International investment treaties are an important part of the legal frameworks governing foreign investment. This report measures the extent to which they apply to agribusiness investments initiated as part of the recent wave of large-scale land deals in low and middle-income countries. It finds that 70% of ‘land grab’ deals worldwide are protected by at least one investment treaty.
Includes the commodification of land, the effects of the land rush in developing countries, land rush land grab?, how much land is involved?, can land deals work for small farmers?, the actors involved in large-scale land acquisitions, legal frameworks protect the investors, international mechanism for protecting human rights, at national level little protection for the poor.
Caso de comunarios que a pesar del régimen de violencia material y simbólica que enfrentan, continúan la lucha por un pedazo de tierra para reproducir la vida. La Calera es el territorio donde durante 20 años de disputas entre 17 comuneros y comuneras indígenas y el poder financiero y los terratenientes de herencia colonial, se enfrentaron por la propiedad y el uso de nueve hectáreas.
Celebrates the launching of OpenLandContracts, an international repository of land deals created in response to the general lack of transparency surrounding such deals. The contracts are annotated to help users navigate them.
EBG Capital was appointed by the German Development Agency (GIZ) to obtain case studies from selected agricultural investment funds (predominantly private equity investors) to determine “best practice” in Responsible Investment (RI) in agriculture and the use of international RI principles and guidelines to achieve this.
This study investigates the implications of foreign land deals in Africa especially with regard to agricultural trade. It is motivated essentially by large scale foreign deals of land in Africa, Latin America, Central Asia and Southeast Asia that have been reported in recent years. One of the driving forces has been attributed to the presumed availability of land in these regions.
This guide provides information for communities who are, or who may be, harmed by projects sponsored by financial institutions, development banks and private groups.
Dramatic changes are underway in Southern Africa, with growing interest by foreign and domestic investors to access land for farming, mining and other commercial operations. This book of case studies documents situations in which commercial projects are planned or are being implemented on land held by rural communities in Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Some of the factors that have been attributed to the global increase of Foreign Land Deals-FLDs include the three F's (food, fuel and finance) crises, and among others. However, most of the empirical evidences stem from the assessment of a broad set of countries. An analysis on the main determinants across host communities within a country presents specificity and closer reality.
Large-scale land acquisitions often take place in developing countries which are also known for their corruption-friendliness caused by weak institutional frameworks. We hypothesize that corruption indeed leads to more land deals.
