The Global Land Grab Debate

15 June 2010

Global land grabbing has hit the media headlines and sparked fierce debate about how to both analyse the problem and possible solutions for preventing further dispossession.

Stop Land Grabbing Now
Petition by GRAIN, La Via Campesina, FIAN, GRAIN and signed by TNI
Land grabbing must be immediately stopped. The WB’s principles of "responsible investment" attempt to create the illusion that land grabbing can proceed without disastrous consequences to peoples, communities, eco-systems and the climate. This illusion is false and misleading.

Towards a Broader View of the Politics of Global Land Grabbing: Rethinking Land Issues, Reframing Resistance
Jennifer Franco & Jun Borras
June 2010
The spectre of a global land grab by foreign transnationals has captured media attention, but perhaps the bigger danger lies in the response by institutions like the World Bank. Their blindness to the international agro-industrial pressures on rural communities as well as the complex political social dynamics in rural areas are likely to entrench dispossession rather than prevent it.

Responding to Land Grabbing and Promoting Responsible Investment in Agriculture
Harold Liversage, IFAD
June 2010
Liversage, a Land Tenure Adviser for the International Fund for Agricultural Development argues that responsible investment in agriculture is possible if voluntary guidelines are backed up by an empowered civil society.

Responsibly Destroying the World’s Peasantry.
Olivier de Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food.
Certainly, agricultural investment should develop responsibly. But, while many have seen the scares provoked by spiking food prices in recent years as an opportunity for investment, opportunities should not be mistaken for solutions.

From Threat to Opportunity? Problems with a “Code of Conduct” for Land-Grabbing
Jennifer Franco and Jun Borras
Yale Human Rights & Development Law Journal, April 2010
The dominant perception of land-grabbing as a threat is being replaced by a new story line, promoted by, amongst other, the World Bank—that of new land deals as a potential opportunity for rural development. But this supposed win-win formula raises many problems, doubts and concerns.

Recent publications from Agrarian Justice

A Landmark Victory for Justice: Biowatch’s Battle with the South African State and Monsanto Published by Biowatch South Africa, this is a book about access to information, the right to know, and action in the public’s interest – a must-read for anyone campaigning for environmental or social justice.	The right to say no As European Union (EU) member states consider the implications of environmentally risky shale gas development (fracking), negotiations are underway for a controversial EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) which would grant investors the right to challenge governments’ decision to ban and regulate fracking.
Land concentration, land grabbing and people’s struggles in Europe Land grabbing is widely assumed to be happening only in the global South, but an in-depth analysis by a team of researchers shows that land grabbing is also expanding into Europe.	Sons and Daughters of the Earth In the face of violent dispossession and incorporation into an exploitative labor regime, indigenous peasant families in northern Guatemala are struggling to access land and defend their resources as the basis of their collective identity.