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NewSecurityBeat

The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
  • Guest Contributor

    New World Bank Report on Land Grabs Is a Dud

    September 9, 2010 By Michael Kugelman

    After months of delays and false starts, and a tantalizing partial leak to the Financial Times earlier this summer, the much-ballyhooed World Bank report on large-scale land acquisitions has finally arrived.

    For the last year, those thirsting for more information about these land deals – which are rumored to extend millions of acres of developing-world farmland to foreign agribusiness investors and governments dependent on food imports – have assured themselves that the Bank’s study would answer all their questions.

    They are in for a major disappointment. The 164-page report, “Rising Global Interest in Farmland: Can It Yield Sustainable and Equitable Results?” may have landed with a powerful thud, but the product is a resounding dud.

    The study essentially rehashes the glass-half-full, glass-half-empty debate in much of the substantive work previously published on the issue:

    • If done well, these deals can reduce poverty in the developing world and revitalize sagging agricultural sectors.
    • If done poorly, they can destroy smallholder livelihoods, spark rampant displacements, and wreak grave environmental damage.

    Nothing new here.

    The report also recycles the “principles for responsible agro-investment” that many international organizations believe will promote beneficial and sustainable agricultural investments: Respect for indigenous land rights; emphases on transparency and good governance; participation of all “stakeholders”; and attention to social and environmental sustainability.

    Much of the anticipation surrounding the report centered on data the Bank promised to reveal about specific land deals – data practically impossible to obtain anywhere else. Yet the data, as reported in the study, are anticlimactic. On the one hand, they reveal “displacement of local people from their land without proper compensation,” and on the other, support for social infrastructure “through community development funds using land compensation” – all of which is essentially in line with previously published work.

    Fortuitously, several thought-provoking conclusions do eventually emerge from the report’s otherwise dry discussions about “yield gaps,” “institutional frameworks,” and the like.

    The Bank finds that “virtually everywhere, local investors, rather than foreign ones, were dominant players” in large land transfers between 2004 and 2009. This finding amplifies the under-reported fact that overseas farmland acquisitions are sustained as much by the eagerness of host governments – and their local partners – to attract foreign investors as they are by the motivations of foreigners. The World Bank does not comment on the character of these “local investors,” though anecdotal evidence suggests they are not particularly warm-hearted.

    In the Wilson Center’s 2009 book, “Land Grab? The Race for the World’s Farmland,” Raul Montemayor, who represents a farmers’ group in the Philippines, wrote about local partners hiring “goons” to intimidate smallholders into abandoning their land:

    In 2009, there have also been many reports of small landowners being pressured and intimidated into involuntarily leasing their land. In some parts of the southern Philippines, local agents of palm oil agribusiness investors have been suspected of hiring goons to harass uncooperative landowners. Elsewhere in the Philippines and in other parts of Asia, rogue elements have reportedly been let loose to sow terror in target areas, forcing frantic settlers to evacuate their homes and farms, and making them easy prey for opportunists – who have readily offered to lease the settlers’ land in exchange for advance rental payments.

    Another important point in the report is that “private investors can contribute in many ways, not all of which require land acquisition.” Indeed, international investors can bring great benefits to local farming communities by simply providing them with more water-efficient technologies.

    Unfortunately, the study sheds precious little light on the fundamental problem of these land deals: They are orchestrated by private investors and governance-deficient governments, neither of which demonstrates interest in ensuring their transactions are beneficial for smallholders and host countries on the whole. The actors doing the investing are driven by powerful motivations: private firms seek to boost bottom lines, and national governments aim to improve food security back home at all costs.

    The World Bank’s talk about codes of conduct and other normative modes of fostering good investor behavior is well-intentioned, but ultimately naïve. It is unfortunate the report does not place more of an onus on host governments to pass new laws or enforce existing ones to protect their agricultural communities from predatory investments in farmland.

    Michael Kugelman is a program associate with the Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars. Much of his recent work has focused on resource shortages. He is the lead editor of, and a contributor to, the 2009 book “Land Grab? The Race for the World’s Farmland.”

    Photo Credit: “Cadillac Rows” courtesy of flickr user ken mccown.

    Topics: development, economics, environment, food security, foreign policy, Guest Contributor, land, natural resources, population
    • Tom Deligiannis

      Thank you for your very interesting posting. Resource capture continues unabated, it seems. There have been cases recently where public exposure and anger at these leasing deals has resulted in their being overturned. Clearly greater transparency and watchfulness by civil society can also play a role in helping to forestall land grabs, along with the factors you note above.

    • http://www.blogger.com/profile/18337694112852162181 Geoff Dabelko

      I look forward to reading the report to see if it can help answer how the equation between these kinds of purchases outweigh buying on the international market. Alex Evans presented a very plausible hypothesis at the Wilson Center last week when he flagged the national food protectionist response during the 2008 food price spikes. Food exporters started shutting it down and the international trade system was shown to be completely unprepared to deal with the food security threat of protectionism rather than the displacements of free trade (of course backed by heavy developed country farm subsidies). Look to Global Dashboard blog for Alex's take on this issue.

    • http://www.panearth.org/ SESALMONY@aol.com

      There is an urgent need to examine the science of human population dynamics. The topic of human population dynamics has not been and is not now being openly discussed.

      Let us imagine for a moment that the growth of the human population today is the “mother” of human-driven global challenges looming before humankind and knowledgeable people willfully refuse to speak about why the unbridled increase in absolute global population numbers is occuring. How can that behavior be construed as correct? On what authority is silence in response to science condoned? Who has the right to deny the existence of knowledge of something that threatens all of us? Is there no one who has determined that experts have a “duty to warn” humanity in such dire circumstances as exist when the very future of children everywhere could be put at risk soon?

      Before I started the AWAREness Campaign in 2001, I fully anticipated that the publication of peer-reviewed scientific evidence regarding human population dynamics and human overpopulation of the Earth would be rigorously scrutinized, carefully examined and objectively reported by appropriately trained and educated experts. To my astonishment that did not occur. The experts remained mute. The evidence was neither sensibly refuted nor affirmed. There was only a deafening silence. After some months passed, I concluded that experts must not believe the evidence regarding the human population but could not rebutt it either. So the AWAREness Campaign began. Even now, years later, I believe the silence of so many indicates that the research is virtually irrefutable on the one hand and unbelievable on the other. It appears that we are in need of a transformed scientific imagination by means of which scientists with appropriate expertise are freed from inadequate thought and time-honored theory…freed to carefully examine and skillfully report new, unforeseen and unfortunately unwelcome scientific research regarding the human population.

      So here we are in 2010. With the rare exception of a handful of pre-eminent scientists who are willing to speak truth-as-he-sees-it to the powerful, elective mutism is effectively vanquishing science with regard to extant evidence of human population numbers.

      If the research to which I have unsuccessfully tried to draw attention for so long is fatally flawed and completely wrong, then I trust esteemed scientists like Geoff Dabelko at the WWIC accept my invitation to expose me for the fool that I surely am. On the other hand, if the scientific evidence is somehow on the correct track, then there is plenty of work for everyone in the human community to begin doing in earnest. It appears to me that there is just enough space-time for us to transform human consciousness, adopt sustainable lifestyles and right-size business enterprises, but we need to get started now.

      Steven Earl Salmony
      AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
      Chapel Hill, NC
      http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1176
      http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
      http://www.panearth.org/

    • http://www.blogger.com/profile/08467259827528678494 Michael

      Tom, your point about civil society oversight is an excellent one. It — and also the media — must be on the frontlines to warn against potentially troubling investments. As you suggest, general publics have had more success than governments or international organizations in squelching investors' plans. Geoff, my sense is that these large-scale land acquisitions were indeed a direct response to the protectionism imposed in 2007-08. With food exporters shutting down their exports, market shortages ensued and commodity prices became too high for food-importing nations to bear. With insufficient land and water to obtain food indigenously, these nations simply looked abroad.

    • http://www.blogger.com/profile/16652548783647029675 Teal

      The World Bank seems to have a bit of a crisis of identity: a risk-averse lending agency or a politically-powerful development organization. The land grabbing report is filled to the brim with this internal struggle — the normative standards for all investors, the safe practice guidelines for responsible sale of massive amounts of land…they do indeed smack of a large bank eager to open a BOP market. Perhaps I am the naive one, but it strikes me as a bit scary to have the Bank back land grabbing. I'm not sure it's wrong, but with the most powerful development agency (not money wise, but clout wise) giving an essential seal of approval I fear negative social and environmental outcomes. But, I hope this fear is misplaced.

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