Land rush: simulating negotiations over land rights

LAND RUSH is a board game that allows participants to critically assess the ways in which different social classes face both opportunities and constraints in securing land rights and in managing the acquired land sustainably in an extremely competitive environment. The game illustrates three characteristics of contemporary land dynamics in an altering world. First, the logics of smallholder farmers are largely oriented towards risk diversification, and often contrast with those of current agrarian policies of most international and national policy makers, oriented towards maximal production and commercialization. Second, the rules of the game in the land arena are not uniformly defined, but are characterized by a reality of legal pluralism. Third, access to or exclusion from land is the result of a negotiation process in which actors with unequal power relations interact and compete with each other. Better-off actors have a comparative advantage in negotiations over land rights. However, poorer actors still exert agency, although in constrained ways.