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From: Tsegai Emmanuel (emmanuelt40@gmail.com)
Date: Thu Sep 09 2010 - 03:51:30 EDT
Published on Wednesday, September 8, 2010 by Inter Press Service
Land Grabs in Poor Countries Set to Increase
by Hilaire Avril
PARIS - After weeks of rumors sparked by the leaking of a draft World Bank
position paper on so-called land grabs in poor countries, the international
financial institution has officially released its report on the surge in
farmland purchases and leasing which have elicited controversy for over two
years.
Acquisitions of vast tracts of fertile land in Africa by foreign governments
and companies eager to secure affordable food resources in highly volatile
commodity markets stirred public attention when the South Korean company
Daewoo bought more than a million hectares of farmland in the east African
island state Madagascar.
The World Bank report, titled "Rising Global Interest in Farmland. Can It
Yield Sustainable and Equitable Benefits?" and released on Sept 8, cautions
that "an astonishing lack of awareness of what is happening on the ground"
exists -- even by the public sector institutions mandated to control this
phenomenon.
It estimates that 2009 saw 45 million hectares of farmland deals going
through and predicts that, "given commodity price volatility, growing human
and environmental pressures, and worries about food security, this interest
will increase, especially in the developing world".
At the beginning of Sept 2010, riots over steep increases in the price of
bread left seven people dead and hundreds injured in Maputo, the capital of
the southern African country Mozambique, sparking fears of another food
crisis like the one that affected several African countries two years ago.
That same week, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization
announced that, "surging wheat prices drove international food prices up
five percent (in Aug 2010) in the biggest month-on-month increase since
November 2009."
Several huge farmland investment deals have been decried for bringing
uncertain benefits to recipient countries, and sometime for leading to
smallholders' eviction from their land and adversely affecting local
livelihoods.
The World Bank report reckons that "one of the highest development
priorities in the world must be to improve smallholder agricultural
productivity, especially in Africa".
But the report deems that "when done right, larger scale farming systems can
also have a place as one of many tools to promote sustainable agricultural
and rural development". It then proceeds to detail many conditions for these
deals to benefit developing countries.
"When assisted, family farmers have been able to compete in global markets.
Many companies have successfully collaborated with local farmers," Lorenzo
Cotula, who researches the topic for the London-based International
Institute for Environment and Development, told IPS. The non-profit IIED
promotes sustainable development.
"But national laws in recipient countries need to be changed and better
implemented, so local people can have more secure rights to their land," he
cautions.
The report states that farmland investments' adverse effects on local
development are often due to the fact that host countries' governments "were
ill-equipped and ill-prepared to deal with the sudden influx of interest".
Indeed, many such deals have been rushed through, and several have brought
minimal revenue to public coffers. "The fact that there appears to be
significant interest in countries with weak governance implies that the
risks associated with such investments are immense," the report warns.
Cotula concurs and adds: "Governments must be able to regulate investment
and skilfully negotiate with investors. Civil society should be able to
scrutinize government and investor action, and farmers' groups should be
able to negotiate with government and investors.
"International agencies can play an important role in making these three
conditions come true," he suggests.
The World Bank report calls for global implementation of investment
principles it drafted last year with other developmental institutions such
as FAO.
But it acknowledges that the "effectiveness of these rules depends on the
mechanisms for disclosure and enforcement that are available to assess
whether actors comply with standards, and to deal with cases where they do
not".
Such enforcements mechanisms do not yet exist, and some observers are
skeptical.
"Relying on voluntary enforcement of such principles would never work as
investors would pay no heed to them. Many already hide behind governments
and shell companies", says Antoine Bouhey, who leads the campaign for
farmers' rights in developing countries as organized by the nongovernmental
organization (NGO) Peuples Solidaires in association with international NGO
ActionAid.
"What we need is constraining legislation, both in recipient countries and
at home where the investing corporations are headquartered," he argues.
"This will take a while. In the meantime a moratorium on these investments
should be declared in developing countries that have not reached millennium
development goal one (eradicating extreme poverty and hunger)," he adds.
While the World Bank report anticipates that demand for land may be
increasing, it admonishes that, "at the same time, scarcity of information
on what is happening encourages speculation on a large scale".
But, in a hopeful conclusion, it observes that "these risks correspond to
equally large opportunities", as "increased productivity and effectiveness
in the utilization of (large areas of land currently not cultivated) could
have far-reaching developmental impacts".
Copyright © 2010 IPS-Inter Press Service
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