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Abstract
In 2012, with the adoption of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (or TGs), the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) established a new international standard on natural resource governance. After adoption, the challenge is for these guidelines to be implemented and used. However, no law is self-interpreting or self-implementing, and so how states will interpret and implement these new guidelines cannot be taken for granted. This is especially true in the current global context of land grabbing driven, in many cases, by alliances of state and capital. Consequently, subaltern people, for whom rights in relation to the natural resources on which they depend remain out of reach, face the challenge and potential opportunity of making use of the TGs to recalibrate the political-legal terrain in favour of human rights and democratic control of land and other natural resources.
Notes
1. In 2007 the absolute number of people living in urban centres worldwide overtook the number of people living in the countryside for the first time ever. Yet three-fourths of the world’s poor were still living and working in the countryside. Poverty often means hunger, and by 2008 there were an estimated 1 billion hungry people in the world. FAOSTAT data downloaded 3 November 2008.
2. On land and violent conflict see Pons-Vignon and Solignac Lecomte, Land, Violent Conflict, and Development and Kay, Reflections on Rural Violence, 741–775.
3. Committee on World Food Security, How to Increase Food Security.
4. Deininger and Byerlee, “Rising Global Interest”; Deininger, “Forum on Global Land Grabbing,” 217–247.
5. Behrman, Meinzen-Dick, and Quisumbing, “Gender Implications of Large-Scale,” 49–79; Koopman and Mar Faye, “Land Grabs, Women’s Farming.”
6. See research linked to the Land Deals Politics Initiative and several academic journal special issues on the topic, such as Journal of Peasant Studies, Development and Change, Globalizations, Canadian Journal of Development Studies, Third World Quarterly, and Water Alternatives, among others.
7. GRAIN, Seized; Monsalve Suarez, “The FAO and its Work on Land”; von Braun and Meinzen-Dick, “’Land Grabbing’ by Foreign Investors”; Borras and Franco, “From Threat to Opportunity?” 507; Zagema, “Land and Power,” 114–164; White et al., “The New Enclosures,” 619–647; Mehta, Veldwisch, and Franco, “Introduction to the Special Issue,” 193.
8. Fox, Accountability Politics, 1–2.
9. Polack, Cotula, and Côte, Accountability in Africa's Land Rush.
10. Sawyer and Gomez, “Transnational Governmentality,” 3.
11. With the meaning of human rights and democratic land control along the lines spelled out by Franco, Monsalve, and Borras, “Democratic Land Control.”
12. Hall et al., “Resistance, Acquiescence or Incorporation?” 467–488.
13. Martiniello, “Social Struggles in Uganda's Acholiland,” 653–669.
14. Kandel, “Politics from Below?” 635–652.
15. Milgroom, “Policy Processes of a Land Grab,” 585–606.
16. Larder, “Space for Pluralism?” 839–858.
17. Moreda, “Listening to their Silence?” 517–539.
18. Borras, “Land Politics, Agrarian Movements.”
19. The ICARRD coalesced diverse rural constituencies towards a common agenda anchored in a human rights understanding of land and territory. The IPC facilitated agrarian movements to influence the outcomes of this conference, foreshadowing the TGs. ICARRD’s final declaration committed governments to a participatory approach based on economic, social and cultural rights for the equitable management of land, water, forests and other natural resources, focusing on sustainable development and overcoming inequalities in order to eradicate hunger and poverty. The next milestone was the International Forum on Food Sovereignty (Nyeleni) in Mali in 2007, and then the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia in 2010. Monsalve Suarez, “The FAO and its Work”; Rosset, “Re-Thinking Agrarian Reform,” 721–775.
20. Edelman and Borras, Political Dynamics of Transnational Agrarian Movements.
21. This includes the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, the Guidelines on the Right to Food, the Guidelines on Small-Scale Fisheries and the Wilderswil Declaration on Livestock Diversity and the rights of livestock keepers which was unveiled at the International Technical Conference on Animal Genetic Resources at Interlaken in 2007.
22. Brem-Wilson, “The Reformed Committee”; Brem-Wilson, “Towards Food Sovereignty,” 73–95.
23. See https://www.foodsovereignty.org.
24. McKeon “One Does Not Sell,” 105–122; Paoloni and Onorati, “Regulations of Large-Scale Acquisitions,” 369–400.
25. Available at https://fian.nl/civil-society-organizationsa-proposals-to-fao-for-the-tenure-of-land-and-natural-resources/.
26. The past decade has seen myriad responses to the problem of land grabbing: the International Food Policy Research Institute’s (IFPRI) call for a ‘code of conduct’ (von Braun and Meinzen-Dick, “‘Land Grabbing’ by Foreign Investors”); the World Bank’s call for ‘Principles for Responsible Agricultural Investments’ (PRAI); the International Institute for Environment and Development’s (IIED) advocacy around transparency and community consultation in land investments (Vermeulen and Cotula, “Over the Heads of Local People,” 899–916; Cotula, Land Deals in Africa); the call for human rights principles to address land grabbing (De Schutter, “How Not To Think,” 249–279; Künnemann and Monsalve, “International Human Rights,” 123–139); and the call of La via Campesina and allies to stop land grabbing (La via Campesina, Stop Land Grabbing Now!).
27. Several Southern American countries have tried to prohibit or control the ‘foreignisation’ of land ownership, yet it is in this part of Latin America where large-scale land deals remain widespread (Wilkinson, Reydon, and Di Sabbato, “Concentration and Foreign Ownership,” 417–438; Murmis and Murmis, “Land Concentration and Foreign Land,” 490–508; Urioste, “Concentration and ‘Foreignisation,’” 439–457; White et al., “The New Enclosures,” 619–647).
28. Bevir, A Theory of Governance.
29. Margulis, McKeon, and Borras, “Land Grabbing and Global Governance,” 1–23.
30. Borras, Franco, and Wang, “Challenge of Global Governance,” 161–179.
31. These three tendencies are more or less stable analytical constructs, but key state and non-state actors and their political stands are dynamic and often straddling two or three tendencies depending on the issues and alliances.
32. Deininger, “‘Forum on Global Land Grabbing,” 217–47.
33. For FPIC in the context of the global resource rush, see Franco, Reclaiming Free Prior and Informed.
34. For a detailed account of how the Voluntary Guidelines to Support the Progressive Realisation of the Right to Adequate Food in the Context of National Food Security have influenced law making, see Vidar, Yoon, and Cruz, Legal Developments in Progressive Realisation.
35. von Bogdandy, Goldmann, and Venzke, Public International to International Public Law, 24.
36. Fox, “Vertically Integrated Policy Monitoring,” 616–627.
37. Franco, Bound by Law.
38. Fox, “Editor’s Introduction,” 1–18.
39. At the time of writing, CNOP was the regional coordinator of La via Campesina for West and Central Africa.
40. In addition to CNOP, the other members of CMAT are: Association des Organisations Professionnelles Paysannes (AOPP), Union des associations et coordinations pour le développement et la défense des droits des démunis (UACDDDD), Ligue pour la justice, le développement et les droits de l’homme (LJDH) CAD-MALI.
41. African Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights, https://www.humanrights.se/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/African-Charter-on-Human-and-Peoples-Rights.pdf.
42. Borras, Edelman, and Kay, “Transnational Agrarian Movements.”
43. Monsalve Suárez, “The Human Rights Framework,” 239–290.
44. FIAN, Monitoring the Governance of Land.
45. Hall and Scoones, Strengthening Land Governance, 49.