Thursday, 18 October 2012

KNOTS blogger

KNOTS blogger

New FHS book launched yesterday in Washington DC and online

Posted: 18 Oct 2012 03:29 AM PDT

On 17 October 2012, members of the DC Health Systems Board gathered at the Results for Development Institute in Washington DC and online to participate in the launch event for the new book from FHS, Transforming Health Markets in Asia and Africa.

A Storify that captures key points from the presentations and questions from the audience is available below.

Land grabs: changing the planet

Posted: 17 Oct 2012 07:51 PM PDT

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By Holly Jean Buck, Cornell University

One popular question about land grabbing today was: What is new about the phenomenon? How is it distinctive from dispossessions and enclosures throughout history?

One possible answer is: it is taking place in the Anthropocene, the so-called age of humans, where humanity has become a geological agent through its modifications in earth processes.

Land grabs: framing the debate

Posted: 17 Oct 2012 07:10 PM PDT

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By Youjin Brigitte Chung, Cornell University

What are the different perspectives from which we can frame the land grab debate? This was the overarching theme of the first parallel session of the 2nd International Conference on Land Grabbing. The panelists for this session – Farshad Araghi (Florida Atlantic University), Tania Li (University of Toronto), Phil McMichael (Cornell University), and Pauline Peters (Harvard University) – all provided different standpoints from which to understand the nature, scope, and patterns of contemporary larges-scale land acquisitions.

Land grabs - Governance panel I: from past to present

Posted: 17 Oct 2012 06:56 PM PDT

By Ryan Nehring, Cornell University

Governance of land deals is a hot topic at the moment. Eric Holt-Gimenez chaired the first panel of the conference on issues of governance, rules and formalizing land grad deals.

First, Aaron de Grassi showed how the historical relations with Portuguese settlers has shaped, and continues to shape, pressures for agrarian change in land-use. Aaron used the history of spatial relations with land in Angola as an entry point into analyzing the elite relations with neo-patimonial land tenure. Download Aaron de Grassi's paper (pdf)

10 big questions on land grabs

Posted: 17 Oct 2012 06:22 PM PDT

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The first day of the 2nd International Conference on Global Land Grabbing got off to a dynamic start with a plenary panel on big-picture questions, featuring Melissa Leach (STEPS Centre), Lorenzo Cotula (IIED), Sam Moyo (African Institute for Agrarian Studies), Eric Holt-Gimenez (FoodFirst!), and Tania Li (University of Toronto).

The discussion was very wide-ranging, but here are 10 of the "big questions" raised by the panel – questions which pose a challenge to this conference and beyond.
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