webmaster
© Copyright DEHAI-Eritrea OnLine, 1993-2010
All rights reserved
From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Fri Oct 15 2010 - 16:25:29 EDT
UN body fails to back "land grabs" code of conduct
Fri Oct 15, 2010 2:00pm GMT
By Silvia Aloisi
ROME (Reuters) - A top U.N. inter-governmental body on food security has
failed to endorse a code of conduct on foreign land investments, in a blow
to efforts to draft international guidelines to regulate so-called "land
grabs".
Responding to concerns about countries like China, South Korea and Gulf Arab
states buying large swathes of land in Africa and Asia to secure their food
supplies, the World Bank and U.N. agencies drew up seven principles for
"responsible agricultural investment."
But a meeting of the U.N. Committee on Food Security (CFS), which dragged on
into the early hours of Friday, failed to endorse those principles, simply
"taking note" of them, participants told Reuters.
"It's terribly disappointing," said Olivier De Schutter, the U.N. special
rapporteur on the right to food.
"We are not moving swiftly enough to find an effective answer to the
problems posed by land investments."
The principles advocated by the World Bank, and sponsored by Japan, say
existing rights to land should be respected, investment should not
jeopardise food security, and all those materially affected should be
consulted.
RULE OF LAW
Investments should respect the rule of law, reflect industry best practices
and be viable economically. They should be transparent and monitored, and
they should also be sustainable from both a social and environmental point
of view.
However, China, Egypt and South Africa, as well as farmers' groups, opposed
endorsing those principles at the CFS meeting in Rome, complaining about
lack of consultation and involvement in the process. That left the code of
conduct in a "no man's land", De Schutter said.
The principles were drawn up after a spike in food prices to record levels
in 2007-08 sparked a wave of land deals, as food-importing countries and
major agricultural businesses sought to increase their food supplies and
protect themselves from price volatility.
Some 45 million hectares worth of large scale farmland deals -- roughly the
size of Sweden and a tenfold increase from previous years -- were announced
in 2009, the World Bank said in a report released last month.
Aid groups say that such deals come at the expense of small farmers in
African and Asian countries and could end up worsening poverty and hunger in
less developed countries.
With the World Bank principles sidelined by the CFS, the focus now shifts to
a set of as yet ill-defined voluntary guidelines which have been in the
works since 2008.
A draft of the guidelines, the result of consultations between the U.N. Food
and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), member states and civil society groups,
is due to be submitted to the CFS in a year's time.
In any case, both the World Bank principles and the FAO's voluntary
guidelines are non-binding.
Critics say any new rules risk being too little, too late as land deals
continue unabated and could even increase on the back of the recent rise in
cereals prices due to drought in Russia and flooding in Pakistan.
In the past two weeks alone, an Egyptian private equity firm has announced
plans to invest $40 million to grow crops in Sudan and the head of Qatar's
national food security programmes told Reuters talks were under way to buy
land in Ukraine and Argentina for cereals' production.
"One of the reasons why there was this rush towards overseas investments is
that governments and the private sector lost faith in international markets
as a reliable source of food supply," said David Hallam of FAO's trade and
market division.
"The rise in the global price of wheat and maize in the past few weeks and
the export bans by Russia and Ukraine have only reinforced those fears."
Aid groups said the fact that governments, international organisations and
civil society groups were all involved in the CFS talks was positive but
denounced a general lack of urgency.
"We are concerned that smallholder farmers are still at risk from land grabs
and that governments are dragging their feet," said Duncan Pruett, policy
adviser on land at Oxfam.
C Thomson Reuters 2010 All rights reserved
----[This List to be used for Eritrea Related News Only]----