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Land & land rights
RSS FeedAfrica: Organic farmer doubles his income
2012-05-02, Issue 583
Farm Radio Weekly has a story about Michael Gitau, one of 5,000 members of the Central Organic Farmers and Consumer Organization who has been growing organically for six years. He is happy that he now makes double the income he used to as a conventional farmer. In a second story, Selinah Mncwango from South Africa is a farmer who treasures the seeds that have been handed down to her from generation to generation. But she worries that the South African government is taking steps which may deprive her and other South African farmers of their seed heritage.
Uganda: Land row over oil exploration areas
2012-05-06, Issue 583
A stand-off between central government and a policy advocacy group, the Uganda Land Alliance (ULA), has alarmed national level civil society organisations but seems not to have affected work by grassroots organisations in oil exploration areas. According to a public statement by the ULA, the Minister for Internal Affairs, Hillary Onek, has demanded that the Alliance withdraw a report on ‘land grabbing’ and apologise to the government for bringing Uganda into international disrepute. Onek, the Alliance says, has threatened the group with closure if they fail to meet these conditions. The controversial report, co-published in September 2011 by the Alliance and the international development and campaigning NGO, Oxfam, alleged that the National Forestry Authority evicted some 20,000 people from farmland in Mubende and Kiboga districts, in order to award a concession to the UK-based New Forest Company.
Uganda: State bodies accused of land grabbing
2012-05-06, Issue 583
When President Museveni signed the controversial Land Amendment Bill into law protection from illegal eviction was guaranteed. However, participants debating the issue of land grabbing in a public policy symposium in Kampala last week, cited state house, police, the lands ministry, investors and government officials among the key drivers of land disputes and illegal evictions.
Ethiopia: Human rights violations and deteriorating security threaten indigenous peoples
2012-05-06, Issue 583
In response to the Saturday 28 April 2012 attack on the camp of Pakistani nationals who were advising Ethiopian multi millionaire, Sheik Al Moudi on rice production and irrigation for his 10,000 hectare Saudi Star rice project in Gambela region, the Ethiopian government quickly confirmed the attack but gave an inaccurate account of events, according to the Anywaa Survival Organisation (ASO), a non-profit organisation that believes in a world of social justice and of environmentally sensitive development that recognises and respects the rights of indigenous peoples to actively participate in and enjoy the benefits of development in their own territories without prejudice. 'Despite the government's claim that the suspected assailant are under custody (Gunmen kill one Pakistani, four Ethiopians: official), our local sources indicate that those suffering in the hands of the army are innocent indigenous civilians employed by Saudi Star to safeguard and protect the company's employees and properties.'
Africa: 'Zombie' Chinese land grabs in Africa rise again in new database
2012-05-06, Issue 583
Last week, a new Land Matrix 'land grab' database was released at a big World Bank conference on land. On paper, says one academic, they have a strong methodology and very strict criteria about projects that are to be included, but some projects involved China are listed even though they were exaggerated or never came to fruition.
Uganda: Apologise or face closure, Government tells Uganda Land Alliance
2012-05-06, Issue 583
The price for Uganda Land Alliance’s (ULA) investigations into cases of land grabbing has been set-so high that once paid, it will become extremely risky for anyone attempting to question the vices of land grabbing and forceful evictions of innocent citizens. Government has given ULA two weeks within which to among other stern conditions; provide evidence of land grabbing or else have her permit revoked; and to make an apology to the President and government ministries. The above conditions were contained in a damning 19-page investigation report on the works of ULA, produced by the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Global: Improved transparency in decision-making over large-scale land acquisitions
2012-04-25, Issue 582
Since 2008, the rush for land in developing countries has rapidly intensified but the sector remains largely unregulated and land deals are frequently agreed in secret between governments and investors. This report, 'Dealing with Disclosure', launched by Global Witness, the International Land Coalition and the Oakland Institute, looks at why it is vital to transform the secretive culture behind large scale land deals and, for the first time, sets out in detail what tools governments, companies and citizens can harness to ensure that this happens
Africa: Campaigners claim World Bank helps facilitate land grabs
2012-04-25, Issue 582
The World Bank is helping corporations and international investors snap up cheap land in Africa and developing countries worldwide at the expense of local communities, environment and farm groups said in a statement released to coincide with the bank's annual land and poverty conference in Washington DC. According to the groups, which include NGO Friends of the Earth International (FOEI) and international peasants' group La Via Campesina, decades of World Bank policies have pushed African and other governments to privatise land and focus on industrial farming. In addition, they say, the bank is playing a 'key role' in the global rush for farmland by providing capital and guarantees to big multinational investors.
Africa: Visualisation tool on land deals now available
2012-04-29, Issue 582
The Land Matrix is an online public database of large-scale land deals. It provides a visualisation of records documenting land deals since 2000. The data you can explore represent about 50 per cent of the entire data base. The remaining deals are being crosschecked and added, together with new data provided, on an on-going basis. The visualisations offer overview of the data as well as giving full access to the public database down to the level of an individual deal.
Malawi: Without land reform, small farmers become 'trespassers'
2012-04-30, Issue 582
In Malawi, like most other countries in the region with the exception of South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe, more than 60 per cent of land is customary, meaning that it is mostly untitled and administered by local chiefs on behalf of the government, with local communities merely enjoying user rights. The system has led to many abuses, with some government officials and chiefs selling off customary lands and dispossessing smallholder farmers who are already competing for dwindling arable land as Malawi’s population increases.
Uganda: Anxious communities at refinery site not yet consulted
2012-04-18, Issue 581
Lawrence Ozelle pushes aside his tool box and steps forward to confront us as we photograph Kyapaloni market - a trading centre in Kabaale parish, Buseruka sub-county, some twenty kilometre west of Hoima town. 'Who are you people?' he demands. 'Do you want to steal our land?' Ever since oil was discovered nearby, the locals say, they have had no peace. Strangers come to Kabaale on a daily basis. Some promise development, while others come and go quietly.
Mozambique: World Bank to discuss land policy in the country
2012-04-19, Issue 581
A policy paper is to be presented to the annual World Bank conference on land and poverty in Washington DC in the United States, which focuses on the confrontation between peasant producers and investors in the Mozambican province of Zambezia. Written by Simon Norfolk and Joseph Hanlon, the paper looks at divisions in the Mozambican government over whether it should support foreign investment to promote a technological leap in agriculture, or if it should support small scale farming to increase productivity.
Africa: Land grabs put farmers at risk across Africa
2012-04-19, Issue 581
Three stories on the Farm Radio Weekly website deal with 'land grabs', which are in many cases violations of farmers’ land rights. The first story is from Burkina Faso and tells how land owned by small-scale farmers is being granted to influential 'Sunday farmers'. The government gambled that encouraging investors to create large modern farms would help achieve food self-sufficiency. But few large land owners are even using their new land for farming, and smaller farmers are increasingly locked out of the land market.
Uganda: A study on land grabbing cases in Uganda
2012-04-23, Issue 581
This report compiled by the National Association of Professional Environmentalists and supported by Friends of the Earth International investigates cases of land grabbing in Uganda, focusing in particular on oil palm plantations in Kalangala, Lake Victoria. It assesses the impacts on rural communities and on the local environment, and questions who benefits from these projects.
Sierra Leone: Action for Large scale Land Acquisition Transparency (ALLAT) launched
2012-04-23, Issue 581
A two-day National Conference on Land Owners and Land Users affected by large scale investments in agriculture organized by the Sierra Leone Network on the Right to Food (SiLNoRF) and Green Scenery, held on the 2nd and 3rd April, 2012 at the St. Edwards Pre- School Hall, Kingtom, Freetown ended up with a recommendation by participants for the formation of a Civil Society coalition that would serve as a watchdog on land issues in the country. In response to this recommendation, the 'Action for Large scale Land Acquisition Transparency’' known as (ALLAT) was formed.
Sierra Leone: SOCFIN land investment brief by the Oakland Institute
2012-04-23, Issue 581
In 2011, Socfin Agricultural Company Sierra Leone Ltd. (Socfin SL) secured 6,500 hectares (ha) of prime farmland for rubber and oil palm plantations in Malen chiefdom in Pujehun district in the south of Sierra Leone. The firm is now seeking an additional 5,000 ha in expansion plans in the Malen region or neighboring chiefdoms. The initial investment, estimated at $100 million, with promises of job creation, compensation for lost farms, and construction of infrastructures, has enjoyed high-level government support.
DRC: Landmines hurting farmers’ livelihoods
2012-03-27, Issue 579
Landmines planted about a decade ago in parts of Kabalo territory in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) southeastern Katanga Province are adversely affecting farming livelihoods, and an important World Food Programme (WFP) project. 'In our area, there are villages where we get much harvest but the road leading to those villages [has] landmines,' a food trader from Kabalo said. Lorries often get blown up by the landmines, Birindwa Murhula, a leader of one of the local food traders’ associations, told IRIN.
South Africa: Rescuing emerging farmers in South Africa?
2012-03-28, Issue 579
The South African agriculture economy has little or no room for emerging farmers; with no strong support system, being an emerging farmer in South Africa can be a hopeless adventure, writes Davison Chikazunga on the blog Another Countryside. 'Introducing market liberalisation in 1992 has aggravated the difficulties; it was naïve for the country to introduce such measures at the dawn of democracy when the state presence needed to do much to establish new black farmers. South Africa’s agriculture economy under apartheid blossomed because of state subsidies, and similar support programs in America and Europe helped their agricultural economies to thrive.'
Global: UN moves to curb farmland grabs
2012-03-28, Issue 579
The UN has proposed that countries set limits on the size of agriculture land sales to regulate the growing trend of so-called farmland grabs. The new voluntary guidelines won the consensus of nearly 100 countries this month after three years of negotiations and are now set to be ratified in May at a special session in Rome of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation. The guidelines, which officials say are largely pro-business, nonetheless state that countries should 'provide safeguards' to protect tenure rights.
Global: UN human rights body criticises Canada over resource extraction
2012-03-21, Issue 578
The Canadian government has not addressed the issue of persistent poverty among indigenous peoples, nor implemented the right to free, prior and informed consent, before undertaking projects that affect them or their lands. This was among the conclusions, reached last week, by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD). CERD also expressed concern over the impact of Canadian corporations, particularly mining companies, on the lands of indigenous peoples in other countries.
Egypt: Citadel Capital part of land-grab in South Sudan
2012-03-21, Issue 578
Saudi Arabia and China are buying up significant parcels of agricultural land in South Sudan. So is Egypt. Egypt’s Citadel Capital is buying land in South Sudan, with designs on agricultural production to help feed Egypt’s growing population.
Global: Report highlights land grab water concerns
2012-03-21, Issue 578
A new report by the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) points out that millions of hectares of farmland in Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America have been leased to foreign countries, sovereign wealth funds, and private corporations over the past four years with little or no explicit legal agreement on how water can and will be used on the acquired properties. With 70 per cent of global water withdrawals used in agriculture, the rapid increase in cultivated farmland will require significant quantities of water to sustain production.
Sierra Leone: Land deals beginning to stir discontent
2012-03-21, Issue 578
Foreign land investment is on the rise in Sierra Leone and, as with many of its neighbours, the government wants more companies to come in to boost the economy and spur much-needed agricultural development in rural areas. Sierra Leone ranked 180 out of 187 countries on the UN human development index in 2011. But as more and more companies flock to the country to lease large tracts of land, murmurs of protest and unrest are cropping up among local populations who are unhappy with the way the deals are done; and civil society groups are growing increasingly concerned that foreign land deals are not producing the win-win scenarios they had hoped for.
Global: Negotiations on food security completed
2012-03-14, Issue 576
On 9 March, the Committee on Word Food Security (CFS) completed the intergovernmental negotiations of the FAO Voluntary Guidelines on the Tenure of Land Fisheries and Forests in the context of national food security. The guidelines contain valuable points that will provide backing to organizations in their long struggle to ensure the care and use of resources and natural goods in order to produce more nourishing food, so helping to eliminate hunger from the world by addressing its root causes, says this press release from a coalition of civil society organisations.
Uganda: Police disperse land protest
2012-03-14, Issue 576
Gunshots rocked Amuru District as the police tried to disperse about 100 people who had crossed from Adjumani District to the disputed border area of Elegu, to reportedly distribute plots of land among themselves. Although Atiak residents in Amuru District claim legitimacy over the land, the Ofodro clan members in Arinyapi Sub-county district claim the land, that has since become lucrative, belongs to their grandparents and that they only abandoned it during insecurity.
Ethiopia: Leaked map reveals Ethiopia’s mass evictions plan
2012-03-15, Issue 576
Ethiopian authorities have inadvertently revealed the existence of highly ambitious plans to resettle Lower Omo Valley tribes who stand in the way of a massive plantations scheme. The map was included in an internal report by the country’s Wildlife Conservation Authority (EWCA), into the environmental impact of planned sugarcane plantations in the Omo. Leaked to Survival International, the map shows where Ethiopia intends to resettle tribes whose land and communities stand in the way of their ‘development’ plans.
Global: The long term value of land
2012-03-19, Issue 576
As investors turn to land-based assets and commodities, large areas of fertile land are being acquired around the world to produce biofuels, food commodity crops, timber and develop extractive industries. Where land governance is weak, new risks are being created. These include, on one hand, the security of local people, their access to food and water, and conflicts associated with forced evictions. A report, 'The Land Security Agenda', from the Earth Security Initiative, outlines the security and risk implications of the growing wave of investments in farmland and commodities.
Ethiopia: The thorny business of rose exports to Europe
2012-03-06, Issue 574
Over the last seven years Karuturi Global has acquired rights to 311,700 hectares of land in Gambela and Bako region in Ethiopia for the purpose of agricultural development. But Karuturi’s practices in Ethiopia has also attracted less welcome attention from human rights activists. Investigators from New York-based Human Rights Watch paid a visit to a Karuturi lease area in Gambela in May 2011 where they found that maize, sorghum, and groundnut crops planted by local Anuak farmers had been cleared without consent and residents moved off their land.
Liberia: Land deals with foreign firms could sow seeds of conflict
2012-03-07, Issue 574
Pa Sando, the town chief of Konja, in Grand Cape Mount county in Liberia, looks out across the farmland. 'I used to pick cocoa on this farm for more than 30 years. My grandfather planted it for us,' he says. 'All this area here was mine, and now it's all gone.' The land has been leased by Sime Darby Plantation (Liberia) Inc, owned by the Malaysian-based multinational Sime Darby, to grow trees for palm oil. Sando said he was never asked whether he wanted to give up his land – only that he saw the bulldozers in the bush and then his land was taken.
Global: The new wave of land grabbing by extractive industries
2012-03-08, Issue 574
Chances are that, no matter where you live on Earth, land acquisitions for mining, oil and gas might soon be at your door, says this report from the Gaia Foundation. 'This trend is now a major driver of land grabbing globally, and poses a significant threat to the world’s indigenous communities, farmers and local food production systems, as well as to precious water, forests, biodiversity, critical ecosystems and climate change. This report alerts global citizens to the dynamics in the extractive industries as a whole, and shows the alarming scale of this overall trend.'
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