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  • Published: 3 June 2013
  • ISBN: 9781905811755
  • Imprint: Eden Project Books
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 448
  • RRP: $29.99

The Landgrabbers

The New Fight Over Who Owns The Earth



How City financiers, Chinese billionaires, oil sheikhs and agribusiness are buying up our hungry, crowded world. Brilliant, trail-blazing reportage.

What do City speculators, Gulf oil sheikhs, Chinese entrepreneurs, big-name financiers like George Soros and industry titans like Richard Branson buy when they go shopping? Land. Parcels the size of Wales are being snapped up across the plains of Africa, the paddy fields of Southeast Asia, the jungles of the Amazon and the prairies of Eastern Europe. Why? The money men will tell you that their investments will bring an end to world famine. But is this more about fat profits and food security for the few?

The race is on to grab the world’s most precious and irreplaceable resource. In this brilliant piece of investigative journalism Fred Pearce moves from boardroom and trading floor to goat-herder’s hut and flooded forest. The result is an eye-opening, extraordinarily important examination of the most profound ethical and economic issue in the world today.

  • Published: 3 June 2013
  • ISBN: 9781905811755
  • Imprint: Eden Project Books
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 448
  • RRP: $29.99

About the author

Fred Pearce

The Times described Fred Pearce recently as one of Britain's finest science writers. An author and journalist based in London, he has reported on environment, popular science and development issues from over 60 countries over the past 20 years, specialising in global environment issues. He is the environment and development consultant for the New Scientist and writes regularly for the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian, the Independent the Times Higher Education Supplement and Country Life. In the US he has written for the Boston Globe, Audubon Magazine, Foreign Policy, Seed, Popular Science and Time and has written reports and extended journalism for WWF, the UN Environment Programme, the Red Cross, UNESCO, the World Bank and the UK Environment Agency. He is syndicated in Japan, Australia and elsewhere and his books have been translated into at least ten languages, including French, German, Portuguese, Japanese and Spanish.

He was voted BEMA Environment Journalist of the Year in 2001 and has been short-listed for the same award in 2000, 2002 and 2003. He is a past recipient of the Peter Kent Conservation Book Award and the TES Junior Information Book Award.

He is a regular broadcaster on radio and TV, and has given public lectures on all six continents in the past two years.

'Fred is one of the few people that understand the world as it really is' - James Lovelock, scientist

'[Fred is] one of my heroes' - Rt. Hon John Gummer MP, former UK environment secretary

Praise for The Landgrabbers:

'Brilliant: Fred Pearce has lifted the lid on an issue that has yet to register with most people. Anyone who cares about the fate of the planet should read this.' Chris Mullin


Fred's books include: The Landgrabbers, Peoplequake, Deep Jungle, When the Rivers Run Dry, The Last Generation, Confessions of an Eco Sinner and Ian and Fred's Big Green Book for children.

Also by Fred Pearce

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Praise for The Landgrabbers

Brilliant: Fred Pearce has lifted the lid on an issue that has yet to register with most people. Anyone who cares about the fate of the planet should read this.

Chris Mullen

Fred Pearce is at the nexus, brilliantly reporting on the biggest swindle of the 21st centurey. He is without peer.

Susan George, author of HOW THE OTHER HALF DIES

compelling and well-researched

Nature

A very important piece of work.

Tony Benn

This is just what the world has been waiting for-a detailed overview of the land grabs that are the principal manifestation of a new geopolitics of food.

Lester R. Brown, President of Earth Policy Institute and author of World on the Edge

an astounding eye-opener, Landgrabbers is an unflinchingly sobering read and all the more important for that

Compass, Cox & Kings’ Travel Magazine

a gut-wrenching page-turner... an exhaustive and compelling overview of the threat facing the global commons

New Internationalist

Eye-opening... a new global horror story of the rich annexing the poor

Independent