Food Security and Agri-Foreign Direct Investment in Weak States: Finding the Governance Gap to Avoid ‘Land Grab’

Food security is important. A rising world population coupled with climate change creates growing pressure on global world food supplies. States alleviate this pressure domestically by attracting agri-foreign direct investment (agri-FDI). This is a high-risk strategy for weak states: the state may gain valuable foreign currency, technology and debt-free growth; but equally, investors may fail to deliver on their commitments and exploit weak domestic legal infrastructure to ‘grab’ large areas of prime agricultural land, leaving only marginal land for domestic production. A net loss to local food security and to the national economy results. This is problematic because the state must continue to guarantee its citizens’ right to food and property. Agri-FDI needs close regulation to maximise its benefit. This article maps the multilevel system of governance covering agri-FDI. We show how this system creates asymmetric rights in favour of the investor to the detriment of the host state’s food security and how these problems might be alleviated.

Labour Migration, Trade and Investment: From Fragmentation to Coherence

Trade, investment and migration are strongly intertwined, being three key factors in international production. Yet, law and regulation of the three has remained highly fragmented. Trade is regulated by the WTO on the multilateral level, and through preferential trade agreements on the regional and bilateral levels – it is fragmented and complex in its own right. Investment, on the other hand, is mainly regulated through bilateral investment treaties with no strong links to the regulation of trade or migration. And, finally, migration is regulated by a web of different international, regional and bilateral agreements which focus on a variety of different aspects of migration ranging from humanitarian to economic. The problems of institutional fragmentation in international law are well known. There is no organizational forum for coherent strategy-making on the multilateral level covering all three areas. Normative regulations may thus contradict each other. Trade regulation may bring about liberalization of access for service providers, but eventually faces problems in recruiting the best people from abroad. Investors may withdraw investment without being held liable for disruptions to labour and to the livelihood and infrastructure of towns and communities affected by disinvestment. Finally, migration policies do not seem to have a significant impact as long as trade policies and investment policies are not working in a way that is conducive to reducing migration pressure, as trade and investment are simply more powerful on the regulatory level than migration. This chapter addresses the question as to how fragmentation of the three fields could be reme-died and greater coherence between these three areas of factor allocation in international economic relations and law could be achieved. It shows that migration regulation on the international level is lagging behind that on trade and investment. Stronger coordination and consideration of migration in trade and investment policy, and stronger international cooperation in migration, will provide the foundations for a coherent international architecture in the field.

Sustainable investment in land in the Global South: What would it require from a coherence perspective? The case of Sierra Leone

Large scale acquisitions of land in the Global South have signifi-cantly increased since the millennium. It is often the case that foreign investors are involved in such acquisitions, which are commonly aimed at facilitating the export of commodities. These investments in land tend to transform conventional, rather small scale agricultural systems into large scale, industrial agricultural systems. While investment in ag-riculture in the Global South is much needed, large-scale investments in land often goes hand-in-hand with environmental and human rights re-lated challenges. As a consequence, lawyers need to address questions of sovereignty over natural resources (this paper focuses in particular on land resources), to peoples’ right to self-determination, to the responsi-bilities of the home and host states of the investors, including public-private relationships, and the role of international institutions who are involved, as well as relevant jurisprudence. This paper approaches these questions from the perspective of a theory on policy coherence for sus-tainable development.

Time-Limited Property Rights and Investment Incentives

Although it is axiomatic that property rights of infinite duration are necessary for owners to make efficient long term investments in their property, time limits on property rights are pervasive in the law. This paper provides an economic justification for such limits by arguing that they actually enhance property values in the presence of various sorts of market failure. The analysis offers a coherent approach for understanding what otherwise appear to be unrelated doctrines in the law.

Disciplining Investment Incentives: A Lost Cause?

An E15 Initiative think piece: Investment incentives rank among the most important policy instruments governments employ to influence the locational decisions of multinational firms. In the wake of the recent increase in locational competition and the growing impact of investment incentives and support measures for state-owned enterprises (SOEs), the need for enhanced disciplines on investment incentives has gained political and academic salience. This think piece explores the evolution of investment incentives from a development and rule-making perspective. It summarises the existing literature and examines current practices and recent trends in FDI flows and the use of various investment incentives. This is followed by a discussion of the reasons for the observed stalemate in attempts at disciplinary rule-making. The paper concludes by putting forth recommendations for data gathering and transparency that could further the move toward improved global governance founded on the increasing complementarities of trade, investment, and competition law and policy as the core pillars of a more open, inclusive, and just world economy.

Difference Blindness vs. Bias Awareness: Why Law Firms with the Best of Intentions Have Failed to Create Diverse Partnerships

This Article uses the example of BigLaw firms to explore the challenges that many elite organizations face in providing equal opportunity to their workers. Despite good intentions and the investment of significant resources, large law firms have been consistently unable to deliver diverse partnership structures - especially in more senior positions of power. Building on implicit and institutional bias scholarship and on successful approaches described in the organizational behavior literature, we argue that a significant barrier to systemic diversity at the law firm partnership level has been, paradoxically, the insistence on difference blindness standards that seek to evaluate each person on their individual merit. While powerful in dismantling intentional discrimination, these standards rely on an assumption that lawyers are, and have the power to act as, atomistic individuals - a dangerous assumption that has been disproven consistently by the literature establishing the continuing and powerful influence of implicit and institutional bias. Accordingly, difference blindness, which holds all lawyers accountable to seemingly neutral standards, disproportionately disadvantages diverse populations and normalizes the dominance of certain actors - here, white men - by creating the illusion that success or failure depends upon individual rather than structural constraints. In contrast, we argue that a bias awareness approach that encourages identity awareness and a relational framework is a more promising way to promote equality, equity, and inclusion.

Legislative Proposals to Modernize Business Development Companies and Expand Investment Opportunities, Testimony Before the House Subcommittee on Capital Markets and Government Sponsored Enterprises

This testimony discusses proposed legislation to amend the definition of accredited investor. It also discusses proposed legislation designed to reform the regulatory framework for business development companies. Among other things, the regulatory regime for BDCs would change to allow these companies to invest a greater portion of their assets in financial companies, potentially reducing the percentage of assets invested in operating companies.

Financial services and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. CEPS Policy Brief No. 302, 20 November 2013

Given the size of the financial markets on both sides of the Atlantic and the symmetry in the follow-up of the G-20 standards, Karel Lannoo argues in this Policy Brief that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) provides a good opportunity to put in place a more institutionalised framework. He finds that both blocs have reacted in similar ways to the financial crisis in strengthening their regulatory and supervisory frameworks and incorporating the G-20 recommendations into federal law. He also notes that consumer protection has been reinforced, certainly in the US, with the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And on the EU side, the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) will radically change banking supervision. In his view, inclusion of financial services could also be an opportunity to strengthen prudential rules and consumer protection provisions on both sides. Rather than leading to a reduction of consumer protection, as had been feared in the post-crisis environment, it could lead to an examination, exchange and recognition of best practices in regulation and enforcement. Finally, he concludes that inclusion of financial services would make it part of the permanent regulatory dialogue that will be established as a result of a successful TTIP.

Trade Policy, Investment and Migration: The Liberalisation Paradigm

Presentation by Thomas Cottier & Charlotte Sieber-Gasser prepared for the Markets for Migration and Development (M4MD) Conference, Bern, 13-15 September 2011. This presentation is part of Session 1 "Why Trade, Development and Migration?" of the M4MD conference, which was one of the thematic meetings held in the context of the 2011 Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) chaired by Switzerland. Session 1 seeked to understand to what extent international trade and foreign direct investment drives migration and why states find it more difficult to liberalise the trans‐boundary movement of persons than to liberalise cross‐border trade in goods and services. One discussed aspect was why globalisation, trade liberalisation and FDI can lead not only to more, but also to less migration and what the corresponding effects on development would be. This Session provided a timely opportunity to broaden the perspective on international migration and explore the interaction between migration, development and trade policymaking.