Date/Time
Wednesday
24 Apr 2019
4:15 pm - 5:30 pm

Location
470 Stephens Hall

Event Type
Film Screening

Alfredo Bini
Photojournalist and ESPM Visiting Scholar

Please join us for an event co-sponsored by the department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management, where photojournalist Alfredo Bini will present his documentary on land grabbing in Ethiopia, titled “Land Grabbing or Land to Investors?” The documentary ‘connects the dots’ between agribusiness corporations and large scale land acquisitions in Ethiopia and documents the disagreement between the way government officials and local communities view this phenomenon. Large tracts of agricultural land worldwide have been acquired and converted from subsistence farming to large scale commercial agriculture. The land is transferred from the control of local communities to agribusiness corporations and private investors often from other countries. Joint venture between domestic corporations and foreign companies are also big players. Since 2002, about 37 million ha of agricultural land – more than four times the area of Portugal – have been controlled by international investors through sales, leases or concessions, mostly in the developing world. In many cases, these land negotiations occur with no transparency, without involving the local communities or with no consideration of societal and environmental impacts. Because customary property rights are often violated, this phenomenon has been termed “land grabbing”.

After the documentary, there will be a round-table discussion with:

Alfredo Bini, Photojournalist and ESPM Visiting Scholar, University of California, Berkeley
Claudia J Carr, Associate Professor of Environmental
Science, University of California, Berkeley
Paolo D’Odorico, Professor of Environmental Sciences, University of California, Berkeley
Jampel Dell’Angelo, Assistant Professor of Water Governance, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands

The panel discussion will focus on the geopolitical, economic, ethical and environmental drivers of land grabbing.