Monique Chemillier-Gendreau, jurist specialized in international law, led AGTER’s 9th thematic meeting, which was organized in the context of the association’s investigation into massive land grabs in the world and natural resource governance. Monique Chemillier Gendreau explores the reasons behind international law’s current inability to construct laws that are not just proclamatory, but executable as well, through a comprehensive reform of international institutions. Monique (...)

AGTER took part in the International Conference Global Land Grabbing (Brighton 6-8 April 2011), organized by the Land Deal Politics Initiative (LDPI), the Journal of Peasant Studies et the Future Agricultures Consortium of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS, Sussex University). Cochet H., Merlet M.; IDS; 2011. Diaporama. Hubert Cochet (Professor, AgroParisTech [Paris Institute of Technology for Food and Environmental Sciences] and Chairman of AGTER) and Michel Merlet (Director (...)

Social movements have marked a milestone in the struggle against land grabing, by unanimously adopting the Dakar Appeal. Back on this success of the WSF. During the World Social Forum in Dakar, there was no single day without workshops on massive land grabs in the world. Organizations of civil society and farmers’ organizations were present during the forum to explain the many forms take by the process and its many economic, social and environmental impacts. This advocacy work was necessary (...)

In June 2010, the Technical Committee on “Land Tenure and Development” published the document "Large scale land appropriations: Analysis of the phenomenon and proposed guidelines for future action", result of the reflexions facilitated by AGTER about large scale land appropriations. The working group has included members of the Technical Committee, members of the French Interministerial Group on Food Security (GISA) and representatives of civil society organisations. This process of analysis (...)

Synthesis of the contributions of a working group composed of the ’Land tenure and development’ technical committee’s members and other institutional and NGO’s experts.

Call-Voluntary guidelines The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations- FAO has initiated a process of discussion which should lead to the adoption of the Voluntary Guidelines for Land and Natural Resource Tenure. The attached text gives a quick overview of this process along with its objectives and structure. It is within this context that the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty has convened and hosted the regional meeting of Civil Society (...)

During the last 20 years, an increased concern about global issues has emerged. Some problems like global warming, financial instability or global conflicts have led to the development of global governance schemes in order to try to solve them. Recently, the phenomena of massive land acquisitions in developing countries by private investors or foreign states (usually called “land grab” in the press) have led to a new demand for the implementation of global governance mechanisms in relation (...)

During the first quarter of 2009, AGTER carried out on behalf of the International Land Coalition a scoping study for a worldwide collaborative research on new "Commercial Pressures on Land." In order to be able to orient the reflection and the different works within this controversial topic, we started elaborating a conceptual framework. It makes clear the nature of the different mechanisms and specifies what is really new and what has been existing for ages. This reflection has been (...)

In october 2008, the NGO GRAIN published on its website an article which describes and analyses from information gathered in newspapers and on the web massive grabbing of agricultural lands worldwide. GRAIN hightlights that the phenomenon is not really new. However, under the present situation (high prices of stapple food, high prices of oil, financial crisis), things are moving very fast, and this is new. "Sovereign funds" of countries that affirm to want to guarantee their food (...)