scholarly journals How Far Does the European Union Reach? Foreign Land Acquisitions and the Boundaries of Political Communities

Land ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Torsten Menge

The recent global surge in large-scale foreign land acquisitions marks a radical transformation of the global economic and political landscape. Since land that attracts capital often becomes the site of expulsions and displacement, it also leads to new forms of migration. In this paper, I explore this connection from the perspective of a political philosopher. I argue that changes in global land governance unsettle the congruence of political community and bounded territory that we often take for granted. As a case study, I discuss the European Union’s Renewable Energy Directive as a significant driver of foreign land acquisitions. Using its global power, the European Union (EU) is effectively governing land far outside of its international borders and with it the people who live on this land or are expelled from it. As a result, EU citizens ought to consider such people fellow members of their political community. This has implications for normative debates about immigration and, in particular, for arguments that appeal to collective self-determination to justify a right of political communities to exclude newcomers. The political community to which EU citizens belong reaches far beyond the EU’s official borders.

Author(s):  
Ben E. Aigbokhan ◽  
Kehinde O. Ola

This chapter focuses on the impact of foreign land acquisition on the livelihood of the host communities. The chapter investigates Presco Industries, which has been in existence for the past 23 years in Obaretin and Ologbo Estates in Edo State. The impact on employment, entrepreneurship, community relation, environment, and farming, which are the main sustenance of rural communities, are also considered. The result of the Binary Probit Estimator employed shows that the existence of the company in the communities has not offered any significant impact on the livelihood of the people. All indicators of economic wellbeing are not significant for all the households. Therefore, there is need to incorporate the host communities' economic sustenance into the programmes of large-scale agricultural business before land acquisition.


2019 ◽  
pp. 1159-1178
Author(s):  
Ben E. Aigbokhan ◽  
Kehinde O. Ola

This chapter focuses on the impact of foreign land acquisition on the livelihood of the host communities. The chapter investigates Presco Industries, which has been in existence for the past 23 years in Obaretin and Ologbo Estates in Edo State. The impact on employment, entrepreneurship, community relation, environment, and farming, which are the main sustenance of rural communities, are also considered. The result of the Binary Probit Estimator employed shows that the existence of the company in the communities has not offered any significant impact on the livelihood of the people. All indicators of economic wellbeing are not significant for all the households. Therefore, there is need to incorporate the host communities' economic sustenance into the programmes of large-scale agricultural business before land acquisition.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 4772
Author(s):  
Hanna Klikocka ◽  
Aneta Zakrzewska ◽  
Piotr Chojnacki

The article describes and sets the definition of different farm models under the categories of being family, small, and large-scale commercial farms. The distinction was based on the structure of the workforce and the relationship between agricultural income and the minimum wage. Family farms were dominated by the farming family providing the labour and their income per capita exceeded the net minimum wage in the country. The larger commercial farms feature a predominance of hired labour. Based on surveys, it was found that in 2016 in the EU-28 there were 10,467,000 farms (EU-13—57.3%, EU-15—42.7%). They carried out agricultural activities on an area of 173,338,000 ha (EU-13—28.5%, EU-15—71.5%). Countries of the EU-28 generated a standard output (SO) amounting to EUR 364,118,827,100 (EU-13—17.2% and EU-15—82.8%). After the delimitation, it was shown that small farming (70.8%) was the predominant form of management in the European Union (EU-13—88.2% and EU-15—79.8%) compared to family farming (18.4%) (EU-13—10.5% and EU-15—29%). In most EU countries the largest share of land resources pertains to small farms (35.6%) and family farms (38.6%) (UAA—utilised agricultural area of farms).


2017 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olesea Sirbu ◽  
Rodica Crudu ◽  
Augustin Ignatov

Abstract In the present conditions when the demographic pressure upon the environment is higher than ever, the humanity faces the challenge of sustainability. Namely the sustainability of human activities is important and nothing can assure it better than sustainable energy supplies. The European Union is the leading global power in terms of adjusting its policies to increase innovation to assure a sustainable growth of its energy sector as a key to an advanced economic system. The present research focuses on the impact of European Union policies on the sustainable development of its energy sector by analyzing quantitatively and qualitatively various indicators intended to offer a throughout insight. The results obtained focus on the identification of the main innovation paradigms; the description of the main modern environmental challenges, especially in the energy domain; the determination of the relation between innovation and energy sustainability, and its analysis at the level of European Union.


2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 183-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Manley ◽  
Kelvyn Jones ◽  
Ron Johnston

Most of the analysis before the 2016 referendum on the UK’s continued membership of the European Union based on opinion polling data focused on which groups were more likely to support each of the two options, with less attention to the geography of that support – although some regions, especially London and Scotland, were expected to provide substantial support for Remain. Using a recently developed procedure for detailed exploration of large tables derived from survey data, this paper presents the result of a prediction of the outcome across local authorities in Great Britain using just two variables – age and qualifications. In relative terms, that prediction was reasonably accurate – although, reflecting the polls’ overestimate of support for Remain it underestimated the number of places where Leave gained a majority, as was also the case within local authorities where data were published by ward. The model’s predictive value was enhanced by post hoc incorporation of information on turnout and the number of registered electors, and taking these into account there was little evidence of substantial, additional regional variation in levels of support for Leave. Overall, regions were relatively unimportant as influences on the referendum outcome once the characteristics of the people living there were taken into account.


Gamification ◽  
2015 ◽  
pp. 1734-1750
Author(s):  
Jonathan Bishop

The growth in Internet use is not only placing pressure on service providers to maintain adequate bandwidth but also the people who run the Websites that operate through them. Called systems operators, or sysops, these people face a number of different obligations arising out of the use of their computer-mediated communication platforms. Most notable are contracts, which nearly all Websites have, and in the case of e-commerce sites in the European Union, there are contractual terms they must have. This chapter sets out to investigate how the role contract law can both help and hinder sysops and their users. Sysop powers are limited by sysop prerogative, which is everything they can do which has not been taken away by statute or given away by contract. The chapter finds that there are a number of special considerations for sysops in how they use contracts in order that they are not open to obligations through disabled or vulnerable users being abused by others.


2020 ◽  
pp. 233-261
Author(s):  
Chris Heffer

This chapter summarizes the main analytical moves in the TRUST heuristic for analyzing untruthfulness. It then applies the heuristic to three short texts that have been widely called out as lies: Trump’s tweet about large-scale voter fraud just before the 2016 presidential elections; the “Brexit Battle Bus” claim that the United Kingdom sent £350 million per week to the European Union; and Tony Blair’s 2002 statement to Parliament about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction. The cases share a common theme: the capacity of untruthful public discourse to undermine democratic legitimacy by, respectively, questioning the integrity of electoral procedures, harming the capacity of voters to make a rational choice, and undermining faith in the rational and responsible deliberation of one’s leaders. The chapter troubles the simple attribution of lying in these cases and shows how a TRUST analysis can lead to a deeper understanding of the types and ethical value of untruthfulness.


2016 ◽  
pp. 76-95
Author(s):  
Falendra Kumar Sudan

There has been large-scale Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in land in India for promotion of Special Economic Zones (SEZs). The key drivers of land acquisitions are food security, the bio-fuels boom, growing business opportunities, and policy reforms. Increased foreign land investment may increase economic growth and raise government revenues and create new livelihood opportunities through new capital, technology, know-how, infrastructure, and better market access. At the same time, foreign land acquisitions may result in local people losing access to the resources. Therefore, there is a need for wider public consultation involving all stakeholders to ensure improved livelihoods and food security. The creation of robust institutions and social and environmental impact assessments of FDI in land acquisitions are called for to promote inclusive growth through more job creation, infrastructure development, public revenues, environmental protection, and to protect local food security, particularly in times of food crisis. This chapter explores FDI in land acquisition in India.


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