Land grab or development opportunity? International farmland deals in Africa

This perspective discusses the increasing number and size of large-scale farmland acquisitions in Africa by foreign investors over the past five years, including the opportunities and risks created by this trend

UN FORUM SERIES – business and human rights in investment treaties: what progress?

This post was contributed by Lorenzo Cotula, who leads the International Institute for Environment and Development’s work on Legal Tools for Citizen Empowerment. On 16-18 November, hundreds of delegates from government, business, NGOs and social movements will be in Geneva for the United Nations Forum on Business and Human Rights. The forum will provide an opportunity to take stock of progress made with implementing the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights

Water Rights, Poverty and Inequality: The Case of Dryland Africa

human development, water, sanitation

Between promising advances and deepening concerns: A bottom-up review of trends in land governance 2015–2018

An evolving land governance context compounds the case for practitioners to closely track developments as they unfold. While much research sheds light on key trends, questions remain about approaches for collective bottom-up analysis led by land governance practitioners themselves. This study presents findings from an initiative to test such an approach. Drawing on written submissions made in response to an open call for contributions, the study discusses global trends in land governance over the period 2015–2018. While not a comprehensive review nor a replacement for empirically grounded research, the study highlights some of the developments practitioners grapple with in their work. The findings point to the contrasting local-to-global trends that affect land governance in diverse agro-ecological and socio-economic settings: Growing commercial pressures on land, and shrinking spaces for dissent in many contexts, coexist with new avenues for public participation in land governance processes; while diverse approaches to securing land rights, whether individual or collective, possibly underpinned by new deployments of digital technology, can coexist or compete for policy traction within the same polity. This bottom-up trends analysis broadly correlates with available accounts based on empirical research, while also providing distinctive emphases that reflect the ways practitioners perceive the changing realities they are engaged with

Chapter 6 The right to land

"This is the first book to address and review The Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in December 2018. Food security and sustainable agri-food systems, responsible governance of natural resources, and human rights are among the key themes of the new millennium. The Declaration is the first internationally negotiated instrument bridging these issues, calling for a radical paradigm change in the agricultural sector while giving voice to peasants and rural workers, recognized as the drivers of more equitable and resilient food systems. The book unfolds the impact of the Declaration in the wider realm of law and policymaking, especially concerning the new human rights standards related to access and control of natural resources and the governance of food systems. Chapters touch on a broad array of topics, including women’s rights, the role of and impact on indigenous peoples, food sovereignty, climate change, land tenure and agrobiodiversity. Voices from outstanding scholars and practitioners are gathered together to inform and trigger a further debate on the negotiation process, the innovative and potentially disruptive contents, the relations with other fields of law, and the practical scope of the Declaration. The volume concludes with a collection of case studies which provide concrete examples to help us understand the potential impacts of the Declaration at regional, national and local levels. This book is the first comprehensive tool to navigate the Declaration and is designed for students, researchers and practitioners in the fields of food and agriculture law, peasant, agrarian and rural studies, human rights and environmental law, and international development and cooperation.

Law at two speeds: Legal frameworks regulating foreign investment in the global South

The global legal system regulating foreign investment in lower-income countries is more geared towards enabling secure transnational investment flows than it is towards ensuring that these flows benefit people in recipient countries. There is a need to improve national and international law safeguards for rights that may be affected by investment flows, and to strengthen local capacity to exercise those rights and get a better deal from incoming investment

南半球国际投资的法律构架

低收入国家的外国投资的全球法律制度监管，更面向启用安全的跨国投资流动，而不是朝着这些受援国的受益人流动。作者认为有必要改进国家和国际法律保障下的易被投资流动所影响权利，同时也要加强地方政府的权利来确保这些权力的实施，并从未来的投资中获得更大的收益

Beyond Trade Deals: Charting a Post-Brexit Course for UK Investment Treaties

The Brexit referendum has raised questions about the future terms of the United Kingdom’s engagement with the world economy. While a debate over the UK’s future approach to trade deals has already begun, a similar discussion has yet to develop on the treaties that govern foreign investment. As this briefing note by Lorenzo Cotula of the International Institute for Environment and Development, and Lise Johnson of CCSI highlights, the stakes are high: ill-designed treaties could leave the UK excessively exposed to legal claims by foreign companies and could fail to address relevant economic, social and environmental challenges. While meaningful negotiations are unlikely to start until the new relationship between the UK and the EU has been clarified, now would be a good time for a policy review to define a new approach. The government, parliament and the public have an important role to play in positioning the UK as a global innovator in investment treaty policy

Trade with Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific : the UK’s economic partnership agreements

While in Malawi for action research on the place of small-scale farmers in commercial agriculture, a colleague and I visited the Phata cooperative in the Lower Shire Valley, a wide lowland plain in the south of the country. With support from a management firm, over 1,100 farmers had pooled their small landholdings to set up a collective estate of over 600 hectares and build an irrigation system drawing water from the Shire River. The cooperative was growing sugar cane and selling it to a nearby mill operated by a multinational enterprise. During the visit, we learned about local initiative and innovation, as farmers sought out opportunities and ultimately reaped economic benefits. We also saw glimpses of changing international arrangements that, in regulating aid and trade, connected Malawi to 78 other countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP), to the European Union (EU) and to the United Kingdom (UK)