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ABSTRACT
Climate change mitigation and land grabbing are distinct but not isolated phenomena. There is evidence that their intersection and interaction contribute to rapid agrarian transformations with dire social and ecological spillover, including the onset and aggravation of conflicts. Several existing human rights instruments are applicable to such spillover situations and are preferable to other kinds of regulation, as they tend to be seen as more legitimate by those adversely affected. With insights from Cambodia and Myanmar, this paper argues for a recalibration of analysis and action on climate change mitigation and land grabs that moves beyond regulation in each isolated case and toward integrated solutions.
RÉSUMÉ
L’atténuation des changements climatiques et l’accaparement des terres sont des phénomènes distincts, mais non isolés. Il est prouvé que leur intersection et interaction contribuent à des transformations agraires rapides ayant de terribles répercussions sociales et écologiques, incluant l’émergence et l’aggravation des conflits. Plusieurs instruments en matière de droits humains sont applicables à de telles situations et sont préférables à d’autres types de règlementation, car ils ont tendance à être perçus comme étant plus légitimes par les personnes qui en souffrent. Sur la base de données sur le Cambodge et le Myanmar, cet article propose un recalibrage de l’analyse et de l’action sur l’atténuation des changements climatiques et l’accaparement des terres qui va au-delà d’une règlementation au cas par cas, vers des solutions intégrées.
Notes on contributors
Jennifer Franco is a researcher activist with the Transnational Institute. After receiving a PhD in politics in 1997 in the United States, she began working with the Philippine solidarity group in the Netherlands, and with local peasant organisations, rural community organising and human rights groups. Since 2012 she has been leading research on rural politics and land governance in Myanmar. She is also adjunct faculty with the College of Humanities and Development at the China Agricultural University in Beijing.
Clara Mi Young Park is a PhD candidate at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, Netherlands. Her research focuses on the gendered and “generationed” political economy of climate change and resource grabbing in Myanmar. Clara is Regional Gender Rural and Social Development Officer with the Asia Pacific Regional Office of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations in Bangkok.
Roman Herre holds a MA in geography (minor in ethnology) from Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. Since 2007 he has been a senior policy adviser with the human rights organisation FIAN (FoodFirst Information and Action Network) Germany. His main case work is on land conflicts, human rights in relation to land issues and policy development. He also participates in national and international networking, research in rural land-related conflicts, consulting for governments and NGOs and educational work.
Notes
1. Here we refer to international regulatory instruments, processes and monitoring mechanisms, tools and entities collectively as international regulatory instruments. However, these instruments vary considerably in terms of legitimacy, ownership, accountability and enforceability. For instance, “corporate-led” instruments are developed by private sector actors, sometimes together with civil society actors, as self-regulatory tools and can be sector-wide or company-specific.
2. Bonsucro is a multi-stakeholder membership-based organisation which promotes “responsible” sugar production, including through certification of standards. Its members include big corporations alongside farmers, end users and civil society.
3. Margulis, McKeon, and Borras (Citation2013, 5) highlight “the rapid elevation of land grabbing onto the global governance agenda and a flurry of global rule-making projects at various scales involving a multiplicity of actors to regulate land-grabbing”.
4. See TNI (Citation2016).
6. Bourdieu (Citation1987) differentiates between diverse fields of social regulation to illuminate different individual actors and groups of actors embedded in field-specific institutions and forms of stratification. Their unique combination of bases of power, institutions and forms of stratification give fields a particular logic and coherence of their own, and therefore a degree of autonomy from each other.
7. Such practices are a basic feature of many societies, whether they originate in pre-colonial cultures or with European Christian missionaries seeking to spread a “harmony legal model” (Nader Citation1990, Citation2001, 21). As Von Benda-Beckmann (Citation2001, 52) argues, “Even if one’s main orientation is to accept the inevitable primacy of the state and state law as the means for change, one nevertheless has to take into account the overall constellation of normative and institutional orders in which the state apparatus, its institutions and regulations, are only one part”. In recognition of customary law, many official legal and judicial reform initiatives include “non-state justice” components as a way to expand access to justice without further burdening regular courts.
8. FPIC refers to the right to self-determination and to freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development. It is clearly articulated in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: “Indigenous peoples shall not be forcibly removed from their lands or territories. No relocation shall take place without the free, prior and informed consent of the indigenous peoples concerned and after agreement on just and fair compensation and, where possible, with the option of return” (Article 10).
9. FPIC is appearing in initiatives:
ranging from the safeguard policies of the multilateral financial institutions; practices of extractive industries; water and energy development; natural resources management; access to genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge and benefit sharing arrangements; scientific and medical research; and indigenous cultural heritage. (As noted by Antoanella-Julia Motoc and the Tebtebba Foundation in a legal commentary submitted to the Commission on Human Rights Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Prosecution of Human Rights, Working Group on Indigenous Populations, at the twenty-third session, 18–22 July 2005)
10. While it is safe to assume that most international regulatory instruments will address gender, it is important to remember that gender equality is a contested notion, including in Asia (Roces Citation2010), which can lead to different constructions of meanings and politics. The evidence indicates that, overall, women are disproportionately affected vis-a-vis men by land dispossession (Doss, Summerfield, and Tsikata Citation2014, 3) due to existing hierarchical structures and patriarchal norms. Conflicts, shocks and competition over scarce resources can exacerbate existing gender and social disparities and further marginalise those who are most vulnerable.
11. There are 10 core international human rights instruments. For each there is a committee of experts to monitor implementation of the treaty provisions by its state’s parties.
12. The term “demonstration” is used here conceptually, as in Herman and Brodhead (Citation1984).
13. On the “framing” function of social movements, see McAdam, McArthy, and Zald (Citation1996).
