ABSTRACT
This chapter explores use of the concept of benefit-sharing in land governance for food and agriculture purposes, with a particular focus on farmers’ rights and benefit-sharing from public lands, including the case of large-scale agricultural investments. I start by outlining fundamental elements that differentiate the regulation of benefit-sharing from land use compared to benefit-sharing from genetic resource use for research and development, related to the nature of the resource, the scope of the regulation and the determination of beneficiaries. I draw a general picture of the trends behind land governance, including linkages between land distribution and social justice, gender as a decisive element of land poverty, the central role of national law and interactions between formal and customary tenure systems and the emergence of international regulation, including human rights and investment law. I then trace the emergence of the concept of fair and equitable benefit-sharing through its relevance to land governance in environmental treaties, including the Convention on Biological Diversity and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. I explore in detail specific applications of benefit-sharing with regard to farmers’ rights in the context of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, human rights including the right to food and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants, as well as implementation challenges in view of seed and variety certification and marketing regulations. I propose a broad construction of farmers’ rights to include supporting elements and enabling conditions including land rights and access to markets. I conclude the analysis with a case study on the international policy framework on access to markets and linkages with farmers’ rights and benefit-sharing. I then pass to applications of benefit-sharing from the use of public lands. I present basic categorizations and challenges arising from overlapping formal and customary tenure systems, and the trend of large-scale agricultural investments, and focus on the emerging legal basis, including the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure and human rights instruments, and specific implementation efforts. I conclude the analysis with a discussion of competing land uses and benefit-sharing on the isle of Ikaria, Greece.
