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People
> Natural Resources research group

Lorenzo Cotula

Principal researcher (law and sustainable development) and team leader, legal tools, Natural Resources

Lorenzo Cotula leads research, policy engagement and field-level projects on the legal arenas where natural resource governance meets the global economy – cutting across land and natural resource law and governance; international economic law; law and transnational value chains; human rights; political economy of natural resources and foreign investment; and legal empowerment, citizen agency and public accountability.
Full biography

Lorenzo is also a visiting professor at the School of Law, University of Strathclyde.

Expertise

Land and natural resource governance; economic law, particularly international investment law; human rights; “responsible investment”, particularly in agriculture and the extractive industries; small-scale producers and transnational value chains; law and political economy in natural resource investments; legal, socio-legal and cross-disciplinary research methods; legal empowerment approaches; citizen participation in law reform. Close collaboration with researchers and practitioners in the global South; country experience in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Before IIED

Research consultant to the Legal Office of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO); collaboration with two Italian NGOs.

Education
Postgraduate certificate in Sustainable Business, University of Cambridge; PhD in Law, University of Edinburgh; MSc in Development Studies (Distinction), London School of Economics; Degree in Law (cum laude), University "La Sapienza" of Rome.

Current work

Lead on Legal Tools for Citizen Empowerment, a collaborative initiative to strengthen rights in investment and trade.

Lorenzo Cotula's picture
Telephone: 
+44 (0) 131 300 0161
Email: 
lorenzo.cotula@iied.org
Twitter: @LCotula
Google Scholar
 
Languages: English, Italian and French

Lorenzo Cotula's projects

A concerete mixing lorry drives under an arch that has the words 'Phnom Penh Special Economic Zone' written on it

Special economic zones: a rights perspective

Project, Dec 2021
Forestry tractor carrying fruits from a field

ALIGN: Advancing Land-based Investment Governance

Project, Sep 2020
Flags outside the Palais des Nations, Geneva

Rethinking investment treaties and dispute settlement in the light of sustainable development

Project, Jun 2020
A small farm.

Strengthening land governance, local to global

Project, Jun 2020
aerial view of an oil palm plantation

Land rights and investment treaties

Project, May 2020
A large group of people sitting in a circle outdoors

Democratising international investment law

Project, May 2020
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Latest publications

Recalibrating rights, limitations and obligations in land governance

The Right to Land

Protecting legitimate tenure rights: From concepts to practice

Land and labour: Agricultural workers’ tenure rights

Tenure rights in large-scale and artisanal mining: Implications of the Tenure Guidelines

Tenure rights and obligations: towards a more holistic approach to land governance

View more publications by this author

 

Lorenzo Cotula's blog posts

A crowd of women and men hold banners and shout in protest

Confronting structural inequalities in South-North research collaborations

Blog, May 2022
A group of people sit on the floor in a circle. A woman on her feet is reading from a paper. Some other people are no their feet and holding hands in the air.

Legal empowerment as action research

Blog, Jan 2022
Stalls of fruits and vegetables.

Food Systems Summit: implications for global food governance

Blog, Sep 2021
Woman selling vegetables

Agricultural contracts and farmer agency: a shift in perspective

Blog, May 2021
Páramo landscape

Investment disputes from below: whose rights matter?

Long read, Jul 2020
A road going into the distance splits two fields

Stopping land and policy grabs in the shadow of COVID-19

Blog, Jun 2020
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Links to other sites

Renegotiating control in global food governance

Academic blog, Welternährung, April 2022

Oil, ‘modernity’ and law: revisiting the Abu Dhabi Arbitration in the age of the climate crisis

Academic reflection, TWAILR, March 2022

The shifting contours of property: ‘social function’ in the neoliberal era

Academic blog, Transformative private law, December 2021

A more holistic approach to land governance: recalibrating rights and obligations

External blog, Land Portal, December 2021

The global land rush, revisited

Academic blog, Afronomicslaw, November 2021

Rethinking investment law from the ground up: extractivism, human rights, and investment treaties

Academic blog, Investment Treaty News, March 2021

Research-to-policy transitions in international economic law

Academic blog, Afronomics Law, March 2021

Law and political economy of commodity rushes: reflections on “land grabbing” in the global South

Academic blog, September 2019

Rural producer agency and agricultural value chains

Webinar report/video, September 2019

Justice and the Anthropocene

Video from a roundtable, Kings College London, April 2018

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50 years linking local to global

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