A/HRC/12/31* page 12 or rent of land in order to achieve food security.13 Private investors, including large investment funds, have also acquired land, sometimes for merely speculative motives, with the conviction that the price of arable land will continue to rise in the future. 20. There are opportunities in this development. For host States, the arrival of investment has the potential of creating employment, both on and off the farm (in associated processing industries, for instance). It may lead to transfers of technologies. It could improve the access of local producers to markets at domestic, regional and international levels. It could increase public revenues, through taxation and export duties. For countries purchasing or leasing land abroad, this implies greater food security, since they will be less dependent on international markets to acquire the food they need to feed their populations - although the risks of lower productivity in agriculture in subtropical regions owing to climate change and, in the future, higher freight costs, could partially offset this advantage. 21. Yet, the human rights challenges are real. In June 2009, the Special Rapporteur put forward a set of core principles and measures in order to frame the discussion on large-scale land acquisitions or leases in human rights terms. These principles are based on the right to food, but they also aim to ensure the respect of agricultural workers’ rights and to protect land users from eviction that do not comply with certain conditions. They also call for the respect of the right to self-determination of peoples and on the right to development. They may be summarized as follows: (a) Negotiations leading to investment agreements should be conducted in full transparency, with the participation of the local communities, whose access to land and other productive resources could be affected as a result of the arrival of an investor; (b) In principle, any shift in land use may only take place with the free, prior and informed consent of the local communities concerned. This is particularly important for indigenous communities, in view of the discrimination and marginalization that they have historically endured. Forced evictions should only be allowed in the most exceptional circumstances, when in accordance with the locally applicable legislation, when they are justified as necessary for the general welfare, and when they are accompanied by adequate compensation and alternative resettlement or access to productive land; 13 See Vera Songwe and Klaus Deininger, Foreign Investment in Agricultural Production: Opportunities and Challenges, World Bank, 2009; Reuters, “Factbox: foreign forays into African farming”, 2 March 2009; GRAIN, “The 2008 land grab for food and financial security”, 18 October 2008 (available at www.grain.org/go/landgrab); International Food Policy Research Institute policy brief 13 April 2009; International Institute for Environment and Development, FAO and IFAD, “Land grab or development opportunity? Agricultural investments and international land deals in Africa”, 26 May 2009.