From Threat to Opportunity? Problems with a “Code of Conduct” for Land-Grabbing

Jennifer Franco

Jun Borras

Yale Human Rights & Development Law Journal

April 2010

From Threat to Opportunity? Problems with a “Code of Conduct” for Land-Grabbing

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.

Download the paper - From Threat to Opportunity [PDF, 165KB]

Jennifer Franco

Co-coordinator of TNI's Agrarian Justice work.

Jennifer Franco is a researcher working on land and rural politics issues. After receiving a PhD in politics in 1997 in the US, she began working with the Philippine solidarity group in the Netherlands, and with local peasant organizations, rural community organizing and human rights groups, and research outfits in the Philippines in two regions faced with extreme landlord resistance to redistributive agrarian reform. She began working with TNI in the mid-2000s, on several projects on various topics involving local peasant movement and rural reform activists, human rights activists, and activist researchers from various countries and regions. In 2010 she joined the College of Humanities and Development (COHD) at the China Agricultural University in Beijing as an adjunct faculty and travels there twice a year to give seminars and work with junior faculty and MA and PhD students. She has lived in the US, Philippines, Canada and the Netherlands.

Jun Borras

Associate Professor in Rural Development, Environment and Population at the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague, Netherlands. Jun is also Adjunct Professor, COHD at China Agricultural University, Beijing; a Fellow for Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy in California, Coordinator for Initiatives in Critical Agrarian Studies (ICAS), and Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Peasant Studies (JPS).

Saturnino 'Jun' M Borras Jr. is a political activist and academic who has been deeply involved in rural social movements in the Philippines and internationally since the early 1980s. Borras was part of the core organising team that established the international peasant movement La Via Campesina and has written extensively on land issues and agrarian movements.