Showing posts from category Guest Contributor.
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A New Land Security Agenda to Enable Sustainable, Equitable Development
›The recent news that overseas investors have acquired over 10 percent of Australia’s farmland and 9 percent of water entitlements in its agriculture sector has struck a political chord in the country. Large grain-producing nations like Brazil and Argentina have passed laws to restrict the foreign ownership of land. In other global grain hubs, like Ukraine and Russia, compromised harvests due to droughts could result in export restrictions. In a globalized economy, the combination of scarcity, market and population pressures, and weather volatility will make fertile land an increasingly precious resource.
A shift is underway in global financial markets, where global investors perceive that owning what grows on the land – or better still, owning the land itself – may be a hedge against the risks of more volatile financial markets. A surge in farmland investments is expected to grow over the next decade is due to a number of combined pressures: a growing global demand for commodities, rising commodity prices, ecological limits, and the fact that farmland is a “real asset” that offers diversification to the portfolios of investors at a time of market volatility.
The need to increase food production against the backdrop of resource limits, social vulnerability, and population growth, puts the question of land at the center of a new security agenda.
In sub-Saharan Africa large-scale acquisitions of land that neglect local livelihoods and resource scarcity, commonly referred to as “land grabs,” put the region’s future in the balance. Not all land investments have negative consequences, but given the lower levels of land tenure by communities and the fragility of human security in sub-Saharan Africa, regulating land investments with foresight is an urgent issue. Population growth and climate change underpin this agenda. A worse-than-average drought, exacerbated by climate change, may be all that is needed in certain places to realize the political, humanitarian, and ecological risks that are slowly building momentum.
From Land Grabs to Land Stewardship
Progress now depends on moving from a land grabs debate to land stewardship solutions. This shift, which the Earth Security Initiative summarized in a report published this month, The Land Security Agenda: How Investor Risks in Farmland Create Opportunities for Sustainability, requires an improved understanding by investors and political leaders of three priorities: managing land degradation, protecting human rights by focusing on food security and land ownership, and keeping economies within ecological – especially water – limits.
The agenda we have developed discusses why these issues form part of a new risk management agenda for investors as well as for countries seeking to attract foreign capital, whose economic competitiveness and political stability may be compromised by these trends. But managing these risks, we argue, will require making human rights and ecological limits a central feature of a new investment paradigm.
A range of international investors is already searching for solutions to engage practically with this debate. Among those with whom we have engaged throughout the study are individual investment funds, people seeking change within the financial sector, and investor networks such as the UN-backed Principles of Responsible Investment. Recently, governments, international organizations and civil society groups have also agreed on a set of voluntary guidelines for land governance under the auspices of the Committee on World Food Security. These developments are positive steps, but their voluntary nature remains problematic. The focus must now be placed on operationalizing their recommendations to ensure real accountability and creating political incentives in host countries to regulate their land to ensure long-term and equitable prosperity.
A Call to Action
In The Land Security Agenda we call on investors to turn their attention to their land and commodities portfolios, as well as the investments currently under due diligence, and begin to ask how soil resilience, the prosperity of local people, and freshwater limits are being considered. We recommend beginning to assess the risks of countries according to how well their governments are managing these issues.
We similarly call on heads of state in countries seeking to attract large investments in land to become more aware that these risks may undermine their country’s wealth, their stability, and economic competitiveness. Political leadership is needed to champion and enforce regulations that will encourage investments and modernization while protecting a country’s social and natural capital.
Some of the recommendations we have developed, which would help set the tone for investors and governments to move from voluntary principles to action, include:- Define land security parameters: Establish a set of verifiable measures that allows stakeholders to distinguish those land investments that advance equitable and sustainable prosperity from those that do not. Based on these criteria, which we suggest must consider people, water, and soil, it is possible to advance their integration into three important areas of the investment cycle: the identification of investment opportunities that build positive value, the due diligence process, and the performance reviews of fund managers.
- Build better country risk profiles: If the population of a given country is dependent on agriculture for livelihoods, shouldn’t issues like soil erosion, water availability and lack of recognition for people’s land rights increase that country’s sovereign risk? We think so and now seek to develop a “land security index” to help investors and host country governments assimilate these trends into their decisions as well as increase the advocacy capacity of local civil society.
- Advance the formal recognition of land rights on a large scale: The universal call for the prior and informed consent of communities must be supported, but will be of little practical value if communities do not hold the legal rights to their land or are not well informed about their rights and the commercial opportunities available to them. Civil society groups working to advance good governance, land titling, and capacity building – many of whom we have spoken to during this study – are in a position to help create a “land security partnership” that builds technical and political momentum for the formal recognition of land rights on a large scale, as well as the resourcing and oversight that government agencies will require to implement them.
Alejandro Litovsky is the founder and director of the Earth Security Initiative and lead author of the report. The Land Security Agenda can be downloaded here.
Sources: DGC Asset Management, Land Commodities Asset Management, Telegraph.
Image Credit: Cover of the The Land Security Agenda. -
Responses to JPR Climate and Conflict Special Issue: Steve Lonergan (University of Victoria)
›The relationship between climate change and conflict has been discussed for over two decades but most of the evidence of the link between the two has been anecdotal, drawing on extreme climate scenarios. The authors featured in the January special issue of the Journal of Peace Research devoted to climate change and conflict are therefore to be commended for their detailed investigations into a possible causal relationship between the two.
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Responses to JPR Climate and Conflict Special Issue: François Gemenne (Sciences Po)
›If you want a government to address something, make it a defense issue. No need to hold a PhD in political science to know that governments tend to give the highest priority to issues that involve national security interests – one can complain and whine about it, but that’s the way it is.
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Responses to JPR Climate and Conflict Special Issue: Solomon Hsiang (Princeton University) and Todd G. Smith (University of Texas, Austin)
›A January special issue of the Journal of Peace Research brings together a new collection of evidence on a subject that has been a mainstay of the environmental security agenda: the links between climate and conflict.
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Much Ado About Conflict? Climate’s Links to Violence Reexamined
›Violence is on the wane in human affairs, even if slowly and irregularly. Could climate change reverse this trend? Pundits and politicians have raised the specter of havoc caused by rising temperature, erratic patterns of rainfall, and rising sea levels. In this way, so the story goes, climate change will produce famine and mass migration that threatens political stability and provokes violence. However, to date there is little evidence that the meteorological or agricultural conditions associated with climate change are actually a major source of violence.
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Melanne Verveer and Others at Heinrich Böll Gender Equity and Sustainable Development Conference
›The Gender Equity and Sustainable Development conference, hosted last month by the Heinrich Böll Foundation, was a testament to the increasing importance of gender and sustainability within the international development community. Representatives from the U.S. government, UN, and countless international non-profits, aid organizations, and corporations demonstrated the vital need for collaboration and innovative action when working towards a more sustainable world.
The conference kicked off with an invigorating speech by the Honorable Melanne Verveer, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues, who called on the international community to acknowledge the “vital role that women can and must play in sustainable development.”
“Putting a spotlight on the critical role of women in stopping climate change will help to harness the immense human capacity of women worldwide,” said Verveer. By advocating for consideration of gender at every level – from grassroots organizing to policymaking – the ambassador painted a picture of a new era of sustainable development.
Step One: Recognize the Problem
A series of four panels followed the keynote address and focused on the intersections between gender inequity, the economy, trade, food and agriculture, and climate change.
There was clear consensus among all the participants that worldwide consciousness of gender inequity can lead to vast improvements in the status of women while also opening the door for new, innovative approaches to sustainable development. The 16 panel members represented numerous groups, from Oxfam America to Gender Action to the Stockholm Environment Institute, and all spoke to the importance of working for larger structural changes while simultaneously shifting more economic, social, and political power into the hands of women by any means possible.
The panelists described a world in which women represent a tremendous, untapped resource for change. Although women only own approximately one percent of titled land worldwide, they own close to 33 percent of business in the developing world and spend two-thirds of consumer dollars worldwide, which they tend to invest in sectors like health and education that benefit the larger community. Verveer said that data also shows women are more likely to pass environmental legislation and that forestry projects involving women have a higher rate of success.
Humanizing Climate Change
The big question of the conference seemed to be: in a world where women are disproportionately vulnerable to the effects of climate change, why aren’t women given more of a voice in the process of creating a more sustainable world?
Marie Brill, a senior policy analyst at Action Aid USA, pointed to the production of biofuels as a poignant example of a sustainable development plan that has had unintended negative consequences for women around the world. In the developing world, women are primarily responsible for food provisioning, yet many social and legal restrictions prevent women from owning land. If women had better access to land ownership and food insecurity would decrease, she said, and crops yields could increase by as much as 20 to 30 percent.
Foreign ownership of large tracts of land, common in the production of biofuels, makes land title even more difficult for women to acquire or maintain. The industry has also led to price spikes for staple crops like corn, said Brill, meaning poor women are sometimes unable to feed their families.
While biofuels provide an alternative fuel source, their production has been managed in a way that ignores the gender-specific implications of the process. By maintaining an awareness of gender, we can ensure that women do not become victims as we move towards a more sustainable world, Brill said.
Liane Schalatek, the associate director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation North America, suggested that a paradigm shift is needed regarding our approach to climate change.
Approaching climate change from a purely scientific and technological perspective is offensively simplistic, Schalatek said. “We need to humanize climate change and bring social equity into the discourse,” she said, emphasizing that “it is our obligation under international human rights objectives and vital to the success of sustainable development to take a rights-centered approach.”
Molly Shane was an intern for the Sierra Club’s Global Population and Environment Program.
Sources: Boston Consulting Group, Council on Foreign Relations, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, USAID, U.S. State Department, Women Deliver.
Photo Credit: “Climate Risk and Resilience: Securing the Region’s Future,” courtesy of the Asian Development Bank. -
Stuck: Rwandan Youth and the Struggle for Adulthood (Book Preview)
›Several years ago, I wrote that the central irony concerning Africa’s urban youth was that “they are a demographic majority that sees itself as an outcast minority.” Since that time, field research with rural and urban youth in war and postwar contexts within and beyond Africa has led me to revise this assertion. The irony appears to apply to most developing country youth regardless of their location.
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The Ramsar Convention: A New Window for Environmental Diplomacy?
›In seeking ways to connect conservation with peacemaking, the Institute for Environmental Diplomacy and Security (IEDS) has released a study that examines an expanded role for the international wetlands treaty, the Ramsar Convention.
The Ramsar Convention: A New Window for Environmental Diplomacy? describes the wetlands convention, its place within the international environmental treaty world, and its potential to enhance environmental security during this dynamic time of increasingly insecure water supplies and climate change. With more than 40 years of work, the treaty has been quietly and effectively conserving wetlands and increasing recognition of the need to build international cooperation around them. The treaty has also helped define wetlands within greater biogeographic regions and led to formal identification of transboundary wetlands.
In the article, we set out to combine information from the convention’s 234 listed wetlands (13 of which have formal transboundary plans) with the Global Peace Index, which ranks countries using 23 indicators, such as number of conflicts, conflict deaths, military expenditures, and relations with neighboring countries. The result is a prioritized list of countries most in need of tools of conflict resolution.
Working within the framework of the convention builds capacity between high-conflict-risk nations and has potential to develop otherwise-difficult-to-establish trust because the process is transparent and all stakeholder voices are heard. This can be important even when the existing conflict has nothing to do with international wetlands.
The convention is active in many countries with ongoing conflicts, such as Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Iraq, and Sudan, and efforts there may help inform the ongoing debate as to the efficacy of conservation as a tool for peacemaking.
As environmental conditions continue to evolve rapidly, the need for institutions that can work in the transboundary environment will increase. The established international infrastructure of the convention has the potential to be a greater force in peacemaking. Further research may help focus on the strengths and weaknesses of the current system and reveal ways for more effective peacemaking efforts.
Suggestions for ways to enhance the convention’s role in environmental diplomacy include working more closely with researchers and practitioners directly involved in the environmental peacemaking field, increased focus on developing capacity for increased flexibility to react to dynamic conditions, and more active promotion of formal transboundary agreements.
Pamela Griffin is an independent scholar at IEDS where she focuses on the diplomatic potential of transboundary wetlands.
