Governing the Global Land Grab
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12543 |
| Author | Ethan B. Kapstein |
| Date | 01 May 2018 |
| Published date | 01 May 2018 |
Governing the Global Land Grab
Ethan B. Kapstein
Arizona State University and Princeton University
Abstract
Following the 2007–2008 world food price crisis, the value of developing world agricultural land shot up, raising concerns
about a ‘land grab’, In response, the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) promulgated the Voluntary Guidelines on the
Governance of Tenure of Land, Forests and Fisheries (VGGT) in an effort to strengthen the land rights of customary users.
How do we explain the VGGT’s emergence? The argument I make is that the VGGT was largely due to the efforts of a group
of non-governmental organizations that effectively transformed debates over developing world agricultural land from an eco-
nomic or consequentialist issue of increasing farm productivity and output into a moral or deontological one of protecting
the human rights of those who worked the land through customary use. The article addresses the utility of the VGGT as an
instrument for strengthening land rights along with its limits.
Policy Implications
•For the research community:
-understand the conditions under which states and firms comply with international norms; and
-study mechanisms for the efficient transfer of appropriate agricultural technologies to small-hold farmers.
•For social advocates:
-ensure that customary users have the legal capacity to challenge those who would grab their land; and
-‘name and shame’countries and firms that fail to adopt and enforce VGGT principles.
•For donor nations:
-ensure that aid policies around agricultural development are ‘VGGT-relevant’by supporting cadastral surveys, land
tenure bureaus, and dispute resolution procedures.
•For firms:
-ensure that supply chains are VGGT compliant.
•For governments:
-protect those who defend land rights.
Following the 2007–2008 food price crisis, which caused
widespread suffering throughout the developing world, a
number of international organizations, including United
Nations agencies, development finance institutions, and pri-
vate foundations, called for greater investment in agriculture
in order to increase productivity. The quickest way to get
productivity-enhancing technology to farms in Africa and
Asia, these bodies argued, was through massive foreign
direct investment (FDI). Only by encouraging inflows of capi-
tal and knowledge could food shortages and price shocks
be avoided in future.
The rise in food prices sparked a concomitant increase in
the value of arable land around the world, making it a
sought-after commodity by foreign investors, especially as
the prices of stocks and many other asset classes fell with
the global financial crisis that began in 2008. But as large
land acquisitions proceeded in developing countries, local
farmers and pastoralists with weak or non-existent property
rights expressed growing concern about ‘land grabbing’,
particularly from such powerful states as Japan and Saudi
Arabia and from corporations or sovereign wealth funds
based in these and other countries. In short, one conse-
quence of the food price crisis was that it threatened ‘cus-
tomary users’of land –those without formal title –with the
loss of the property they had traditionally exploited for their
livelihoods.
What are the ‘weapons of the weak’–to use James
Scott’s phrase (1985) –in a global economy? How can the
most marginalized individuals and groups make claims
against rich states and multinational corporations? How did
the customary users of agricultural land in the developing
world respond to the land grab that threatened their
existence?
This article seeks to address these questions by examining
the Voluntary Guidelines on the Governance of Tenure of
Land, Forests and Fisheries (VGGT), promulgated by the
Committee on World Food Security (CFS) in 2012. Drawing
on primary and secondary documents, along with
semi-structured interviews with participants in the VGGT
negotiation process, the argument I make is that the
Global Policy (2018) 9:2 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12543 ©2018 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Global Policy Volume 9 . Issue 2 . May 2018 173
Research Article
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