View previous stories
	Large-scale land acquisitions a threat to the poor by International Land Coalition & agencies   Dec 2011   The most comprehensive study of large land acquisitions in developing countries to date — published online on 14 December by the International Land Coalition (ILC) — has found more evidence of harm than benefits.   More than 40 organisations collaborated on the Global Commercial Pressures on Land Research Project, which synthesised 27 case studies, thematic studies and regional overviews.   The report also includes the latest data from the ongoing Land Matrix project to monitor large-scale land transactions, and covers a full decade of land deals from 2000-2010. Those deals amount to more than 200 million hectares of land – or eight times the size of the United Kingdom.   The research revealed some trends that have not been widely reported in the recent surge of media coverage of land deals. First, national elites play a much larger role in land acquisitions than has been noted to date by media reports that have focused on foreign investors.   Second, food is not the main focus of the land deals. Out of the 71 million hectares in deals that the authors could cross-reference, 22% was for mining, tourism, industry and forestry and three-quarters of the remaining 78% for agricultural production was for biofuels.   The researchers found that while large land deals can create opportunities, they are more likely to cause problems for the poorest members of society, who often lose access to land and resources that are essential to their livelihoods.   “Under current conditions, large-scale land deals threaten the rights and livelihoods of poor rural communities and especially women,” says report lead author Dr Ward Anseeuw of the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development, CIRAD.   In addition, promised jobs have not yet materialised, and in their rush to attract investments, governments miss out on long-term tax and lease revenues that better negotiated deals could provide.   “The competition for land is becoming increasingly global and increasingly unequal. Weak governance, corruption and a lack of transparency in decision-making, which are key features of the typical environment in which large-scale land acquisitions take place, mean that the poor gain few benefits from these deals but pay high costs,” says Dr Madiodio Niasse, Secretariat Director of the International Land Coalition, whose members include UN agencies, International Financial Institutions, research institutes, and civil society and farmers’ organisations.   Weak land rights are another problem. “As governments own the land it is easy for them to lease large areas to investors, but the benefits for local communities or national treasuries are often minimal,” says co-author, Dr Lorenzo Cotula of the International Institute for Environment and Development. “This highlights the need for poor communities to have stronger rights over the land they have lived on for generations.” In addition, economic governance is failing the rural poor.   The international trade regimes provide legal protection to international investors, while fewer and less effective international arrangements have been established to protect the rights of the rural poor or to ensure that greater trade and investment translate into inclusive sustainable development and poverty reduction.   Part of the problem is also that many policymakers think small-scale farming has no future and that large scale, intensive agriculture is the best way to achieve food security and support national development.   The dispossession and marginalisation of the rural poor is nothing new. Rather, the current land rush represents an acceleration of ongoing processes, and one that appears set to continue. This report thus concludes that we are at a crossroads as regards the future of rural societies, land-based production and ecosystems in many areas of the South.   The report recommends that governments and investors: recognise and respect the customary land and resource rights of rural people. Put smallholder production at the centre of strategies for agricultural development. Make international human rights law work for the poor. Make decision-making over land transparent, inclusive and accountable. Ensure environmental sustainability in decisions over land and water-based acquisitions and investments.   The report strongly urges models of investment that do not involve large-scale land acquisitions, but rather work together with local land users, respecting their land rights and the ability of small-scale farmers themselves to play a key role in investing to meet the food and resource demands of the future.   February 2012   Land Grabs may lead to "widespread civil unrest" warns new report.   A report out from the Rights and Resources Initiative states that global land grab efforts will lead to "widespread civil unrest" unless the rights of people who have lived on those lands are taken into consideration.   Conflicts have already occurred over land grabs and the current disregard to community members rights creates situations for more conflict, the group says.   “Controversial land acquisitions were a key factor triggering the civil wars in Sudan, Liberia and Sierra Leone, and there is every reason to be concerned that conditions are ripe for new conflicts to occur in many other places,” said Jeffrey Hatcher, director of global programs for the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), which sponsored an expert panel on trends shaping rural lands and rights worldwide.   In presenting the results of an analysis of tenure rights in 35 African countries, by international land rights specialist Liz Alden Wily, Hatcher noted that despite the clear potential for bloodshed, “local land rights are being repeatedly and tragically ignored during an astonishing buying spree across Africa.”   Alden Wily’s review found that the majority of 1.4 billion hectares of rural land, including forests, rangelands or marshlands, are claimed by states, but held in common by communities, affecting “a minimum” of 428 million of the rural poor in sub-Saharan Africa. “Every corner of every state has a customary owner,” Alden Wily concluded.   From the report: Land-grabbing has become recognized as a global phenomenon. In 2011, both Oxfam and the International Land Coalition estimated that more than 200 million hectares had been bought or leased by agri-businesses since 2001—more than four times a previous estimate by the World Bank.   Responding to growing alarm, in October the United Nations Committee on World Food Security discussed voluntary guidelines to protect communities. To the anger of human rights campaigners, however, it postponed a decision until 2012.   Land-grabbing has been triggered by concerns about food security, coupled with the lure of rising world food prices. Most of the grabs have been for state lands, including pastures, forests, and wetlands, most of which are the customary property of communities. Two-thirds of the reported land grabs have been in Africa, where nearly 700 million people live on land that is customarily owned but has insecure tenure under statutory law. Most of this land is deemed — falsely — by governments to be “empty” or “underused”.   The report goes on to note that though commonly referred to as "land grabs," water is taken as well: Land-grabbing is often also accompanied by water-grabbing. In Mali, for example, tens of thousands of hectares of land along the banks of the Niger River have been leased to Chinese and South African sugar corporations.   Sugar is one of the world’s thirstiest crops, and one of the lease contracts says that all the lease’s irrigation needs must be met before any others are taken care of. The schemes take grazing lands but also threaten to dry out the downstream Inner Niger Delta wetlands. The 1.4 million people there rely on annual flooding for traditional recession agriculture, fisheries, and wet pastures.   In late 2011, drought halved the flooded area, triggering a mass migration. Some 30% of the water that should have been reaching the wetlands was being diverted by up-river agricultural projects.   With water shortages the main limiting factor on farm output in an estimated one-quarter of the world, water grabs are set to grow.   In April of last year, peasant rights group La Via Campesina along with Right Livelihood Award-winning group GRAIN, among others, criticized efforts by the World Bank and other groups to repackage land grabs as "responsible agricultural investments."   Nervous about the potential political backlash from the current phase of land grabbing, a number of concerned governments and agencies, from Japan to the G-8, have stepped forward to suggest criteria that could make these deals acceptable. The most prominent among these is the World Bank-led Principles for Responsible Agricultural Investment that Respect Rights, Livelihoods and Resources (RAI).   The RAI were jointly formulated by the World Bank, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). They consist of seven principles that investors may wish to voluntarily subscribe to when conducting large-scale farmland acquisitions. It is noteworthy that the RAI principles were never submitted for approval to the governing bodies of these four institutions.   RAI (seven principles for land aquisitions):   1. Land and resource rights: Existing rights to land and natural resources are recognised and respected.   2. Food security: Investments do not jeopardise food security, but rather strengthen it.   3. Transparency, good governance and enabling environment: Processes for accessing land and making associated investments are transparent, monitored, and ensure accountability.   4. Consultation and participation: Those materially affected are consulted and agreements from consultations are recorded and enforced.   5. Economic viability and responsible agro-enterprise investing: Projects are viable in every sense, respect the rule of law, reflect industry best practice, and result in durable shared value.   6. Social sustainability: Investments generate desirable social and distributional impacts and do not increase vulnerability.   7. Environmental sustainability: Environmental impacts are quantified and measures taken to encourage sustainable resource use, while minimising and mitigating the negative impact.   In April 2010, some 130 organisations and networks from across the world, including some of the most representative alliances of farmers, pastoralists and fisherfolk, denounced the RAI initiative. Their statement debunked RAI as a move to try to legitimise land grabbing and asserted that facilitating the long-term corporate (foreign and domestic) takeover of rural people"s farmlands is completely unacceptable no matter which guidelines are followed.   This statement was endorsed by groups and social movements from around the world following its release. Shortly after, the UN"s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter publicly criticised RAI for being "woefully inadequate" and said, "It is regrettable that, instead of rising to the challenge of developing agriculture in a way that is more socially and environmentally sustainable, we act as if accelerating the destruction of the global peasantry could be accomplished responsibly."   Mr. De Schutter stressed that harmful investments to the detriment of local populations can only be warded off by securing the underlying rights of farmers, herders and fisherfolk, and he called on States to be wary of the dangers of speculation over land and concentration of ownership when land rights are transferred to investors offering to ‘develop’ farmland.   “We must escape the mental cage that sees large-scale investments as the only way to ‘develop’ agriculture and to ensure stability of supply for buyers,” he said. Visit the related web page
	Climate debate needs to address famine in Africa by Mary Robinson, Tom Arnold Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice Ireland   November 30, 2011   The climate change conference in Durban provides an opportunity to develop a sustainable global food system.   Returning Somalia after 19 years, and hearing the UN declare famine in two regions, Lower Shaballe and Bakool, was heart- wrenching. We could see the evidence all around us in Dollow, which has become a transition post for Somalis en route to Ethiopia. The families who reach Dollow rest, or rather collapse, under some trees. They are given minimum food and water by a local Somali NGO, and encouraged to continue on their way to Ethiopia.   Fatima Zabe was holding her emaciated three-year-old, and her other five children were lying on the ground around her. She was barely able to answer our questions as she had walked from El Bon, about 125km away. She did not know where her husband was. The only spark of life for Fatima and the other families was when a donkey cart with water came, and they started to line up with their cans.   Nearby we visited the Mother and Child Health Centre run by the Somali District Health Board with the support of Trócaire. There were long queues of women with malnourished children waiting to be weighed and assessed. The women we spoke to referred repeatedly to gaja (hunger). The local district commissioner urged us to increase the support available, including for other areas “where children and the elderly have to be left to die before they can get here”. He told us “your eyes are your teacher”.   The plight of those living in the Horn of Africa brought home the terrible vulnerability of the people living there to weather and climate shocks. East Africa has experienced above normal temperatures for eight successive years resulting in devastating drought. Since the food price crisis of 2008, food security has again been high on the agenda of donors, NGOs and multilateral aid agencies as they recognised the central role that agriculture plays in helping people to escape from dire poverty and famine. The more recent scenes from the Horn of Africa reinforced the imperative of sustaining efforts and attention on food and nutrition security.   The 2011 Global Hunger Index, jointly published by Concern Worldwide, the International Food Policy Research Institute and Welthungerhilfe, concluded that 26 countries have levels of hunger that are “alarming” or “extremely alarming”. The latter – Burundi, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Eritrea – are all in Sub-Saharan Africa.   The report’s three main recommendations are: to revise biofuel policies so as to balance the potential benefits of biofuels with the potential negative impact on food and feed markets; to regulate financial activities in food markets which have become highly volatile; and to adapt to and mitigate extreme weather change.   An opportunity exists to make progress on the last of these recommendations at the Durban Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The conference should work to achieve the following three objectives:   First, make progress on a legally binding agreement. A legally binding deal on climate change is the only meaningful way forward. Central to this is agreement on the future of the Kyoto Protocol, set to expire at the end of December next year unless a second commitment period is agreed; and the need for a new legally binding agreement to lock in ambitious greenhouse gas emissions reductions and provide support for developing countries.   Even if it is too much to expect a legally-binding agreement to be concluded at Durban, there is an urgent need to make progress on a package which brings together the two negotiating tracks, addressing the Kyoto Protocol and the convention, to pave the way for a convergence phase during which the Kyoto Protocol continues to operate while steps are taken to work towards a new legally binding instrument. This is ambitious but achievable and could chart the way towards agreement on a new legally binding instrument by 2015.   Second, find room for discussions on agriculture in the climate change framework. Addressing climate change and achieving sustainability in the global food system need to be recognised as dual imperatives. Agriculture, particularly rain-fed agriculture, is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Changes in the planting seasons and increased difficulty accessing grazing and water for livestock are already challenges that farmers and herders have to face.   In addition, agriculture is a source of greenhouse gas emissions. Strategies which can increase production, safeguard natural resources and increase resilience while reducing emissions are needed to enable climate-smart agriculture.   The African agriculture ministers’ meeting in Johannesburg this September discussed climate-smart agriculture. They called for “an agriculture programme of work that covers adaptation and mitigation” under the UNFCCC. Also in September, a similar call was made at a meeting of African ministers for the environment in Bamako, Mali. These are clear messages for Durban and could help to provide a platform to address the linked challenges of food and nutrition security and climate change.   Third, the gender dimensions of climate change should be highlighted in the outcomes from the Durban conference. Gender is a key focus from an agriculture and food and nutrition security perspective. Women are especially vulnerable to climate change and its impacts on food and nutrition security. Between 60 and 80 per cent of the food produced in most developing countries is produced by women.   Women hold a special position as agents of change in the face of climate change: they manage many of the world’s agricultural resources and are also likely to have primary responsibility for the care of children. Any effort to increase productivity, adapt to climate change, manage climate risk or mitigate agricultural emissions must address the differences in how women and men manage their assets and activities. In particular, historical tendencies to underplay the role of women must be redressed.   Achieving food security is complex. But a situation where almost a billion people go hungry every day, where a further billion are malnourished, is an affront to us all. Progress at Durban could build a strong momentum to put justice and equity at the heart of international responses to climate change as we prepare for the 20th anniversary of the landmark Rio Earth Summit next June. We urge those gathering in Durban not to let this opportunity pass.   * Mary Robinson is president of Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice, and Tom Arnold is chief executive of Concern Worldwide. Visit the related web page
	View more stories