Harvard Endowment Fund

Harvard University has been grabbing lands from indigenous communities, cutting down forests, and depriving rural people of access to water around the world for years.

Grassroots International is supporting partners and allies in a global campaign to stop violent and illegal land grabs at their source: the massive financial investments of pension funds and college endowments.

Despite Cuyama Valley being one of the most severely overdrawn basins in California, Harvard recently proposed a plan to build three large reservoirs in the area for its vineyard, much to the chagrin of neighboring residents and farmers.

A three-day campaign called “Land Under Siege,” consisting of a teach-in, a Mass. Hall rally and an organiser training event, was organized by Harvard Undergraduates for Environmental Justice.

Students gathered in front of Harvard’s central administration to urge Harvard University President Lawrence S. Bacow to divest the University’s $39.2 billion endowment from farmland holdings around the world.

The Russian government has actively supported foreign investment in Siberian agriculture, making 1 million hectares of arable land in the Far Eastern Federal District available to foreign buyers

In California's wine country, Harvard University's multi-billion dollar endowment is looking to take advantage of water scarcity.

Harvard University, the US pension fund manager TIAA/Nuveen and Japan's Mitsui are among the foreign companies buying up Brazilian farmlands that are responsible for over 420,000 ha of deforestation in the Cerrado since 2000.

Making a bet on climate change, the university’s $39 billion endowment has been snapping up farmland and the related water rights

The fight over a vinyard in the foothills of the Sierra Madre Mountains illustrates the risks that Harvard’s endowment once embraced with its unusual strategy of investing directly in massive agriculture projects around the world.

Harvard University's endowment fund has 5 principles that guide its investments in natural resources, including farmland

The elite university has quietly become one of the largest owners of farmland in the world, according to a new report by GRAIN, an international nonprofit supporting small farmers, and Brazil-based Rede Social de Justiça e Direitos Humanos