Over the past few years, large-scale acquisition of land by foreign or domestic firms, be they public or private, have been making headlines. But although these “land grabs” have received a great deal of attention, their details remain largely unknown. Which countries are the primary investors? Which are the main targets? What is the land used for?

Last month, Oxfam made an extraordinary request. It asked the World Bank to freeze its investments in agricultural land.

At a time when urbanization and growing service industries are bringing great neglect to agricultural sectors across much of the developing world, why would Oxfam want the World Bank to suspend its generous levels of agricultural funding?

The fault line between nomadic pastoralists and sedentary agriculturalists in sub-Saharan Africa has emerged as one of the most dominant stories of climate-related conflict. But according to Edna Wangui, a professor at Ohio University who studies communities in Kenya and Tanzania, pastoralism is different from many people’s perceptions.

“It’s always important when working in policy to consider what we can do beyond conception and look at more implementation,” said Valerie Stahl of New York University at the Wilson Center last month.

Stahl was one of three graduate students presenting their winning papers for an annual academic paper competition, “Reducing Urban Poverty,” co-sponsored by the Wilson Center, USAID, International Housing Coalition, Cities Alliance, and the World Bank. This year’s competition was the third in an effort to better link new academic work on urban issues to actual policymaking. [Video Below]

The original version of this article, by Lydia Polgreen, appeared on The New York Times.

When Augusto Conselho Chachoka and his neighbors heard that the world’s biggest coal mine was to be built on their land, a tantalizing new future floated before them. Instead of scraping by as subsistence farmers, they would earn wages as miners, they thought. The mining company would build them sturdy new houses, it seemed. Finally, a slice of the wealth that has propelled Mozambique from its war-addled past to its newfound status as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies would be theirs.

Across India, where I live and work, I can clearly see the connection between land rights and peace and security.

With respect to personal safety and security: 12 percent of all murders here are related to conflicts over land.

On a provincial level: few weeks go by without newspapers here reporting on violence between communities who are battling over land.

The water-energy-food nexus seems to be garnering more and more attention in the media and elsewhere, and it’s easy to see why: it’s a relatively simple way to illustrate how interconnected the world is today and the kind of domino-like effects that scarcity can have.

Eight years from now, the Gaza Strip will have “virtually no reliable access to sources of safe drinking water, standards of healthcare and education will have continued to decline, and the vision of affordable and reliable electricity for all will have become a distant memory for most,” according to a United Nations report released last month. The bleak assessment concludes that without immediate action to address immense and interconnected economic, demographic, environmental, infrastructure, and social challenges facing Gazans, “the already high number of poor, marginalized and food-insecure people depending on assistance will not have changed, and in all likelihood will have increased.”