodies, authority, and agency. The research also addresses historical changes of leadership as part of other social and political processes in the past and present. The main research questions are the following: 1) What are the new forms of leadership in Amazonian native communities? 2) How can acting in new interethnic networks be understood as a new type of human-to-human relation in Amazonian sociocosmology? 3) How have social roles hold by the young indigenous people changed their communities? 4) What are the differences between young female and male native leaders? 5) How have Amazonian leaderships changed taking into account environmental changes, economic, political, social, and legal processes?