Towards a Broader View of the Politics of Global Land Grabbing
Rethinking Land Issues, Reframing Resistance
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, whose supposedly ameliorative measures are likely to entrench dispossession rather than prevent it.
Abstract
The phrase ‘global land grab’ has become a catch-all framework to describe and analyze the current explosion of (trans)national commercial land transactions related to the production and sale of food and biofuels. Initially deployed and popularised by activist groups opposed to such transactions from an environmental and agrarian justice perspectives, the significance of the phrase has quickly moved beyond its original moorings, as it gets absorbed into mainstream development currents that push for ‘win-win’ arrangements and a ‘code of conduct’, which is critically examined in this paper.
The remainder of our discussion concerns the political dynamics of changes in and struggles over land use and land property relations in the context of contemporary (trans)national land deals that target, principally though not solely, ‘non-private’ lands. We argue that the political dynamics around land are further exposing the inappropriateness of the aggressively promoted mainstream ‘toolkit’ of ‘land governance’. And while we agree with much of the radical critique of the global land rush that it is likely to lead to massive enclosure and dispossession, we also raise the need for nuanced analysis (e.g. more class analysis) and careful empirical inquiry (e.g. less speculation).
We then consider the possibilities of an alternative perspective, which for lack of a better term, we call here ‘land sovereignty’, as a potentially more inclusive and relevant conceptual, political and methodological framework.
About the authors
Jennifer Franco
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
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. Jun is also Adjunct Professor, COHD at China Agricultural University, Beijing; a Fellow for Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy in California and Coordinator for Initiatives in Critical Agrarian Studies (ICAS).
Recent publications from Agrarian Justice
A Landmark Victory for Justice: Biowatch’s Battle with the South African State and MonsantoPublished 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 noAs 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 EuropeLand 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 EarthIn 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. |
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