The land grabbing in the international scenario: the role of the EU in land grabbing

Abstract

The worldwide increase in population and consumption has produced a growing demand for food and energy in the rich and developing Countries. The resulting intensification of land investments, to cope with this need, has in many cases produced investments without transparency rules and it hasn’t created real development for local people. The aim of this paper is to identify, through a cluster analysis, homogeneous groups of investor Countries in order to understand the role of the EU Member States in the context of land grabbing. The results show that the strategies adopted by the investors are driven by the need to achieve energy security and reduce CO2 emissions in order to cope with the problems of food security and to adopt the proposals and the objectives of the European Union Policy for Sustainability. In particular, the acquisitions of EU Member States are driven by the need to provide enough food for the exponential growth of the population and to reduce the energy deficit in view of the achievement of the objectives set out in the “Europe 2020”.