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Legal tools special

In this special edition newsletter, we're sharing the newest content to come out of our legal tools research team.

Law and political economy of the global resource squeeze: can action rise to the challenge?

A collection of journal articles by Lorenzo Cotula investigates how national and international law is shifting control over the world’s natural resources – and explores how people in resource-dependent countries are re-appropriating the law to secure their rights.

Cotula leads research, policy engagement and field-level projects on the legal arenas where natural resource governance meets the global economy. In this interview, he discusses some of the main points from his research.

Briefing

Reforming investor-state dispute settlement: what about third-party rights?

The international investment regime is facing calls to reform. Most debate centres on disputes between investors and states, but foreign investment projects can also affect third parties such as local residents and indigenous peoples. Existing arrangements for third parties to participate in investor-state dispute settlement are not designed to protect people whose rights and interests are directly at stake. The briefing, prepared together with Durham Law School, is part of IIED’s work to feed into ongoing reforms of international investment treaties and dispute settlement.

Rural producer agency and agricultural value chains: What role for socio-legal empowerment?

Growing numbers of policies and programmes in low- and middle-income countries aim to integrate small-scale rural producers into agricultural value chains, based on concepts such as ‘inclusive business’ and ‘shared value’. But significant questions remain over how best to: recognise the possibly divergent visions, interests and constraints of various actors, and support genuine agency among rural producers and their communities.

Rural producer agency and agricultural value chains: What role for socio-legal empowerment? explores whether socio-legal empowerment – the combination of recourse to law with related change strategies such as collective action and gaining greater business savvy – might help address these issues.

The associated briefing, Actors of change: can socio-legal empowerment support rural producer agency? develops a conceptual framework to further understand, test and strengthen the contribution that socio-legal empowerment can make to enhance the agency of rural actors as they engage with commercial agriculture.

The report and briefing lay the conceptual foundations for the action-oriented Empowering Producers in Commercial Agriculture project with partners WOLREC in Malawi and CSRC and NACCFL in Nepal.