Next week several hundred participants from across the world will gather in Cape Town for a global conversation about the politics of land and resource struggles at the Land, Life and Society conference. The event is hosted by the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape and is co-hosted by IDS through the Land Deal Politics Initiative.
This conference comes at a key moment for debates around agrarian and environmental justice. The conference presents an opportunity for scholars and students, practitioners and policymakers, activists and allies to assess the state of knowledge and define a forward-looking agenda on land and agrarian reform ahead of the International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD+20). Taking place in late February 2026 and hosted by the government of Colombia, this next ICARRD comes 20 years after the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation’s first global agrarian reform conference. The Cape Town conference aims to assess evidence and develop positions to shape this global forum.
Papers at the conference will be shared across five themes – land, oceans and fisheries, climate and environment, food and politics. Together, we will ask: what can be done to heal the frayed interconnections between people, land and nature? What can make life liveable for people, and for non-human species? How can effective climate action advance land rights and land justice, and avoid climate-induced land grabs? What types of mobilisation are required, through what new institutional arrangements and alliances, to generate agrarian and environmental justice? And finally, looking forward to ICARRD+20, what are the priority policy issues that need to be taken forward.
The ‘land redistribution initiative’, which aims to get the redistribution agenda back on the table, will present experiences of redistributive land reform from across the world – including Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, India, the Philippines, South Africa, Zimbabwe and the UK in Scotland – comparing experiences and learning lessons. Our work on Zimbabwe’s land reform after 25 years will be presented, and we are looking forward to learning from others about how land reform has fared over time, and where the future challenges lie.
As in previous LDPI co-hosted conferences, the discussions will blend academic and practical political considerations, with movement activists engaging with researchers throughout. Representatives from the La Via Campesina network and the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) will contribute to plenary debates as well as panel sessions, for example. While the focus will be on Africa, given the location of the event, generating connections across the world will be important as we look forward to ICARRD+20 next year.
It will be good to be in Cape Town both to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the founding of PLAAS at UWC, an impressive institution with a highly influential track record, and to engage in the vitally important debates at the conference. Watch out for conference reports and updates after the event!
This post was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland.
Image from land reform site in Colombia