The Real Dirt on Responsible Agricultural Investments at Rio+20: Multilateralism versus Corporate Self‐Regulation

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12121
• Published date: 01 March 2015
• Date: 01 March 2015

The Real Dirt on Responsible Agricultural

Investments at Rio120: Multilateralism

versus Corporate Self-Regulation

Birgit M€

uller Gilles Cloiseau

This article uses a fine-grained anthropological and linguistic analysis to

expose the routine negotiating practices and power games behind the conclu-

sion of paragraph 115 on responsible agricultural investments during the

Rio120 Conference in June 2012. These negotiations are simultaneously a

telling example for the quotidian stuff of international governance—an arena

in which much larger forces are played out through small language-based tac-

tics, and they are representative of an exceptional moment when global multi-

lateral policy making in the frame of the United Nations was challenged by

the legitimation of private authority and corporate self-regulation. Combining

anthropological and linguistic methods, the article focused on language use,

analyzing the ways in which people interact in a highly coded language, how

they “perform,” by exploring, playing with, and twisting the grammatical

structures of the spoken language. At issue is the large-scale appropriation of

agricultural land all over the world by multinational corporations, investment

funds, and foreign governments.

115. We reaffirm the important work and inclusive nature of the

Committee on World Food Security (CFS), including through its

role in facilitating country-initiated assessments on sustainable

food production and food secur ity, and we encourage countries to

give due consideration to implementing the CFS Voluntary

Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land,

Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security.

We take note of the on-going discussions on responsible agricul-

tural investment in the framework of the CFS, as well as the Prin-

ciples for Responsible Agricultural Investment (PRAI).

Paragraph 115 of the outcome document of the Rio120 Con-

ference is an umbrella text that sets the frame for multilateral

negotiations on global agricultural investment policy that go on

We wish to thank the Ecoverio team for the great collective experience of doing field-

work together and for all the stimulating discussions. A special thanks to Jean Foyer and

Sarah Benabou for commenting on the manuscript and to Elise Demeulenaere and Denis

Chartier for sharing the adventure of doing fieldwork at the Rio120 negotiations on

“Food” and for passing on their notes to us. We would like to thank the anonymous

reviewers for their interesting and challenging comments.

Please direct all correspondence to Birgit M€uller, IIAC-LAIOS, EHESS, 190 Ave de

France, Paris, France 75013; e-mail: bmuller@msh-paris.fr

Law & Society Review, Volume 49, Number 1 (2015)

V

C2015 Law and Society Association. All rights reserved.

39

elsewhere. Behind the term “responsible agricultural investment”

hides the concern to rein in, regulate, or only render

“transparent” the worldwide purchases or leases of arable land.

Transnational and corporate investors, governments, and local

elites rushed in recent years to invest massively in agriculture tak-

ing control over large quantities of land (including its minerals

and water) to produce food, feed, biofuel, and other industrial

commodities for the international or domestic market (Margulis

et al. 2013: 2). This global land rush is occurring in all regions of

the world and sparked new transnational political struggles and

controversies. Two global governance instruments with similar

names but different legitimacy address these struggles, the human

rights-based “principles for responsible agricultural investments”

developed multilaterally in the CFS (rai) and the Principles for

Responsible Agricultural Investment (PRAI), a self-regulatory

scheme advanced by the World Bank. The status attributed to

these mechanisms in the Rio Declaration, destined to become a

roadmap for the Future We Want

1

was at stake in the negotiations

on paragraph 115.

Each word in the seemingly friendly, supportive phrases of

this paragraph has been the object of protracted controversies

and competing worldviews. In this article, we use a fine anthropo-

logical and linguistic analysis to expose the routine negotiating

practices and power games behind the conclusion of this para-

graph that we observed during the Rio120 Conference in June

2012. The negotiations of paragraph 115 are simultaneously a

telling example for the quotidian stuff of international gover-

nance—an arena in which much larger forces are played out

through small language-based tactics, and they are representative

of an exceptional moment when global multilateral policy making

in the frame of the United Nations (UN) was challenged by the

legitimation of private authority and corporate self-regulation.

We intend to make the real-world issues that hide behind the

legal language of the paragraph, transparent, and examine the ten-

sion between the promotion of human rights and the desire to pro-

tect and encourage business investments that become apparent in

these negotiations. Behind its highly technical language lie conflicts

about the role the UN are supposed to play to rein in the large-

scale appropriation of agricultural land all over the world by multi-

national corporations, investment funds, and foreign governments.

Although the Rio Declaration does not commit governments to any

specific action or firm engagement, it treads on highly controversial

ground and frames negotiations that go on in other forums.

1

The FutureWe Want is the title of the Rio120 Declaration.

40 The Real Dirt on Agricultural Investments at Rio120