Brussels debate on land access and distribution encourages bottom-up approach

With current discussions over land access and distribution in the spotlight, members of the European Coordination of La Via Campesina (ECVC) from across the EU and Central Asia, exchanged views on the issue at the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), Brussels. 

They highlighted that land in Europe is concentrated in ever fewer hands: the top 3% of farms control half of the total amount of arable land, while 80% of farms – below 10 ha – control just 12%. This is matched by the unequal distribution of CAP subsidies that are supporting big farmers based on an agro industrial model. Every 25 minutes a farm in Europe closes down. 

People struggling against the privatization and dispossession of natural resources, land and water grabbing are converging across the global north and south. As the first international instrument to apply human rights based approach to the governance of tenure, fisheries and forests, the Tenure Guidelines (TGs) are a vital tool to empower local communities and provide practical guidance to governments to stop these processes. In the words of Javier Sanchez, member of ECVC Co-ordination Committee, “to ensure that states live up to their human rights obligations, what is needed now is a legal tool at EU level for implementing the TGs”.

For the development of such a tool, DG AGRI, members of the EU parliament and the FAO representatives who attended the debate, encouraged a bottom up approach, with civil society organisations playing a major role watching EU and national policies. 

This shall include the viewpoint of central Asian small food producer’s organisations, which are also affected by large scale corporate driven resource grabbing. As Mariam Jorjadze, on behalf of Elkana, in Georgia, explained “during the transition from the Soviet economy to the free trade market in Caucuses and central Asia land became fragmented. Farmers were unprepared for the wave of big investments and were forced by poverty to sell their lands […] Land should be a human right not a commodity,” she added.

Currently, the human rights based approach to the land, food and climate nexus is at the core of the new campaign Hands on the Land for Food Sovereignty that involve 16 allies, including ECVC, TNI , FIAN, Terra Nuova, Crocevia. Amongst key demands, organizations call on the EU to implement policies targeting climate and natural resources that protect and support the most vulnerable groups and their resources.