Dr. Logan Cochrane, associate professor at the College of Public Policy (CPP), has published a paper “Forests to the Foreigners: Large-Scale Land Acquisitions in Gabon” in MDPI open access journal Land 2021. Dr. Cochrane is the editor of its Special Issue “Land Rush in Africa”. 

Co-authored with Danielle D. Legault, Global and International Studies, Carleton University, the paper contributes new empirical data, through expert interviews, to fill a critical knowledge gap on foreign land acquisitions and forests in the Central Africa state of Gabon. The resource-rich country is home to the ecologically important Congo Rainforest system that it shares with its neighbors. 

Dr. Cochrane situates Gabon’s historic relationship with land, establishing the intrinsic relationship between colonial land tenure systems and present-day land rights. The findings analyze the macro context of investors and investments, as well as the impacts related to rural-urban linkages and infrastructure development into the forests, civil society, human-environment relationships, and certification programs.

“Forests to the Foreigners: Large-Scale Land Acquisitions in Gabon” can be downloaded as an open access article at https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/10/4/420