Vendre les terres au plus offrant : Le plan de la Banque mondiale pour privatiser les biens communs détaille comment la Banque préconise des réformes, via un nouvel indicateur foncier dans le projet EBA, encourage les acquisitions de terres à grande échelle et l'expansion de l'agrobusiness dans les pays en développement. Ce nouvel indicateur est désormais un élément clé de l'initiative EBA, qui dicte les réformes favorables aux entreprises que les gouvernements devraient mener dans le secteur agricole.
Understanding Land Investment Deals in Africa: Publications
Reports
The Highest Bidder Takes It All: The World Bank’s Scheme to Privatize the Commons details how the Bank’s prescribes reforms, via a new land indicator in the Enabling the Business of Agriculture (EBA) project, promotes large-scale land acquisitions and the expansion of agribusinesses in the developing world. This new indicator is now a key element of the larger EBA project, which dictates pro-business reforms that governments should conduct in the agricultural sector.
Indonesia: The World Bank's Failed East Asian Miracle details how Bank-backed policy reforms have led to the displacement, criminalization, and even murder of smallholder farmers and indigenous defenders to make way for mega-agricultural projects. While Indonesia's rapidly expanding palm oil sector has been heralded as a boon for the economy, its price tag includes massive deforestation, widespread loss of indigenous land, rapidly increasing greenhouse gas emissions, and more.
The Great Ventriloquist Act: The World Bank's Bad Business in India exposes how India's one-track focus on improving its DBR has allowed massive environmental, labor, and human rights abuses to take place. Most appalling is the case of Vedanta Resources Plc, a company that benefitted from the removal of environmental safeguards and was able to operate a damaging copper smelter within the city limits of Thoothukudi in Tamil Nadu--a mere 8.4 miles away from the ecologically fragile Gulf of Mannar Biosphere reserve. Not only has the smelter been responsible for massive environmental destruction, it was the site of a massacre of 13 activists protesting its expansion in May 2018.
The Great Timber Heist-Continued: Tax Evasion and Illegal Logging in Papua New Guinea makes public new evidence of financial misreporting and tax evasion in the logging industry in Papua New Guinea (PNG).
Kuipoteza Serengeti, Ardhi Ya Wamasai Iliyopaswa Kudumu Milele, is a Kiswahili translation of the report Losing the Serengeti: The Maasai Land that was to Run Forever.
Losing the Serengeti: The Maasai Land that was to Run Forever is based on field research, never publicly-seen-before documents, and an in-depth investigation into Tanzania’s land laws. This report is the first to reveal the complicity between Tanzanian government officials and foreign companies as they use conservation laws to dispossess the Maasai, driving them into smaller and smaller areas and creating a stifling map of confinement.
Carbon Colonialism: Failure of Green Resources’ Carbon Offset Project in Uganda exposes the continued and relentless attacks of Green Resources on the rights of local people and the environment in Kachung, Uganda.
Palestine: For Land and Life offers a glimpse of everyday life for the people in Palestine and the monumental issues that stand in the way of peace and justice in the region. The series began as a project examining the impact of the occupation on agricultural livelihoods, with a special focus on land, water, and seeds. But the research quickly became about everyday life under occupation, the use of laws and military orders which subjugate Palestinians, and the struggle to sustain livelihoods in this context. Palestine: For Land and Life shares stories of marginalization and struggle, but it also documents resistance, perseverance and innovation and shows how hope and resilience, just like homes, can be rebuilt and revived—even after 70 years of occupation and displacement.
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Briefs
Emergent Asset Management (Emergent), a private limited liability company based in the UK and minority owned by Toronto Dominion Bank, claims to be managing the largest agricultural fund in Africa. Using private equity to invest in industrial agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa, Emergent is however, a prime example of the troublesome rise in speculative funds that are investing in African agricultural land.
EmVest Asset Management is a joint venture between Emergent Asset Management and Grainvest, a subsidiary of the RussellStone Group. Based out of Pretoria, South Africa, EmVest operates the African Land Fund (ALF) and lists social responsibility as a guiding tenet of its investment strategy, citing a desire to bring “economic uplift to communities through commercially viable, first world practices.”
Saudi Star Agriculture Development PLC, owned by Saudi-Ethiopian billionaire Mohammed Al-Amoudi, acquired 10,000 hectares of land along the Alwero River in the Gambella region of Ethiopia.
Quifel International Holdings (QIH) is the Lisbon-based personal holding of businessman Eng. Miguel Pais do Amaral, a Portuguese aristocrat, businessman, and former majority owner of the Media Capital Group.
The Malibya project established by the Libyan Africa Investment Portfolio secures 100,000 hectares of fertile land for Libya within the borders of Mali. The land, located in the Office du Niger, comes free of charge for 50 years. Libya intends to build the necessary agro-industrial infrastructure (e.g. canals and roads) in order to cultivate rice and cattle in the region.
Addax Bioenergy Sierra Leone Limited is the company behind the most developed land deal in Sierra Leone to date. “Renewable energy” subsidiary of Addax & Oryx Group, a Swiss-based energy corporation, Addax has leased 20,000 hectares for 50 years in the Bombali district to grow sugarcane to produce ethanol for export to Europe and electricity from the by-products to be sold in Sierra Leone.
For decades U.S. foreign aid has been accused of prioritizing U.S. political and military agenda over the needs of the poor around the globe. Now, the Bush administration has declared this to be the official foreign assistance policy of the United States.
Food prices have been increasing sharply since 2005. According to the World Bank, global food prices have climbed by 83% over the last three years. The real price of rice rose to a 19-year high in March 2008―an increase of 50% in two weeks alone―while the real price of wheat hit a 28-year high, triggering an international crisis.
World prices for basic staples have skyrocketed―up 83 percent compared to three years ago―while hunger and destitution reaches record levels. Corn registered a 31 percent increase between March 2007-2008, rice 74 percent, soya 87 percent and wheat a whopping 130 percent. Policy makers and media continue to place blame for skyrocketing prices on a variety of factors, including high fuel costs, bad weather in key food producing countries, and the diversion of land to biofuels. Increased emphasis, however, has been placed on a surge in demand from emerging economies―for instance, from the middle classes of India.
In February 2006, the United States and South Korean governments announced their intention to negotiate a free trade agreement. South Korea is the U.S.’ seventh largest trading partner and the U.S. is South Korea’s third largest trading partner.