The Land Deal Politics Initiative (LDPI) is hosting an International Conference on Global Land Grabbing in Bogota, Colombia with partners including the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), Cornell University, City University of New York, International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), The Hague, PLAAS at University of the Western Cape, Transnational Institute.
The conference will include plenary panels on geopolitics, finance, green grabbing, resistance and policy frameworks. Over 200 research papers to be presented alongside dialogue sessions with social movements on burning issues. Keynote from The Honourable Francia Márquez, Vice-President of Colombia.
LDPI Initiative
The LDPI was launched as a loose network of scholars and activists concerned about the rise of land, water and green grabs across the world and the consequences for rural livelihoods and agrarian relations. A massive wave of investment in land, resulting in expropriation and displacement had emerged following the financial, food and energy crises of 2008-09. The initiative wanted to understand what was going on and how best to respond. Between 2009–2019, LDPI organised a series of events to analyse the social, economic, political and environmental dynamics of large-scale land deals and their implications for policy and social movements.
Conference Agenda
10 years later the LDPI initiative is turning its focus to asking important political and research questions about the aftermaths of land grabs: What happened to the thousands of land grabs documented by researchers, non-governmental organisations, activist groups, news media, and aid agencies? What new configurations of land, labour and capital have emerged since? How has the rise of authoritarian, state-led populism and politics re-shaped the tensions between ‘foreignisation’ and extraction? LDPI made a Call for Applications for Small Grants ($3,000 each), and received close to 700 applications! We have been able to fund 27 recipients who will present their research amongst many other conference participants from all over the world.
The conference will be held along and across the following thematic axes:
- Failed large-scale land grabs
- Domestic land grabs
- Labour implications
- The role of science
- Financialisation
- Green energy and climate change
- Green grabbing and neoliberal conservation
- Growth as extra-territorial development
- Land grabs and environmental change
- National politics of land grabbing
- Violence, from the everyday to the spectacular
- Resistance and mobilisation
- Policy and political change
- Methodology
- Towards theorisation
- Global South/North
Conference outputs
The aim is to publish the papers online beginning mid-February 2024 in the LDPI Working Paper series as a way to share them widely in the build-up to and during the March 2024 international conference in Bogota. Having widely circulating papers will facilitate vibrant, open conversations.
Five leading journals are co-organizing the initiative: Journal of Peasant Studies, World Development, Antipode, Globalizations, and Análisis Político. Some special issues or special forums in these journals may be organised for selected appropriate papers from this initiative.
Conference event partners
Cornell University, University of New York, Institute for Development Studies (IDS), International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), The Hague, PLAAS at University of the Western Cape, Transnational Institute.
Key contacts
