Agriculture, Water and Investment

What’s New in Agriculture, Water and Investment

The IISD Guide to Negotiating Investment Contracts for Farmland and Water: A team of lawyers, social scientists and environmentalists at IISD joined forces to develop a model contract for developing countries to attract investment in agriculture, while at the same time ensuring they lift people out of poverty and protect the environment. This is the first of its kind and is based on a more than three-year investigation of almost eighty agricultural investment contracts. The IISD Guide provides legal options for developing rural economies, boosting employment, building processing factories, protecting against climate change and ensuring enough water for all. See report (English and French ).

Global training course on promoting sustainable investment in agriculture, 4 November 2014. IISD hosted a training workshop for agricultural investment negotiators in Montreux, Switzerland. The goal of the workshop was to assist government officials in preparing for investment negotiations and drafting contracts with foreign investors that promote sustainable development. See programme (English and French ) and report (English ).

Committee on World Food Security (CFS) Adopts New Principles for Investment. On 15 October 2014, the CFS adopted the Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems (RAI). IISD welcomes the new principles and believes they will contribute to building a normative framework for investment in food and agriculture. Read IISD’s opinion piece (in French and English ) on the principles released in October 2014.

Making Agricultural Investment Work for Africa: Launch of Phase 2. In August 2014, the Pan African Parliament, together with IISD and a range of other partners, launched a new phase of the parliamentarian’s campaign to ensure that foreign investment brings benefits to Africa, including food security and employment. Phase 2 will focus on introducing new laws, drafting model investment contracts, creating online land observatories, holding public hearings and other monitoring and oversight roles for parliamentarians. More information is available here .

A wave of foreign investment in agricultural land and water is transforming rural economies and livelihoods. The Land Matrix Partnership says that more than 1,217 deals were concluded in developing countries, between 2000 and 2009, covering 83 million hectares of land.

A key driver for investment is the growing global demand for food and biofuels, coupled with increasing water shortages and scarcity, which have forced many governments to look abroad. The private sector, including banking and finance, is seizing the opportunities.

Rural areas and the agriculture sector desperately need investment. One billion people go to bed hungry every night. Seventy per cent of those people live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. However, foreign investment does not always contribute to improving those livelihoods.

IISDs work tries to help governments and policy-makers build more effective investment strategies that contribute to sustainable development. We explain the role of international investment agreements in protecting investors interests and the need to safeguard space for governments to implement agricultural policies in the public interest.

Working with Governments

Global training course on promoting sustainable investment in agriculture, 4 November 2014

Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture

These principles were adopted by African Agriculture Ministers in May 2014. The Land Policy Initiative (LPI) of the African Union (AU), the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the African development Bank (AfDB), developed guiding principles to promote responsible investment in agricultural land. IISD supported the LPI in the drafting process in January 2014 and prepared this input for the e-consultation as a further contribution.

Working with Parliamentarians in Africa

IISD works in partnership with the Pan African Parliament to inform and advise parliamentarians on how foreign investment can contribute to sustainable development. IISD is helping to organize a series of workshops across Africa to raise awareness among parliamentarians about investment in agricultural land and water. We bring together a range of people to provide ideas on what parliamentarians can do to make investment work for Africa. More information .

Key Publications

The IISD Guide to Negotiating Investment Contracts for Farmland and Water  Carin Smaller with contributions from Howard Mann, Nathalie Bernasconi-Osterwalder, Laszlo Pinter, Matthew McCandless, Jo-Ellen Parry IISD, 2014 The IISD Guide to Negotiating Investment Contracts for Farmland and Water is a legal and policy tool for governments and communities that are involved in negotiating investment contracts with foreign investors. The guide focuses on a particular type of contract involving long-term leases of farmland. Part I, Preparing for Negotiations, is designed to assist in the preparatory phase. Part 2, Model Contract, is structured like an investment contract for the lease of farmland and proposes model provisions.

Water-Energy-Food Nexus and Agricultural Investment: A sustainable development guidebook  Livia Bizikova, Dimple Roy, Henry David Venema, and Matthew McCandless with contributions from Darren Swanson, Avet Khachtryan, Carter Borden and Karla Zubrycki, IISD, 2014 The purpose of this guidebook is to provide a practical ecosystem-based framework for the design and management of land investments that deliver increased water, energy and food security. This publication is aimed primarily at those involved in strategic planning and allocation of domestic and foreign investments as well as international agencies supporting or evaluating investments in other countries.

Investment Contracts for Farmland and Water: 10 Steps  Carin Smaller, IISD, 2013 This document is a tool for parliamentarians, government officials, landholders and local communities who are involved in negotiating investment contracts with foreign investors for agricultural land and water. It presents 10 key steps to follow when negotiating the contract from a sustainable development perspective. It is an overview of a more detailed and comprehensive handbook, which proposes model legal provisions for an investment contract.

Foreign Investment in Agriculture: Some Critical Contract Issues  Howard Mann, IISD, 2012 The paper highlights the need for agriculture investment contracts to be embedded within national legal systems, and for those systems to take into account both local cultural and indigenous legal systems and practices, and a strong sustainable development policy perspective. Mann argues that these two factors limit the utility of seeking harmonization on only a limited set of issues, such as land registration. Rather, what is needed is a holistic approach to such contracts that is inclusive of local community needs, legal customs and processes.

 Roderick Campbell, Tristan Knowles, Amphaphone Sayasenh, IISD, 2012. This paper investigates foreign direct investment (FDI) into the agriculture sector of Laos in an attempt to understand the pros and cons of various business models, focusing on the model of land acquisition used by foreign investors and the extent to which various business models are contributing to economic development.