See videos, photos, blogs and more from the second international conference on ‘Global Land Grabbing’. The STEPS Centre also has a range of useful resources on land, green and water grabs.
Organised by the Land Deal Politics Initiative (LDPI) and the Cornell Department of Development Sociology, two of the STEPS Centre’s directors – Melissa Leach and Ian Scoones – presented recent work on land grabs and green grabs. STEPS affiliate Future Agricultures Consortium is a member of the LDPI.
Among the keynote speakers at the 17-19 October event was the new Director-General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and Brazilian academic, José Graziano da Silva.
A dramatic, worldwide rise in large-scale land deals stem from the revaluation of land by powerful economic and political actors, particularly in the global South. ‘Global land grab’ has become a catch-all phrase to describe this explosion of (trans)national commercial and government-driven land transactions revolving around the production and sale of food and biofuels, conservation and mining activities.
This conference was a follow up to the highly successful 2011 conference, Global Land Grabbing, held 6-8 April 2011 at the Institute for Development Studies, UK
To see videos. photos. blogs and more from the event, please see the conference website.
And for more resources see the Future Agricultures Consortium Land theme web pages.
Useful resources from the STEPS Centre and our members:
- Journal: Green grabs special issue of the Journal of Peasant Studies
- Journal: Green grabs and biochar: Revaluing African soils and farming in the new carbon economy by Melissa Leach, James fairhead, James Fraser Journal of Peasant Studies
- Video: “Green wins or green grabs? Contested pathways to sustainability in Africa” STEPS director Melissa Leach gives the 1st Annual Piers Blaikie Lecture on Environmental Politics
- Project: Biochar and Anthropogenic Dark Earths
- Project: Political ecologies of carbon in Africa
- Journal: The new enclosures: critical perspectives on corporate land deals. Ben White, Saturnino M. Borras Jr., Ruth Hall, Ian Scoones & Wendy Wolford Journal of Peasant Studies
- Paper: Biocharred Pathways to Sustainability? Triple Wins, Livelihoods and the Politics of Technological Promise Melissa Leach, James Fairhead, James Fraser, Eliza Lehner
- Media: Q. and A.: The Dark Side to ‘Green’ Transactions, New York Times. STEPS director Melissa Leach is interviewed by Joanna M Foster for the New York Times about the appropriation of nature in the name of ‘green’ market initiatives.
- The dark side of the green economy: ‘Green grabbing’ Melissa Leach blogs for Al Jazeera about fostering an agenda focused on distribution, equity and justice in green market arrangements.
- Journal: Water Grabs – a special issue of Water Alternatives: Water grabbing? Focus on the (re)appropriation of finite water resources Guest editors: Lyla Mehta (STEPS water and sanitation convenor), Gert Jan Veldwisch and Jennifer Franco
- Research: Future Agricultures Consortium Land theme web pages.