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Since the early 2000s, private companies, state-owned companies, investment funds and public-private partnerships have invested in large tracts of agricultural land, especially in developing countries, aimed at installing commercial activities. This phenomenon, often referred to as land grabbing, has raised concerns about its socio-economic and environmental implications among national governments, international institutions, civil society and academia.
The seminar will introduce the topic of land deals, focusing on its characteristics, dimensions and impacts. Peter Messerli from the University of Bern will address the consequences of the land deals in developing countries and those who are most affected by these investments. Kaitlin Cordes, the head of the section “Land and Agricultre” at the Columbia Center on Sustainable Development will discuss on the controversy of the deals and the respect for human rights.
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.
Kaitlin Y. Cordes is an Associate Research Scholar at the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment, where she leads work on investments in land and agriculture. 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). She 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 holds a BA in Political Science and International Studies from Northwestern University and a juris doctor from Columbia Law School. She is admitted to the bar in New York.
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