Desertification, Land Grabbing and Food Sovereignty
The Unexplored Link
Keywords:
Desertification, Land Grabbing, Food Sovereignty, Green CorridorAbstract
Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems and practices. Recent years, there has been an active interest in foreign investment in productive agricultural land in developing countries across the political, legal and geographical jurisdictions by governments as the result of a complex combination of a number of socio-economic and environmental factors. Among the factors, depletion of water resources and acceleration of desertification are the most significant drivers. For example, Saudi Arabia, which for many years encouraged wheat production, decided to phase it out by 2016 because of depletion of fresh water sources. Equally many firms in Gulf countries abandoned agriculture due to alkalinity. Now they invest in foreign agriculture land. This changing nature of foreign investment in agriculture land has far reaching consequences on food security. In many of the host States, there is an inadequate legal framework to protect rights of people. Based on the secondary sources, this paper analyses the link among desertification, land grabbing and food sovereignty. To comprehensively address the pressing issues of hunger and poverty, the food sovereignty principles empower local communities to have greater control over their productive resources, use & sustain ecological friendly means of production, and access local markets as well as nutritious and culturally accepted food.
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