Rural livelihoods in a context of the global land rush

In this chapter, we argue that the sustainable livelihood framework will help to better grasp developmental impacts of the global land rush. The trend of the global land rush involving foreign and domestic investments started in the late 2000s, leading to large scale transformations of rural landscapes and livelihoods. Existing impact assessments often stop at the level of local communities and tend to overlook agency of individuals and diversity of rural livelihoods. In order to explore possibilities of linking large scale land investments and inclusive development (leave no one behind), it is important to look 'under the radar': a more holistic and agency-oriented assessment of people's livelihoods is necessary as a starting point. This is not only to clarify how people become vulnerable in the first place to such an extent that they are negatively impacted by the investments, but also to understand people's capacities to cope with the vulnerability and to generate an alternative agenda both on their own and in collaboration with investors.