“Community Interests” and the Role of International Law in the Creation of a Global Market for Agricultural Land

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jochen von Bernstorff
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Global Market ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Cultural Rights ◽  
Land Grab ◽  
Large Scale Land ◽  
The One

The chapter explores the notion of “community interests” with regard to the global “land-grab” phenomenon. Over the last decade, a dramatic increase of foreign investment in agricultural land could be observed. Bilateral investment treaties protect around 75 per cent of these large-scale land acquisitions, many of which came with associated social problems, such as displaced local populations and negative consequences for food security in Third World countries receiving these large-scale foreign investments. Hence, two potentially conflicting areas of international law are relevant in this context: Economic, social, and cultural rights and the principles of permanent sovereignty over natural resources and “food sovereignty” challenging large-scale investments on the one hand, and specific norms of international economic law stabilizing them on the other. The contribution discusses the usefulness of the concept of “community interests” in cases where the two colliding sets of norms are both considered to protect such interests.

scholarly journals What Drives Landowners to Resist Selling Their Land? Insights from Ethical Capitalism and Landowners’ Perceptions

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 312
Author(s):  
Ruxandra Malina Petrescu-Mag ◽  
Hamid Rastegari Kopaei ◽  
Dacinia Crina Petrescu
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Urban Land ◽  
Land Conversion ◽  
Land Grabbing ◽  
Ethical Perspective ◽  
Land Acquisitions ◽  
Large Scale Land ◽  
Land Transactions

Foreign land grabbing is acknowledged as a phenomenon that generates disempowerment and dispossession of local farmers, human rights violations. Previous studies have revealed the lack of ethical benchmarks in foreign large-scale land transactions that raise moral concerns. It is evident that when resources are scarce and people depend on them, the balance between values and interests transforms itself into a dilemma. Within this context, the aims of the paper were to bring to the fore critical reflection on a more ethical perspective of large-scale land acquisitions and to extend the scant information on what factors determine landowners not to sell their land to foreigners to limit land grabbing. This context justifies the need for a critical reflection on a more ethical perspective of large-scale land acquisitions. Therefore, two objectives were set. The first one is to document the role of ethics in large-scale land transactions. Based on the land grabbing literature, authors selected a set of eight land grabbing narratives, most often interrelated and overlapping, that pose ethical considerations. The second objective is to reveal how well a set of variables can predict the “Resistance to sell” the land to foreigners even when an attractive price is offered. As ethics is a social construct, the analysis captured the stakeholders’ perspective on land grabbing. Therefore, a questionnaire was applied to a sample of 332 Romanian landowners from twelve randomly selected counties to reveal their perceptions. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to observe how well a set of seven variables could predict landowners’ “Resistance to sell” their land to foreign buyers. The use of PLS-SEM was justified by the existence of single items and the need to examine many structural model relations. Results showed that the variables with the strongest contribution to the prediction of the dependent variable are the “Probability to join an association for farmers rights defense”, the “Importance of the land price offered by the potential foreign buyer”, and the “Perceived effect of agricultural land conversion to urban land”. Raising awareness on the importance of buyer attributes, increasing people’s perception of the negative effect of agricultural land conversion to urban land, or strengthening the state’s image as a necessary actor to limit land grabbing will increase landowners’ resistance to sell their land to foreigners. Finally, it can be inferred that, within this frame of discussion, ethics should be valued as a means to create economically viable and morally justifiable solutions for foreign large-scale land transactions.

scholarly journals Land Deals, Wage Labour, and Everyday Politics

Land ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adwoa Yeboah Gyapong
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Oil Palm ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Land Grab ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Everyday Politics ◽  
Settler Society ◽  
Context Specific

This article explores the question of political struggles for inclusion on an oil palm land deal in Ghana. It examines the employment dynamics and the everyday politics of rural wage workers on a transnational oil palm plantation which is located in a predominantly migrant and settler society where large-scale agricultural production has only been introduced within the past decade. It shows that, by the nature of labour organization, as well as other structural issues, workers do not benefit equally from their work on plantations. The main form of farmworkers’ political struggles in the studied case has been the ‘everyday forms of resistance’ against exploitation and for better terms of incorporation. Particularly, they express agency through acts such as absenteeism and non-compliance, as well as engaging in other productive activities which enable them to maintain their basic food sovereignty/security. Nonetheless, their multiple and individualized everyday politics are not necessarily changing the structure of social relations associated with capitalist agriculture. Overall, this paper contributes to the land grab literature by providing context specific dynamics of the impacts of, and politics around land deals, and how they are shaped by a multiplicity of factors-beyond class.

Questioning the “Regulatory Approach” to Large-Scale Agricultural Land Transfers in Ethiopia: A Legal Pluralistic Perspective

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fantu F. Mulleta ◽  
Pierre Merlet ◽  
Johan Bastiaensen
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Codes Of Conduct ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
International Standards ◽  
Positive Development ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
Large Scale Land ◽  
Development Outcomes

AbstractUntil now, most policy recommendations put forward to deal with the possible negative impacts of large-scale land acquisitions are either directed towards the legal recognition and formalization of land rights in order to secure the rights of historical land holders or the design and implementation of “voluntary” guidelines and codes of conduct that promote positive development outcomes of large-scale land investments. This paper argues that these types of recommendations tend to depoliticize the debate around access to land and natural resources, whether at local, national and international levels. This paper looks to bring this political dimension back by proposing an analytical framework in line with the legal pluralist tradition. From a legal pluralistic analysis of the process of land deals in Ethiopia, this paper finds out that socio-cultural identity and power structures, rather than market and regulatory failure alone, play a fundamental role in redirecting negotiations and determining losers and winners from such deals. With the above finding, this paper finally suggests that blueprint international standards or investment regulatory measures cannot be used as a panacea and that solutions need to be more profound than such conventional approach.

scholarly journals FromJus ad BellumtoJus ad Vim: Recalibrating Our Understanding of the Moral Use of Force

2013 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Brunstetter ◽  
Megan Braun
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Full Scale ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ethical Framework ◽  
Michael Walzer ◽  
Important Distinction ◽  
The One

In the preface of the 2006 edition ofJust and Unjust Wars, Michael Walzer makes an important distinction between, on the one hand, “measures short of war,” such as imposing no-fly zones, pinpoint air/missile strikes, and CIA operations, and on the other, “actual warfare,” typified by a ground invasion or a large-scale bombing campaign. Even if the former are, technically speaking, acts of war according to international law, he proffers that “it is common sense to recognize that they are very different from war.” While they all involve “the use of force,” Walzer distinguishes between the level of force used: the former, being more limited in scope, lack the “unpredictable and often catastrophic consequences” of a “full-scale attack.” Walzer calls the ethical framework governing these measuresjus ad vim(the just use of force), and he applies it to state-sponsored uses of force against both state and nonstate actors outside a state's territory that fall short of the quantum and duration associated with traditional warfare. Compared to acts of war,jus ad vimactions present diminished risk to one's own troops, have a destructive outcome that is more predictable and smaller in scale, severely curtail the risk of civilian casualties, and entail a lower economic and military burden. These factors makejus ad vimactions nominally easier for statesmen to justify compared to conventional warfare, though this does not necessarily mean these actions are morally legitimate or that they do not have potentially nefarious consequences.

scholarly journals Land Deals, Labour and Everyday Politics

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adwoa Yeboah Gyapong
Keyword(s):  
Oil Palm ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Scale Production ◽  
Land Grab ◽  
The North ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Everyday Politics ◽  
Settler Society ◽  
Context Specific

This study presents empirical evidence on the nature of the political struggles for inclusion on an oil palm land deal in Ghana. It examines the employment dynamics and the everyday politics of workers on an oil palm plantation in a predominantly migrant and settler society of the north-eastern part of Ghana, where large-scale production has only been introduced within the past decade. It shows that by the nature of labour organization, as well as other structural issues, workers do not benefit equally from the land deals and therefore express everyday forms of resistance against exploitation, and for better terms of incorporation. Particularly, they express agency through absenteeism and non-compliance, which especially, enables them to maintain their basic food sovereignty/security. Nonetheless, these everyday politics is not necessarily liberating in confronting the everyday peasant problems and unfavourable agrarian transitions associated with capitalist agriculture. Overall, this paper contributes to the land grab literature by providing context-specific dynamics of impacts and politics and how are they are shaped by a multiplicity of factors- beyond class.

Land Acquisition and the Semantic Context of Land within the Normative Construction of “Modern Development”

2015 ◽  
pp. 63-82
Author(s):  
Renny Rueda Castañeda
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Land Ownership ◽  
Semantic Context ◽  
Land Acquisition ◽  
Modern Development ◽  
History Of ◽  
Large Scale Land ◽  
The One ◽  
Bretton Woods Institutions

This chapter analyzes how, historically, normative interventions on the idea of “development” at the Bretton Woods Institutions have defined a theoretical bias from which land and land acquisition have been represented. On the one hand, the chapter proposes a framework from which representations of land, land acquisition, and land ownership can be contextualized within scholarly literature on the concept of development. The second part of the chapter carries out an empirical case study on linguistic analysis to highlight how increasing levels of land concentration go hand in hand with normative interventions built at the top of the executive bodies of an international architecture. The chapter reveals that rather than a coincidence, policies and recommendations on large-scale land acquisition have made part of a highly institutionalized and ideologically defined discourse that has evolved semantically within selected periods of the history of these institutions.

The Twenty-First Century Agricultural Land Rush

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory Thaler
Keyword(s):  
Global Economy ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
First Century ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Land Grab ◽  
Investment Capital ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Political Economic

The 2007–2008 global food crisis has been followed by a rapid acceleration in large-scale agricultural land deals, which activists have labeled a “global land grab.” This chapter explores the origins of this twenty-first century agricultural land rush, its geography, and the responses it has engendered. The origins of the land rush are located in interlinked food, financial, and ecological crises that are indicative of fundamental shifts in the global political economy. In response to these crises, land grabbing represents an effort to reconstruct a stable political-economic order, both on the part of investment capital seeking to relaunch accumulation and on the part of political actors and companies seeking to secure stable supplies of food and energy. The geography of the land rush is analyzed through the interrelated variables of land availability, the structural position of a country in the global economy, and a country’s domestic institutional structure. Finally, the main theoretical positions in the debate over land deals are linked to distinct political responses. The real historical significance of the structural changes behind the agricultural land rush suggests that the implications of the land rush will be both durable and systemic.

The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change: A Guide to the Debate

2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 731-733
Author(s):  
Radoslav S. Dimitrov
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Climate Change ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Remedial Action ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Science And Politics ◽  
The One

The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change: A Guide to the Debate, Andrew E. Dessler and Edward A. Parson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 190.Among policy issues struggling for attention on political agendas, climate change is particularly consequential, by virtue of its large-scale negative consequences for all human communities and ecosystems and the high policy costs of remedial action. The stakes are singularly high, yet the general public is not well informed about the reality of climate change. Even the concerned citizen seeking information gets lost between tendentious sketches in the mass media, on the one hand, and practically illegible specialized literature, on the other. Dessler and Parson's work is a welcome middle ground that provides clearly comprehensible scientifically validated information on all aspects of the issue. The book summarizes and evaluates current information on climate change, focusing primarily on multilateral scientific assessments conducted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It offers a balanced review of the state of knowledge, and carefully delineates the bounds of scientific agreement and uncertainty.

scholarly journals Land Grabbing in Europe? Socio-Cultural Externalities of Large-Scale Land Acquisitions in East Germany

Land ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramona Bunkus ◽  
Insa Theesfeld
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Rural Livelihoods ◽  
Land Grabbing ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Land Acquisitions ◽  
Large Scale Land ◽  
Investment Object ◽  
Acquisition Processes ◽  
Land Transactions

Recently, we witnessed an immense increase in international land transactions in the Global South, a phenomenon slowly expanding in northern industrialized countries, too. Even though in Europe agriculture plays a decreasing economic role for rural livelihoods, the increases in land transactions by non-local, non-agricultural investors pervades rural life. Nevertheless, the underlying processes are not yet well understood. Large-scale land acquisitions describe such purchases and leases in a neutral way, while ‘land grabbing’ expresses negative consequences for rural people. We investigate whether and under which conditions the term land grabbing is justified for the phenomenon observed in Europe. We propose six socio-cultural criteria that scholars should consider to come to an initial classification: legal irregularities, non-residence of new owners, centralization in decision-making structures, treating land as an investment object, concentration of decision-power, and limited access to land markets. We supplement our findings with empirical material from East Germany, where such land acquisition processes occur. Our paper contributes to the ongoing discussion about agricultural structural change in Europe, which is intensified by increasing land prices and a new distribution of landownership but likewise strongly intertwined with rural development.

scholarly journals Forestland Grabbing by the Foreigners in Hokkaido, Japan: Is It a Big Concern for Sustainable Forest Development?

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (10) ◽  
pp. 1724 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kazi Islam ◽  
Kimihiko Hyakumura
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Land Use Changes ◽  
Local Economy ◽  
Ecological Impacts ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Foreign Companies ◽  
Land Grab ◽  
The Social ◽  
Large Scale Land ◽  
Hokkaido Island

A world-wide demand in large-scale land acquisition over the past decade has been discussed as a land grab for access to natural resources. Forestland grab is the dynamics of land use changes by the foreign or national entities that can enable forests and biodiversity transformations on a wider scale. In recent times, forestland grabbing performed by foreigners in the Hokkaido Island of Japan has been increasing and causing a lot of debate. Therefore, this study analyzed the social, economic, and ecological impacts of forestland grabbing by the foreigners in the Hokkaido Island of Japan, and also analyzed the land ownership rules and regulations of Japan that have an impact on the land-grabbing process. This study is formed by an analysis of public and forestry agency documents, grey and academic literatures, interview with questionnaire and practical observation in central Hokkaido, Japan. The study found out that the forestland grabs have been taking place on the Hokkaido Island using the existing Japanese policy and legal arrangements. However, some people and print media have disagreed with the treatment of forestlands as a commodity because the land and water resources are limited and also essential for the national sovereignty and local culture. On the other hand, the small-scale forestland grabbing and development activities by foreigners were totally in the grip of the local government and no significant forest and biodiversity losses have been identified so far. The study also revealed that the entry of foreign companies has augmented the local economy and tourism industries and also provided jobs for the local people. Therefore, the foreigners-based land grabs and investments have caused an immense debate, and the study would recommend the proper execution of conservation regulations at every level instead of blocking the entry of foreign entities through law.

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