This field-redefining book puts land redistribution back on the map as a route for addressing deep inequalities in development, promoting improved livelihoods, and ensuring better environmental protection.

Written by a world-leading team of scholars, practitioners, policymakers, and activists, all hailing from the regions they discuss, Redistributive Land Reform Revisited compares land reform experiences in eight countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe. Each case study is based on longitudinal research covering economic, political, and environmental impacts over 30 to 40 years. By examining global land reform experiences, the book contributes to future policies that promote economic development, equity, and social justice.

Written in a style accessible to researchers, policymakers, and practitioners and activists alike, this book is a must-read for anyone seriously concerned with how informed land reform policies can lead to more socially and environmentally sustainable development.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the International Institute of Social Studies.

Ian Scoones is a professor at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, UK. Taking an interdisciplinary perspective to land, agriculture and livelihoods, he has worked on issues of environmental and agrarian change in Zimbabwe since 1985. He was the co-director of the ESRC STEPS Centre focusing on the politics of sustainability and was principal investigator of the ERC Advanced Grant funded PASTRES project, which explored pastoralism and uncertainty across three continents.

Saturnino M. Borras Jr. is Professor of Agrarian Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR), the Netherlands. He is a member of the distinguished Erasmus Professor Program at EUR, Distinguished Professor at China Agricultural University in Beijing, and an associate of the Transnational Institute. He was Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Peasant Studies for fifteen years, until 2023.

Ruth Hall is a full professor and is the acting director at the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, South Africa. Ruth is editor of the Journal of Peasant Studies. She has co-founded several regional and global research networks: the Land Deal Politics Initiative (LDPI), the BRICS Initiative in Critical Agrarian Studies (BICAS), the Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative (ERPI), and the Network of Excellence on Land Governance in Africa (NELGA).

Wendy Wolford is Robert A. and Ruth E. Polson Professor of Global Development in the Department of Global Development and Vice Provost for International Affairs at Cornell University, Ithaca, USA. Her research includes work on international development, land use and distribution, social mobilization, agrarian societies and critical ethnography, including in Brazil.