Lorenzo Cotula on land rights and investment treaties
With the growing concerns about land grabbing for large scale-based investments in low and middle-income countries, an increasing number of donors and researches are trying to know more about how certain mechanisms in development cooperation as well as trade may affect peoples’ rights to land at local and national levels.
Towards this aim of sharing lessons, the Global Donor Working Group on Land organised a webinar with Lorenzo Cotula, IIED’s expert in law and development, who talked about his recent work on land rights, land deals and investment treaties. Lorenzo examined how investment treaties, which aim to promote investment flows between state parties, affect land rights in low and middle-income countries and, on the other hand, how large-scale land deals are increasingly relying on investment treaties to protect agribusiness investments in such countries.
Land and development specialists from several donor organisations also joined the webinar and shared their views and experiences on the topic. The discussion was moderated by Mathieu Boche, land expert from France’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and vice-chair of the Global Donor WG on Land.
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For this presentation, Lorenzo drew on two reports from 2015: