Global Food System

The Global Land Rush, Revisited

Over time, I have collaborated with researchers and practitioners to investigate the global land rush and support responses to it. This action research taught me about the material dimensions of the deals, including their scale, location, crop types, intended markets, varying degrees of implementation, and the way they shook the very foundations of local life, livelihoods and culture. It also highlighted deep-seated tensions between competing visions of agriculture, food systems, territory and society; connections to an evolving global political economy and contested notions of sovereignty and statehood; and the role the law — from land tenure systems to international trade, investment and human rights treaties — has played in facilitating the deals or resistance to them.

Climate Change, Land, and the UNIDROIT Legal Guide on Agricultural Investments

Treating climate change as a small subset of environmental issues which are then treated as if they can be balanced against economic or social concerns is highly problematic in a time of climate crisis. It is to be hoped that the final text of the ALIC Zero Draft will endeavour to more seriously grapple with the implications of climate crisis for agricultural land investment contracts, and pay close attention to the findings of the IPCC CCLR.