INEQUALITIES

Foreign Land Deals and Human Rights Case Studies on Agricultural and Biofuel Investment

This report traces the surge in large-scale foreign land investments across the Global South through the lens of the right to food and host community rights, situating it in the broader framework of international human rights law and evaluating the gap between the developmental promise of agricultural investment and its lived consequences for the world’s most vulnerable populations. This report argues that the unchecked expansion of industrialized land acquisition carries systemic human rights significance through the compounding dynamics of state complicity, investor impunity, and structural dispossession, generating entrenched threats to equitable food security that demand a fundamental reorientation of investment philosophy toward community agency, rights-based standards, and sustainable development.

In 2009, the number of hungry people in the world topped one billion. This milestone is a tragic reminder of what is at stake in the world today. Ensuring food security in a sustainable and equitable manner is both a paramount and increasingly urgent goal.

In this context, the Global South is experiencing a surge in foreign direct investments in agricultural land. Prompted in part by the global food crisis, state and private investors are buying and leasing millions of hectares of farmland in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and “[this] ‘land rush’ is unlikely to slow.” As currently conceived and implemented, however, many large-scale land investments do not serve the goal of ensuring equitable and sustainable food security and may, in fact, be further jeopardizing the rights of host populations.

This Report was prepared by the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice —in support of the mandate of the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter. It includes four case studies on large-scale land investments in developing countries and explores various ways in which states, investors, and host communities can address the numerous human rights challenges posed by large-scale land investments. The observations offered in this Report contribute to an understanding of the essential minimum steps that can be taken to enhance the benefits of investments that are already underway, while mitigating the risks moving forward. These observations combine an analysis of obligatory human rights standards applicable to states involved in these investments with proposals for private actors to ensure that their activities respect the rights of affected communities.

Ultimately, these recommendations cannot substitute for the need to fundamentally reevaluate an increasingly discredited philosophy: that large-scale industrialized agricultural production and biofuel investments, as currently conceived, can ensure the environmental and developmental needs of the planet in a sustainable and equitable way. The rights of communities affected by large-scale land investments must finally take center stage. Their agency over resources must be respected and the development of policies to address their needs must be made a priority.