ABSTRACT

This chapter provides an introduction to the property rights approach used to create the checklist to aid in analysing large-scale land acquisition cases for water grabbing. It proposes the checklist of eight analytical patterns to connect property rights shifts in land and water. The chapter discusses two land acquisition case studies illustrate land use changes that have an impact on the water sector. It presents the value of property rights approach for systematically predicting trends in how water grabbing may accompany land grabbing. In principle, the relationship can also be thought of the other way around, starting with an investment in the water sector that grabs water and has a subsequent land grabbing effect. Attention to the patterns allows a researcher to classify the impact of land grabbing on the various rights and claims in the agricultural water sector and facilitates the comparison of cases and thus makes reliable general predictions possible.