Conference | Large-Scale Land Acquisitions: Focus on South-East Asia – Geneva

The launch of our latest issue took place on December 7 at the Graduate Institute Geneva. The three guest editors presented the  volume, followed by critical comments from two discussants and questions from the floor.

The conference began with the welcoming words of Gilles Carbonnier, DevPol’s editor-in-chief, followed by Bernhard Furher, Director of the Swiss Network for International Studies (SNIS), which played an important role as the main funder of a research project on Large-Scale Land Acquisitions led by the volume’s three guest editors (Christophe Gironde, Christophe Golay and Peter Messerli) that was a major catalyst for our special issue.

Christophe Gironde then focused on the impact of land grabbing on the livelihoods of local populations, especially in rural areas, while Christophe Golay stressed the human rights violations documented in those articles of the volume that take a human rights perspective. Peter Messerli, on the other hand, shared his thoughts about the interdisciplinary nature of the special issue and on the need to complement practical case studies issued from detailed field work, with analyses relying on larger datasets contributing to theory building and hypothesis testing.

The two discussants, Shaila Seshia Galvin and Ben White, shed light on the multifaceted nature of such a complex topic and provided critical inputs concerning the way of improving the study of Large-Scale Land Acquistions, as well as to reduce their negative impact on local populations.

Watch the entire debate below.