The Transnational Governance of Land Grabbing

Matias E. Margulis

 
This project examines a new and poorly understood field of transnational governance, land. Since the 2008 global food price crisis, investors and governments have acquired over 60 million hectares of agricultural land worldwide to outsource the production of biofuels, animal feed, and food. This scale of land acquisition has not been seen since the era of colonialism and critics have referred to this phenomenon as a "global land grab." Several controversial land deals, and the growing awareness of the socio-ecological consequences of land grabs more generally, has prompted states, investors, international organizations, global civil society organizations, and transnational social movements to cooperate in creating global rules to regulate land grabbing. Given that land is conventionally understood through the legal framework of national sovereignty, what types of rule-systems, discourse, and forms of political power are these actors using to construct land grabbing as a transnational governance issue? The project’s empirical focus is on two recent transnational governance mechanisms that feature the bundling of multiple public and private rules rooted in diverse issue areas. Project duration: October 2012 to July 2013.
 
Margulis, Matias E., 2012: Land Grabbing and Global Governance: Some initial observations. Paper presented at Global Land Grabbing II Conference, October 2012. Ithaca: Cornell University.
 

 
Margulis, Matias E/Nora McKeon/Saturnino M. Borras Jr. (eds.), 2012:Land Grabbing and Global Governance. London: Routledge (forthcoming July 2013).