The Challenge of Global Governance of Land Grabbing: Changing International Agricultural Context and Competing Political Views and Strategies

The emergence of ‘flex crops and commodities’ within a fluid international food regime transition, the rise of BRICS and middle-income countries, and the revalued role of nation-states are critical context for land grabbing. These global transformations that shape and are reshaped by contemporary land grabbing have resulted in the emergence of competing interpretations of the meaning of such changes, making the already complex governance terrain even more complicated. We are witnessing a three-way political contestation at the global level to control the character, pace, and trajectory of discourse, and the instruments in and practice of land governance. These are ‘regulate to facilitate’, ‘regulate to mitigate negative impacts and maximize opportunities’, and ‘regulate to block and rollback’ land grabbing. Future trajectories in land grabbing and its governance will be shaped partly by the balance of state and social forces within and between these three political tendencies. Given this an unfolding global development, this article offers a preliminary analysis by mapping under-explored areas of inquiry and puts forward initial ways of questioning, rather than firm arguments based on complete empirical material.