The Land System Governance Lab examines how institutions, markets, states, communities, and changing patterns of access to and control over land shape land-system transformations. Our research spans local livelihoods to global supply chains, linking environmental sustainability with social and economic development.
01 | Land Control & Global Land Transformations
This theme examines how land transactions, tenure change, and expanding commodity frontiers reshape relationships among land, livelihoods, and ecosystems. We study the drivers and governance of large-scale land acquisitions, the distributional consequences of land-use change, and the environmental outcomes of changing patterns of land control. Our work combines spatial analysis, network approaches, and comparative field research to understand how states, investors, and local communities negotiate access to land and how these processes shape food security, inequality, and environmental sustainability. By linking local land-use decisions to broader investment and commodity networks, we seek to explain when land transformations generate development opportunities and when they reproduce social and ecological risks.
02 | Agrifood System Change
This theme examines how agricultural and pastoral systems respond to environmental, economic, and institutional change. We study how farmers, herders, households, and communities adapt livelihoods and resource-use strategies under shifting climatic and market conditions, and how institutions and collective action shape those responses. Our work spans crop switching, food-system innovation, pastoral mobility, and dryland sustainability, using household and community studies, spatial analysis, and comparative research across regions. We are particularly interested in when adaptation improves resilience and livelihoods, when it produces new vulnerabilities or inequalities, and how governance can support more sustainable and equitable agrifood systems.
03 | Sustainability Transitions
This theme examines how sustainability interventions—such as biofuels, circular nutrient systems, carbon markets, renewable energy, and other land-based solutions—reshape resource demands, institutions, and the distribution of benefits and costs. We study how new technologies, markets, and policies interact with existing land systems and governance arrangements, and why transitions that appear environmentally beneficial can produce uneven social and spatial outcomes. Our work combines comparative, spatial, and institutional analysis to understand when sustainability transitions reduce environmental pressures, when they shift burdens elsewhere, and how governance can support more equitable and effective pathways toward low-carbon, circular, and nature-positive economies.