Global Land Grabs and Property from Below — Balakrishnan Rajagopal

This talk aims to address the challenges posed by the globalization of property rights over land and its related natural resources – land in particular, but also water and marine resources and genetic resources. The growing commodification of these resources often disregards the rights and interests of the poorest populations in the global South. The aim is to identify alternatives to the Western-based conception of property rights, taking into account the social functions of property rights regimes and the social equity and environmental limits of development, and explore alternative ideas of property. As growing number of social actors mobilize human rights-based approaches when framing claims over land, seeds and marine resources, this talk also aims at identifying the promises, but also the limitations, of such a framing of their claims.
Balakrishnan Rajagopal is a Professor of Law and Development at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). He is recognized as a leading participant in the Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) Network of scholars. He is associated with Harvard Law School’s Program on Negotiation and has been associated with the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, the Madras Institute of Development Studies and the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Hebrew University, the UN University for Peace, University of Melbourne Law School and the American University. Professor Rajagopal is the author of two books – International Law from Below: Development, Social Movements and Third World Resistance and Reshaping Justice: International Law and the Third World. He is currently completing a book manuscript for Cambridge University Press on legalization of socio-economic rights in the Global South.