Recent global commodity rushes have profoundly influenced societies across the globe. At least a quarter of a billion hectares of land have been affected, reshaping livelihoods and social and political relations. Contemporary commodity rushes are more complex and far-reaching than those we have seen before, requiring new thinking and practice to respond to such unprecedented challenges. This project aimed to explore contemporary commodity rushes, centred on the reconfiguration of land use and ownership, examining the implications for five spheres of global social life. At its core was the central research question: How do contemporary global commodity rushes reshape the politics of food, climate, labour, citizenship, and geopolitics in different contexts? To answer this, we examined the structural, institutional and political shifts caused by commodity rushes within broader commodity and land regimes and their impacts across the key spheres of global social life. Guided by a multi-disciplinary theoretical framework and grounded empirical work, we explored practical policy questions aimed at probing the potential for socially just and ecologically sustainable reforms. These reforms are anchored in the social justice principles of redistribution, recognition and restitution of wealth and power, and the regeneration and recalibration of human–nature relations. Our empirical research focused primarily on Colombia, Ethiopia and Myanmar—among global hotspots of commodity and land rushes—with complementary studies in Mozambique, Cambodia, the Philippines and China. This project has changed the way we study recent commodity and land rushes, demonstrating why and how they concern not only the 3.5 billion people who live in rural areas, but the entire world population. Conversely, it demonstrates why it is not possible to understand what happens in the five spheres of global social life without comprehending how these, separately and together, interact with commodity and land rushes.
