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Incentives and capacities to invest responsibly are significantly affected by the presence of an enabling environment, including supporting policies, laws and institutions. Governments have requested international guidance on the kind of enabling environment needed to attract and secure responsible agricultural investments at the national level. Many other stakeholders, including civil society and the private sector, also seek guidance to design their own strategies to promote responsible investments in agriculture and food systems. While international instruments are an important reference for the CFS‐RAI, implementation and enforcement will be predominantly at the national level, through domestic policies that are aligned with supporting legislation and institutions. A legal and institutional review can help to understand how far the policy themes and approaches related to responsible agricultural investment are already reflected within the domestic regulatory framework. Strengthening of the domestic enabling environment will need to go hand in hand with institutional changes and reform as well as with an improvement of knowledge and skills of national actors at both technical and decision‐making levels, to ensure that countries’ expectations for responsible investment are improved sustainably.

This guide provides a methodology for the review of national legal and institutional frameworks related to responsible investments in agriculture and food systems. It also identifies key areas of regulation within a thematic context, with a focus on larger‐scale private agricultural investments in primary agriculture. These investments often involve the allocation of long‐term rights to natural resources and may take a long time to recover capital costs and generate profits. As a result, investors look to national legal and institutional frameworks for safeguards to ensure they are not adversely affected over an extended period. This provides a significant leverage point for national governments, as the domestic regulatory framework can help to promote a favorable business climate for both foreign and domestic investors while securing the short, medium and long term social, economic and environmental objectives of responsible agricultural investment.