SPECIAL REPORTS AND PROJECTS
Dwindling number of Africans own land.
Published
4 years agoon
![](https://witnessradio.org/wp-content/uploads/Farming-in-Rural-Uganda-1.jpg)
A smallholder working on her field in Uganda.
Research has shown that inequality in access to land is increasing across the African continent. Experts are calling for more rules and controls on the sale of land to counteract poverty.
A lucrative building boom for some people on Kenya’s coastal regions is causing great suffering for many fisherfolk.
In Tudor, the northern coastal strip in the Kenyan city of Mombasa, apartment buildings and hotels are going up at a dizzying rate.
“Big companies are building there and roads are being extended. All the landing sites for fisher boats have disappeared,” said Phelix Lore, director of the human rights organization Haki Center.
“It affects livelihoods because, when fishermen are not able to land, they have no have a place to put their fish and even sell them.”
Widening gap in land ownership
The Haki Center helps fishing communities that have lost public landing sites to private construction projects. The activists want community members to have more rights to own land.
“Land grabbing has been a big problem in Kenya for years,” Lore told DW.
Fewer and fewer people around the world own land. The growing gap in land ownership and access is hitting smallholder farmers, women and indigenous and rural communities hardest, according to the Global Land Inequality Report by the International Land Coalition (ILC), which includes organizations like Oxfam and German Agro Action.
The study, published at the end of 2020, compares land inequality in 17 countries using traditional census data and tenure, land quality and other indicators.
It concludes that the concentration of land benefiting only a few owners and intensification of production have increased in almost all regions of the world since 1980.
The report points to a growing interest of companies in investing in agricultural land, which it says is the main cause for land inequality. According to the researchers, the richest 10% of the rural population control over 60% of land assets, while the poorest 50% own just over 3%.
“Growing inequality in access to land is a driver of hunger and poverty. Earth belongs to all of us. Land must not be an object of speculation,” Marion Aberle, senior policy advisor at German Agro Action, told DW. Governments and investors are under an obligation, she said.
More community rights
The example of the Kono District in the West African country of Sierra Leone shows that those responsible often do not care.
Large mining companies there exploit the soil by seeking diamonds and gold.
The Koidu Holdings mine was the first company to invest in the lucrative business after the end of the civil war in 2002. It is owned by Israeli Beny Steinmetz — currently on trial in Geneva on corruption charges in mining deals.
“The company and its boss have had a difficult relationship with the community in the mining area ever since they arrived,” Berns Lebbie, coordinator at Initiative Land for Life Sierra Leone told DW.
The company has caused much hardship for the local population, who have to contend with dust haze, water shortages and economic deprivation.
“When an investment company takes over a piece of land and barricades the roads, so that farmers, fishermen and others lose access, people expect that alternative livelihood sources be provided,” said Lebbie.
“They want adequate wage labor for the young, or maybe microfinance support to the women or direct financial compensation. Without this kind of support, grievance and resentment will prevail, which can lead to violent reactions.”
Land ownership is becoming more opaque
With the rise of corporate and financial investment, land ownership and control is becoming ever more opaque, said Ward Anseeuw, an analyst at ILC and co-author of the report.
“In many African countries land is state property. Communities only manage it. They do that with the help of land committees.”
But oftentimes, the collective ideal does not work. For example, when a local leader has only his own interests in mind, or when there are no democratic structures to impose respect for the rules. According to Anseeuw, land collectives are to be welcomed, but it must be ensured that they represent all members.
Improving the situation
More guidelines would increase transparency, Anseeuw said. “This would set rules for minimum and maximum sizes, but also for prices, for transactions, etc.,” he told DW.
Governments, investors and the private sector should be held more accountable, as demanded by the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Investors and governments have to be pressured to make their projects and financing public, said Anseeuw.
Civil society and academic institutions have an important role to play, the expert said. They should increase oversight on land sales and use. At the same time, they should be granted the right to block land transactions or to first refusal.
“Land taxes could also be imposed. They exist for urban centers in many countries, but not in rural areas. Such regulations are important instruments in a more globalized world,” Anseeuw said. They allow for more control over corporations and financial players in the agrarian sector. There is a problem though: “We are dealing with very powerful players.”
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A smallholder working on her field in Uganda.
![](https://witnessradio.org/wp-content/uploads/witness.fw_-1.png)
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DEFENDING LAND AND ENVIRONMENTAL RIGHTS
Statement: The Energy Sector Strategy 2024–2028 Must Mark the End of the EBRD’s Support to Fossil Fuels
Published
10 months agoon
September 27, 2023![](https://witnessradio.org/wp-content/uploads/statement.png)
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is due to publish a new Energy Sector Strategy before the end of 2023. A total of 130 civil society organizations from over 40 countries have released a statement calling on the EBRD to end finance for all fossil fuels, including gas.
From 2018 to 2021, the EBRD invested EUR 2.9 billion in the fossil energy sector, with the majority of this support going to gas. This makes it the third biggest funder of fossil fuels among all multilateral development banks, behind the World Bank Group and the Islamic Development Bank.
The EBRD has already excluded coal and upstream oil and gas fields from its financing. The draft Energy Sector Strategy further excludes oil transportation and oil-fired electricity generation. However, the draft strategy would continue to allow some investment in new fossil gas pipelines and other transportation infrastructure, as well as gas power generation and heating.
In the statement, the civil society organizations point out that any new support to gas risks locking in outdated energy infrastructure in places that need investments in clean energy the most. At the same time, they highlight, ending support to fossil gas is necessary, not only for climate security, but also for ensuring energy security, since continued investment in gas exposes countries of operation to high and volatile energy prices that can have a severe impact on their ability to reach development targets. Moreover, they underscore that supporting new gas transportation infrastructure is not a solution to the current energy crisis, given that new infrastructure would not come online for several years, well after the crisis has passed.
The signatories of the statement call on the EBRD to amend the Energy Sector Strategy to
- fully exclude new investments in midstream and downstream gas projects;
- avoid loopholes involving the use of unproven or uneconomic technologies, as well as aspirational but meaningless mitigation measures such as “CCS-readiness”; and
- strengthen the requirements for financial intermediaries where the intended nature of the sub-transactions is not known to exclude fossil fuel finance across the entire value chain.
Source: iisd.org
Download the statement: https://www.iisd.org/system/files/2023-09/ngo-statement-on-energy-sector-strategy-2024-2028.pdf
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SPECIAL REPORTS AND PROJECTS
Will more sovereign wealth funds mean less food sovereignty?
Published
1 year agoon
April 13, 2023![](https://witnessradio.org/wp-content/uploads/Government-Vedder-Highsmith-detail-1.jpg)
- 45% of Louis Dreyfus Company, with its massive land holdings in Latin America, growing sugarcane, citrus, rice and coffee;
- a majority stake in Unifrutti, with 15,000 ha of fruit farms in Chile, Ecuador, Argentina, Philippines, Spain, Italy and South Africa; and
- Al Dahra, a large agribusiness conglomerate controlling and cultivating 118,315 ha of farmland in Romania, Spain, Serbia, Morocco, Egypt, Namibia and the US.
Sovereign wealth funds invested in farmland/food/agriculture (2023)
|
|||
Country
|
Fund
|
Est.
|
AUM (US$bn)
|
China
|
CIC
|
2007
|
1351
|
Norway
|
NBIM
|
1997
|
1145
|
UAE – Abu Dhabi
|
ADIA
|
1967
|
993
|
Kuwait
|
KIA
|
1953
|
769
|
Saudi Arabia
|
PIF
|
1971
|
620
|
China
|
NSSF
|
2000
|
474
|
Qatar
|
QIA
|
2005
|
450
|
UAE – Dubai
|
ICD
|
2006
|
300
|
Singapore
|
Temasek
|
1974
|
298
|
UAE – Abu Dhabi
|
Mubadala
|
2002
|
284
|
UAE – Abu Dhabi
|
ADQ
|
2018
|
157
|
Australia
|
Future Fund
|
2006
|
157
|
Iran
|
NDFI
|
2011
|
139
|
UAE
|
EIA
|
2007
|
91
|
USA – AK
|
Alaska PFC
|
1976
|
73
|
Australia – QLD
|
QIC
|
1991
|
67
|
USA – TX
|
UTIMCO
|
1876
|
64
|
USA – TX
|
Texas PSF
|
1854
|
56
|
Brunei
|
BIA
|
1983
|
55
|
France
|
Bpifrance
|
2008
|
50
|
UAE – Dubai
|
Dubai World
|
2005
|
42
|
Oman
|
OIA
|
2020
|
42
|
USA – NM
|
New Mexico SIC
|
1958
|
37
|
Malaysia
|
Khazanah
|
1993
|
31
|
Russia
|
RDIF
|
2011
|
28
|
Turkey
|
TVF
|
2017
|
22
|
Bahrain
|
Mumtalakat
|
2006
|
19
|
Ireland
|
ISIF
|
2014
|
16
|
Canada – SK
|
SK CIC
|
1947
|
16
|
Italy
|
CDP Equity
|
2011
|
13
|
China
|
CADF
|
2007
|
10
|
Indonesia
|
INA
|
2020
|
6
|
India
|
NIIF
|
2015
|
4
|
Spain
|
COFIDES
|
1988
|
4
|
Nigeria
|
NSIA
|
2011
|
3
|
Angola
|
FSDEA
|
2012
|
3
|
Egypt
|
TSFE
|
2018
|
2
|
Vietnam
|
SCIC
|
2006
|
2
|
Gabon
|
FGIS
|
2012
|
2
|
Morocco
|
Ithmar Capital
|
2011
|
2
|
Palestine
|
PIF
|
2003
|
1
|
Bolivia
|
FINPRO
|
2015
|
0,4
|
AUM (assets under management) figures from Global SWF, January 2023
|
|||
Engagement in food/farmland/agriculture assessed by GRAIN
|
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SPECIAL REPORTS AND PROJECTS
Farmland values hit record highs, pricing out farmers
Published
2 years agoon
November 21, 2022![](https://witnessradio.org/wp-content/uploads/original_Screen_Shot_2022-11-14_at_9.27.35_AM.png)
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A Financial gap: Can China be stopped from financing the EACOP?
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NEMA suspend operations to evict the World Bank project-affected community and other residents accused of being located in wetlands.
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Sexual violence as a tool to grab land: a local woman accuses industrial agriculture investor Agilis Partners Limited of sexual violence.
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Thirty-six (36) groups from all over the world have written to industrial agriculture investors, Agilis Partners Limited to stop human rights violations/abuses against thousands of indigenous/local communities, settle grievances, and return the grabbed land.
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CSOs, oil host communities, and concerned citizens have petitioned the President of Uganda to stop oil drilling in the Murchison Falls National Park.
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Over 5000 Indigenous Communities evicted in Kiryandongo District
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Invisible victims of Uganda Land Grabs
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