ABSTRACT
National and international law are often viewed as remedies for the illegality of large scale investments in the global South which lack consent, cause displacement or violate environmental standards. However, it is the land concessions agreements concluded between states and investors that create ad hoc legal frameworks that crystallise the inequality of the state–market–community power dynamics and transfer power, control and value from the public/communal to the private. This chapter analyses ten land concession from the Open Land Contracts database and argues that these public–private legal arrangements are crucial to legalising multiple enclosures beyond the grabbing of land. They formalise investors’ rights over water, create special tax regimes and give private actors substantial policing powers within the perimeter of the projects. When law is seen from the ground, several doubts arise on its capacity to provide ‘better development’ in the context of large-scale investments in land.
