22^th October 2014

 

The seminar will address issue related to conflicts and large-scale land acquisitions with contributions from:

 

Kaitlin Y. Cordes, Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

Large-scale land acquisitions, contract farming, and human rights

 

Peter Messerli, University of Bern

Marginal land or marginal people? Analysing patterns and processes of large-scale land acquisitions in the Global South

 

> Bio

Kaitlin Y. Cordes leads the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment’s work on investments in land and agriculture. In addition, she specializes in the intersection of human rights and international investments. Prior to joining CCSI, she worked with the Africa Division of Human Rights Watch, focusing on farmworkers in South Africa, and served as an advisor to the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food (Olivier De Schutter), concentrating primarily on large-scale land acquisitions, access to land, inclusive business models, and the rights of agricultural workers. She also has worked with a range of social justice organizations in the United States and India, and clerked for Justice Virginia A. Long of the Supreme Court of New Jersey. She is the co-editor of Accounting for Hunger: The Right to Food in the Era of Globalisation (Hart, 2011). She holds a bachelor of arts in Political Science and International Studies from Northwestern University and a juris doctor from Columbia Law School, where she was a James Kent Scholar, a Harlan Fiske Stone scholar, and recipient of the Valentin J.T. Wertheimer Prize and a Parker School Certificate in Foreign and Comparative Law. She is admitted to the bar in New York.

> Abstract

A human rights assessment of land deals and their alternatives

This presentation will examine large-scale land acquisitions from a human rights perspective. Land acquisitions have a number of human rights implications, ranging from those more typically associated with land deals – for example, negative impacts on the rights to food and water, or labor rights violations on plantations established after acquisitions – to other issues that occasionally arise, such as impacts on the right to education, or failure of a government to meet its obligation to protect human rights defenders.  This presentation will look at some of the most salient human rights issues, along with the respective government obligations and investor responsibilities. It will then examine the human rights implications of alternative models that have been proposed in lieu of land acquisitions, such as contract farming, and will conclude by considering what a human rights analytical framework and perspective would suggest for moving towards more responsible agricultural investments.

 

 

Peter Messerli

> Bio

Peter Messerli is the director of the Centre for Development and Environment (CDE) of the University of Bern. As a human geographer his research interests lie in the sustainable development of socio-ecological systems in Africa and Asia. He thereby focuses on increasingly globalized and distant driving forces of rural transformation processes and their spatial manifestations in the Global South.

> Abstract

Marginal land or marginal people? Analysing patterns and processes of large-scale land acquisitions in the global south

This presentation addresses the challenge of providing evidence for the improved governance of large-scale land acquisitions in view of more responsible investments into land. The gap between knowledge emerging from generalized inventories and local, highly specific case studies represents a persistent obstacle to informed decision making. I will outline and empirically substantiate how in Southeast Asia research linked place-based patterns of land deals with process-based insights on investment processes. On that basis we will discuss implications for future research and policy implications.

 

 

admission to the Seminar is free of charge, registration is required at: http://goo.gl/iDEU1p

a detailed programme of the seminar is enclosed.