The Practice of Land Grabbing and Its Compatibility with the Exercise of Territorial Sovereignty

When characterized by certain features, large-scale investment contracts in land raise serious concerns. This paper focuses, in particular, on the intricate relationship between the exercise of host States sovereign powers over their own territory and the practice of land grabbing. While the allocation of land plots to foreign investors might be considered consistent with the principle of permanent sovereignty of States over natural resources, the risk with some land related transactions is that the host State does not simply allow the exploitation of natural resources, but rather the alienation thereof. This is likely to transform territory into exchange goods for the global market, thus causing the disarticulation of territory from the exercise of State sovereign powers and, ultimately, from its normative meaning, which is to be conceived as a set of rights and obligations. After introducing the phenomenon of land grabbing and sketching out the contractual terms of some of these contracts, this paper employs the notion of 'control grabbing' to show how these investment operations, while prima facie aligning with the external dimension of sovereignty, ignore host States' obligations deriving from its internal dimension. The external dimension is realized in the relationship between host States and other (public or private) actors at the international level. The internal dimension epitomizes the obligations host States have towards their territorial community and more specifically the duty to exercise their sovereignty in a way in which people may enjoy the benefits deriving from natural resource exploitation.