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The Principles of Responsible Agricultural

Investment
a
Phoebe Stephens
a
Independent Researcher, Toronto, Canada
Published online: 15 Feb 2013.

To cite this article: Phoebe Stephens (2013) The Principles of Responsible Agricultural Investment,
Globalizations, 10:1, 187-192, DOI: 10.1080/14747731.2013.760952

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 Globalizations, 2013
Vol. 10, No. 1, 187 – 192, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2013.760952

The Principles of Responsible Agricultural Investment

PHOEBE STEPHENS
Independent Researcher, Toronto, Canada
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ABSTRACT In 2009 the Group of Eight called for the development of principles to promote
responsible agricultural investment as a means to regulate foreign investment in land. This
essay contextualizes the development of principles for responsible agricultural investment
within the global land grab. In particular, the essay examines the Principles that Respects
Rights, Livelihoods and Resources proposed by multilateral organizations in 2010 and the
decision by the Committee on World Food Security in 2012 to initiate a multi-stakeholder
process to develop principles for responsible agricultural investments.

Keywords: land grabs, large-scale land acquisitions, governance, responsible agricultural

investment, standards, World Bank

In January 2010, the World Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
(FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and the United Nations Con-
ference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) published a document entitled Principles for
Responsible Agricultural Investment that Respects Rights, Livelihoods and Resources (PRAI).
As stated in the introduction to this volume (Margulis et al., 2013, pp. 1-23), these Principles
were developed in reaction to the ‘sharp increase in investment involving significant use of agri-
cultural land, water, grassland, and forested areas in developing and emerging countries’ prompted
by factors such as ‘the 2008 price spike in food and fuel prices, a desire by countries dependent on
food imports to secure food supplies in the face of uncertainty and market volatility, speculation on
land and commodity price increases, search for alternative energy sources, and possibly antici-
pation of payments for carbon sequestration’ (FAO et al., 2010, p. 1).

Background
In light of how rapidly the land grabbing phenomenon was coming to public attention following
the publication of the civil society denunciation of land grabbing (GRAIN, 2008), in 2009 the

Correspondence Address: Phoebe Stephens, 1-61-14 #201 Kitasenzoku, Ota-ku, Tokyo-to, Japan 145-0062. Email:
phoebe.stephens@gmail.com

# 2013 Taylor & Francis

 188 P. Stephens

Group of Eight (G8) committed at its summit in L’Aquila, to ‘work with partner countries and
international organizations to develop a joint proposal on principles and best practices for inter-
national agricultural investment’ (G8, 2009). This commitment quickly translated into intergo-
vernmental action to develop tools and guidelines for best practices. In September 2009 the
government of Japan, along with the World Bank, FAO, IFAD, and UNCTAD, hosted a round-
table entitled ‘Promoting Responsible International Investment in Agriculture’ at the margins of
the UN General Assembly which aimed at launching an intergovernmental response to land
grabbing. Representatives from 31 governments and 13 organizations, including a private
bank and a multinational agri-food corporation, attended the roundtable where the basic outlines
for principles and a framework for responsible global agricultural investment were agreed. The
report urged the four multilateral organizations to undertake work on policy options in consul-
tation with states, investors, and civil society, however, the actual drafting process was a top-
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down endeavor tightly managed by international organizations.

A first version of PRAI was made public in January 2010 in a discussion paper jointly pre-
pared by the World Bank, FAO, IFAD, and UNCTAD (FAO et al., 2010). This inter-agency dis-
cussion paper, Principles for Responsible Agricultural Investment that Respects Rights,
Livelihoods and Resources (PRAI) outlined seven principles (see Box 1). The PRAI discussion
paper report was intended to encourage discussion over regulating land grabs from a broad
selection of stakeholders including civil society organizations, multilateral and bilateral
donor agencies, and all major investor categories. As a point of departure, the PRAI empha-
sized the important role of investment, especially private investment, in agriculture as
central to increase smallholder farm productivity and its potential to contribute to economic

Box 1. The Principles for Responsible Agricultural Investment are:

Principle 1 (Respecting land and resource rights): existing rights to land and associated
natural resources are recognized and respected.
Principle 2 (Ensuring food security): investments do not jeopardize food security but
rather strengthen it.
Principle 3 (Ensuring transparency, good governance, and proper enabling environment):
processes for accessing land and other resources and then making associated investments
are transparent, monitored, and ensure accountability by all stakeholders, within a proper
business, legal, and regulatory environment.
Principle 4 (Consultation and participation): all those materially affected are consulted,
and agreements from consultations are recorded and enforced.
Principle 5 (Responsible agro-enterprise investing): investors ensure that projects respect
the rule of law, reflect industry best practice, are viable economically, and result in
durable shared value.
Principle 6 (Social sustainability): investments generate desirable and distributional
impacts and do not increase vulnerability.
Principle 7 (Environmental sustainability): environmental impacts due to a project are
quantified and measures taken to encourage sustainable resource use while minimizing
the risk/magnitude of negative impacts and mitigating them.
 The Principles of Responsible Agricultural Investment 189

growth and poverty reduction. Despite its favorable disposition to private investment, the discus-
sion paper also noted that the surge in agricultural investment in the form of land grabs under-
mined growth and poverty reduction when ‘large tracts of land are shifted from production of
food crops to non-food crops’ (e.g. biofuels and animal feed), when food produced in areas
that suffer food shortages is destined mainly for export markets, and when conversion to mono-
cropping undermines the resilience of local ecological system (FAO et al., 2010, pp. 6 – 7).
The above discussion foregrounds the framing of the principles as risk-minimizing mechan-
isms and the importance of industry-led forms of governance. The prominence of risks—risks to
investors, risks to capital, risk to land rights—is notable throughout the inter-agency discussion
paper. This is why the authors of the paper seek to expand upon existing industry self-regulation
initiatives like the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI), the Equator Principles,
and the Santiago Principles to develop a mix of guidelines, codes of good or best practices in
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the context of land grabbing (Inter-Agency Panel, 2010; see also Margulis and Porter, 2013,
pp. 65– 86).
Since the introduction of the PRAI in 2010, it has received substantial attention at the global
level. On one end of the spectrum, the PRAI are championed not just by their authors, the mul-
tilateral institutions, but endorsed by the G8 and subsequently the Group of Twenty (G20). In
November 2010 at the G20’s Seoul Summit, world leaders referred to PRAI as part of the
Seoul Development Consensus for Shared Growth, and called for states and companies to
uphold the principles (G20, 2010, p. 6). However, there has also been major political backlash
against these principles. For example, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Dr
Olivier De Schutter, has been highly critical of PRAI even arguing it is ‘providing policy-
makers with a checklist of how to destroy the global peasantry responsibly’ (De Schutter,
2011, p. 254). Significant transnational advocacy has been directed against the PRAI by
civil society and social movements, such as the campaign ‘Why We Oppose the Principles
for Responsible Agricultural Investment’, led by an increasingly vocal global food sovereignty
movement rejecting PRAI as a ‘long-term corporate takeover of rural people’s farmlands’
(GCAR, 2010, p. 2).

World Bank’s Defense of PRAI

The World Bank’s land grabbing study, Rising Global Interest in Farmland (Deininger et al.,
2011) constituted an effort to shape the debate about land and investment, especially in
regard to informing policymakers’ understanding of land grabs and the desirability of PRAI
as a regulatory response. The study report was self-identified as a ‘dialogue with governments
to define principles, provide guidance, and assess the magnitude of ongoing trends through
empirical research’ and to agree on ‘a definition of issues, best practices, decision tools, guide-
lines and codes of practice for governments and investors in land-extensive agriculture’ (World
Bank, 2010).
The World Bank study seeks to build a case for PRAI. The stakeholders that the report con-
siders integral to achieving positive outcomes with respect to land grabbing are governments in
target countries, investors, civil society, and international institutions and the report addresses
recommendations to each category. Ultimately, the Bank identifies the RAI as the best way
forward in terms of regulating land grabs.
The Bank calls on recipient countries to improve administrative structures, provide infrastruc-
ture, clarify and secure local rights, and protect critical natural resources. Investors are con-
sidered to be highly sensitive to reputational risk and thus it is taken as a given that they will
 190 P. Stephens

engage in activities that minimize social dislocation and environmental destruction. Civil society
organizations are called upon to educate communities on their rights, provide specific assistance
in negotiation and monitoring, and perform a watchdog function to draw attention to noncom-
pliance with existing policy or ‘globally agreed norms’ (Deininger et al., 2011, p. 137). Finally,
the Bank regards international organizations as performing a bridging function that encourages
stakeholders to agree on a standard set of principles.
Initially, the World Bank planned on piloting the RAI principles with six case studies (Ibid.,
p. 138). However, the Bank has chosen to ‘retrofit’ the principles to pre-existing projects. Forty
land investment projects are being been chosen for initial study, two-thirds of these in Africa
with the rest in Asia. After the preliminary stages, investors and community members associated
with the projects are being interviewed and 15 cases will be retained for more in-depth analysis.
Conclusions from the case studies are expected to be made available by May 2013.
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Consideration of the PRAI in the context of the Committee on World Food Security
Conscious of the lack of legitimacy from which the PRAI suffered since they had been devel-
oped without any sort of meaningful consultative process, its promoters sought to obtain the
endorsement of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS). This CFS had been reformed
in October 2009 to constitute the foremost inclusive global forum deliberating on food security
issues (McKeon, 2013, pp. 105– 122). The discussion document prepared for the Policy Round-
table on ‘Land Tenure and International Investment in Agriculture’ at the 37th Session of the
CFS in October 2010 proposed that the CFS ‘endorse the on-going elaboration’ of the PRAI
initiated by the four agencies. This discursive formulation of an endorsement was strongly con-
tested by the civil society participants, by the G77 countries who resented the fact that they had
not been consulted in formulating the PRAI, and by others who considered that the CFS would
lose its authority if it simply ratified instruments developed in other forums for which food secur-
ity is not the primary mission. The decision finally adopted the CFS used the wording ‘taking
note of the on-going process’ rather than ‘endorsing’. In addition, the Committee decided to
start a new and ‘inclusive process of consideration of the principles within the CFS’ consistent
with and complementary to the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure
of Land, Fisheries and Forests (hereinafter ‘Voluntary Guidelines’) which the same session
agreed to negotiate. It was subsequently agreed that the investment in agriculture consultation
would begin only once the Voluntary Guidelines had been adopted, which occurred on 11
May 2012. Provisions on investment in the Voluntary Guidelines were among the most strongly
debated (McKeon, 2013, this volume; Seufert, 2013, pp. 181 –186).
Terms of Reference for the consultation were adopted by the 39th Session of CFS in October
2012 following a highly contentious debate regarding the scope and purpose of the PRAI and
the format of the consultation. Some G8 nations, principally the US and Canada, along with
Australia, the corporate sector, and the World Bank and IFAD fought to take the current
PRAI as the basis for the consultation, to focus it exclusively on foreign investment, and to
conduct it as rapidly as possible. Civil society and social movements, allied with a number
of G77 countries, insisted instead on starting anew from small-scale producers’ own invest-
ments, recognized to account for the bulk of all investments in agriculture. In their view,
the objective would be to develop principles within a human rights framework that would
support investments targeted at small-scale producers and defend them from potentially nega-
tive impacts of corporate and speculative investments. In addition, African states, the region
most targeted by large-scale investments, underlined their need for clear guidance to set in
 The Principles of Responsible Agricultural Investment 191

place national frameworks which would mobilize domestic investments in the first instance,
and ensure that foreign investments be supportive of domestic dynamics and processes. A
decentralized, inclusive two-year consultation process was considered to be essential in
order to involve all stakeholders and raise awareness of the importance of using sustainable
and resilient food security objectives as a reference point for investment frameworks. The
Terms of Reference as adopted take most of these points into consideration, and consultations
will be carried out over the next two years. The results of the consultation will be submitted to
the CFS for debate and adoption at its 41st Session in October 2014. In the meantime the
World Bank is continuing to pilot the PRAI, with support from the G8-led New Alliance
for Food Security and Nutrition.
The PRAI is indicative of new regulation for land grabbing that does not stand alone but that
falls within the wider governance framework for the global food and agricultural system.
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Cohen and Clapp (2009, p. 6) point out the incoherent global governance architecture of
food and agriculture: ‘Many international institutions claim a role, mandates overlap, and
power structures within the relevant institutions vary considerably.’ The contrast between
the PRAI, championed by the G8, and the principles under development in the CFS is exemp-
lary in this regard.

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Phoebe Stephens holds a BA in international development studies from McGill University and
an MA in global governance from the Balsillie School of International Affairs at the University
of Waterloo. Her Master’s research focused on the global governance of land grabs. Phoebe
currently lives in Toronto and is researching the future path of energy production and consump-
tion in East Asia.
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