De l’accaparement des terres aux investissements agricoles internationaux responsables : la construction de l’acceptabilité sociale
June 25, 2011, Kofi Annan, said « the problem of climate change, global food and nutrition security is the challenge of our time. » As forecasts estimate the world population will achieve nine billion in 2050, the question of how the world is to be fed is thrust into startling focus. In this context, the emerging phenomenon of international agricultural transactions is on the spot.  While the World Bank encourages agribusiness in developing countries, social movements denounce "land grabbing", with a total area of land that changed hands, estimated between 48.9 and 63.1 million hectares. The agricultural world is in crisis, and the subject of land grabbing has become a must in the media. This interdisciplinary research is intended to be exploratory and aims at identifying how the construction of the social acceptability of the agricultural industry at international level could be started, based on the representations of the actors of what is “unacceptable”.  Having identified the main issues of the agricultural world, the central question of the legitimacy of public decisions, that is to say decisions having a public scope, whether taken by private or public actors, will be addressed. Subsequently, a parallel will be drawn with the mining sector, which has been confronted for several years with the notion of "social risk", focusing in particular on hybrid regulatory instruments, which emerged in response to the crisis of legitimacy of the sector. The research will therefore concentrate on the process of homogenization of the judgment of social acceptability within the agricultural industry, analyzing the media coverage of the phenomenon, and reinforcing the analysis by semistructured interviews with different actors working in international NGOs, international organizations (such as the World Bank or the International Finance Corporation), a large multinational involved in mining, or responsible investment groups.
Sustainable Development Land grabbing Social acceptability Social license to operate Corporate social responsibility Mining