NGO WORK

Godfathers, politics eating up wetland

Published

5 years ago

June 24, 2020

| MUBATSI ASINJA HABATI | The sprawling Kehong Farm in Lubenge in Luweero district produces rice, bananas, eggs, and chicken meat. It is the pride of the area with its Chinese machines and scientific methods and a promise of over 30,000 jobs when fully operational.

But the success has a sting in its tail that President Yoweri Museveni appears unable to escape from. The 1,000 hectares on which Kehong Farm sits is partly what is technically called a `wetland’; an area of land that is permanently or seasonally water-logged. That means it is a protected area under the law and no development is allowed on it under the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) guidelines.

But somehow, the Chinese Kehong Group acquired the land in 2016 as the China-Uganda Agricultural Cooperation Industrial Park and the farm was officially opened by President Museveni amidst protests from environmental activists.

Meanwhile, almost in panic mode, the Minister of State for Environment; Beatrice Anywar, is daily seen threatening to evict ordinary Ugandans who occupy wetlands. She recently embarked on a tour in Kalungu district, under heavy police escort, ordering peasants on tiny half acre patches to vacate wetlands or else they will be forcefully evicted.

Minister Anywar’s threats to peasants in wetlands and President Museveni’s embrace of big Chinese farms in the same wetlands appear to be a contradiction but they may not be. It appears that if you have the right sums of money or the right Godfather, you are above the Uganda wetland laws.

“The people who build factories in wetlands have godfathers in the central government,” says the Luweero district Chairman Ronald Ndawula.

Ndawula was attempting to explain to The Independent why, in his view, presidential directives on wetlands are never implemented.

He was commenting on a June 04 speech in which President Museveni condemned investors who build factories in wetlands.

While giving his annual State of the Nation Address, Museveni mentioned several areas where factories have been built in wetlands and called that “a mistake”.

“We want more and more factories, but build on dry land, not the wetlands,” the President said.

Then he added: “Those already built or being built should be allowed to continue. Demolishing an already built factory is not common-sense. They are very expensive and very useful.”

Perhaps unknown to the President, his comments reinforced an already entrenched practice which has seen some investors constructing at breakneck speed in wetlands, including at night. The goal is to ensure that their development is up and, therefore, unbreakable.

Arthur Bainomugisha, executive director of Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE), a non-government organisation, says what appears to be defiance is actually a reflection of how politics has killed institutions.

“I think the institutions charged with managing the environment have been weakened. And they have been weakened by politics. The legal regime is in place but politics always interferes with NEMA’s activities,” Bainomugisha says.

As a result, factories of varying beautiful designs, size, and function have been built in wetlands all over the country. Driving along major highways leading out of Kampala and other towns and urban centres, one sees rows upon rows of steel framed factory buildings and sprawling farms in former wetlands.

On the Kampala Jinja highway, for example, one can count hundreds of such factories. Such factories include Abacus Parenteral Drugs Ltd (APDL), Tian Tang Group, Global Paper, Landy and others. Uganda’s main industrial park, in Namanve outside Kampala lies on 1000s of hectares of what were once wetlands.

The factories produce goods previously imported into the country, making them cheaper and available. Some of the products are being exported, bringing in the much needed foreign currency.

Tian Tang Group produces metal products such as iron bars and steel sheets, APDL produces infusion products like IV fluids, eye, ear and nasal drops. Such economic gains appear to dwarf any environmental benefits from wetlands that conservations speak of. No wetland is safe.

Environmentalists argue that construction in wetlands deprives the marshland of its water storage and filtration roles, kills plants and animals whose only habitats may be a wetland. But these benefits are indirect, almost invisible while the money from salaries of factory workers, taxes, and sale of products areas are as visible as the clouds of dark smoke fuming from the factory chimneys.

Effects of encroachment on wetlands

There was a time when almost 16% of Uganda’s surface area was wetland. Since building factories in wetlands became normal, it is not clear how much of the remains.

The latest Biomass study indicates that in the last 15 years, the country has lost 569,021 hectares of wetlands in various parts of the country.

The 2019 water and environment sector review report shows that the wetland cover has reduced from 15.6% in 1994 to 8.4% in 2019.

A 2015 study by researchers at Makerere University states that 56% of the original Nakivubo wetland in Kampala had been modified, mainly due to industrial development and small-scale farming.

Another study by World Bank study found that the eight major wetlands in Kampala district declined from 18 percent to 9 percent of the area between 2002 and 2010.

Across the country, urbanisation, industrial development and agriculture have spurred swamp losses, influencing the rise of severe flash floods; particularly in eastern Uganda. They destroy infrastructure, homes and crops. People drown.

There are 25 major wetlands systems in the country that treat wastewater and serve as a source of safe water for local communities, according to the Wetlands Management Department. But data from Uganda’s Ministry of Water and Environment indicates that up to 30% of Uganda’s wetlands were lost between 1994 and 2008. In this period, Uganda’s wetlands reduced from 37,575.4 sq. km in 1996 to 26,307.7 sq. km in 2008.

NGO WORK

Communities stand up against corporate land grabs and State violence

Published

2 weeks ago

May 6, 2025

witnessradio.org

Across the global South, communities that oppose corporate control of their territories face not only corporate violence but also tear gas, batons and state repression. Challenging the expedient misinterpretation of “all land belongs to the State” that governments use to protect corporate interests, communities stand strong in the struggle to reclaim their ancestral lands “because it is a sacred place; it is a place that gives meaning to our existence.”

This editorial is about the courage and determination of communities who are mobilizing to denounce and resist corporate control over community lands. Often, they face not only corporate violence and control over their lands but also tear gas, batons and state repression unleashed by governments resorting to ‘a greedy misinterpretation of “all land belongs to the State”’ to protect corporate interests. (1)

This is what has been happening in the Litoral region of Cameroon, where the community of Apouh à Ngog is opposing the replanting of industrial oil palm plantations on their ancestral lands by Socapalm, a Cameroonian subsidiary of the notorious multinational Socfin. For nearly 50 years, the company operations have been making life miserable for the community of Apouh à Ngog, whose original village site was eradicated by the corporate oil palm plantations decades ago.

As Socapalm replaces sections of old oil palm plantations, it not only ignores community requests for retrocession of vital spaces immediately around the village; the new company plantings are creeping even closer to the village edge. “If they do not stop these operations, the women who live close to Socapalm in Edéa will have to endure another 50 years of suffering, abuse, rape, theft, hunger, frustration and violation of our rights, our privacy and our dignity”. This is what the Association of Women Neighbouring SOCAPALM Edéa (AFRISE) explains in a petition calling for an end to this occupation of the village’s vital life spaces by RSPO-certified Socapalm. (2)

In January 2025, the women of AFRISE planted banana saplings on some 35 hectares of disputed land being prepared for replanting by Socapalm. The company sprayed the young banana plants with chemicals shortly after and on 24 March, returned under the protection of dozens of armed military personnel to continue the replanting. Overcoming fear and facing tear gas and batons, the community stood in the way of the company’s bulldozers, blocking the corporate replanting for days. As the company forged on with its planting, over 60 organisations called for an immediate stop to the continued corporate encroachment on the community’s ancestral lands. They also urged the government of Cameroon to guarantee vital living space for the community of Apouh à Ngog – instead of sending in armed military forces to protect the corporate interest of Socfin, a company that like few others epitomizes the colonial pattern of exploitation of the region.

It is also what has been happening in the municipality of Aracruz, in the Brazilian state of Espírito Santo, where about 1000 women from the Rural Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) took action to demand agrarian reform and against the multiple forms of violence perpetrated against women. (3) Under the slogan, “Agribusiness means violence and environmental crimes. The struggle of women is against capital”, they occupied land controlled by Suzano, the world’s largest exporter of wood pulp. For years, the company has gone about its business with impunity, amassing large areas of fertile land and committing violations against Indigenous Peoples, quilombola and landless peasant communities. In a press release, the MST points out that “Multinationals are not worried about obtaining land in order to solve the problem of hunger in the country” and that it would be possible to settle more than 100,000 families on the 2.7 million hectares of fertile land in Brazil that are held by Suzano. In 2011, Suzano agreed to provide 22 areas occupied by the corporation for settlements of landless peasants, but the company has been failing to comply with its commitment.
Just as AFRISE in Apouh à Ngog, the women occupying the land in Aracruz vow to continue their struggle for land to grow food, as they, too, are confronted with a state siding with the company, not peasants. (4)

It is also what has been happening in Cote d’Ivoire, where 20 members of the indigenous Winnin community were arrested in December 2024. The Winnin have been voicing their opposition to the privatization of their ancestral lands at the Monogaga forest. (5) The Winnin have called these forests their home for more than six centuries. The Ivorian Ministry of Water and Forests, meanwhile, granted a concession to Roots Wild Foundation whose operations have already been causing conflict with the communities. The arrests and the threats to individuals of the Winnin prior to their detention highlight serious concerns about the criminalization of land defenders in the region.

It is also what is happening in Indonesia, in Papua, and across the Mekong region, as we read in two declarations we share in this edition of the bulletin. In Papua, the Solidaritas Merauke Movement came together to share stories of collective suffering and trauma caused by state-corporate crimes, especially in the name of what the government of Indonesia declared National Strategic Projects (PSN). The declaration, collectively prepared by the Solidaritas Merauke Movement, highlights community struggles against the dispossession of their living space by such state-corporate mega-projects that defile what communities hold sacred. In Thailand, communities from the Mekong region and Punan communities from North Kalimantan in Indonesia came together to exchange and learn about community struggles against mega-hydrodam projects. On the occasion of the International Day of Action Against Dams on 14 March, they reaffirm through a declaration the importance of standing together to show that “we are united and firm in the collective struggle to defend our rivers, forests and futures from false green solutions and corporate greed”.

In an interview with WRM in 2018, a leader of the Akroá-Gamela Peoples in Brazil explains why despite the fear of state repression and violence from greedy corporations, communities stand strong in the struggle to reclaim their ancestral lands: “because it is a sacred place; it is a place that gives meaning to our existence.” (6)

Because land gives meaning to their existence, communities are standing up against corporate violence and governments’ greedy misinterpretation of “all land belongs to the State”. In Apouhs à Ngog, Aracruz and the many other places, communities are organizing to protect and reclaim the lands of their ancestors – The struggle continues!

WRM Secretariat

(1) WRM Bulletin 241. 2018. A Reflection from Africa: Conquer the Fear for Building Stronger Movements.
(2) Petition. Cameroon: Testimony of women who reclaim their land back.
(3) Against capital and patriarchy, MST women hold day of struggle and occupy Suzano-owned eucalyptus plantations in Brazil.
(4) Brasil de Fato. 2025. Justiça determina despejo de ocupação de mulheres do MST em área da Suzano no ES.
(5) Mongabay. 2025. Des leaders communautaires emprisonnés après s’être opposés à la privatisation controversée d’une forêt classée en Côte d’Ivoire.
(6) WRM Bulletin 241. 2018. Brazil: I am Kum’tum, I am of the Akroá-Gamela People.

Source: World Rainforest Movement

NGO WORK

Under Guise of Climate Action, the World Bank Launches Fresh Offensive on Land Rights

Published

2 weeks ago

May 2, 2025

witnessradio.org

A new report exposes the exploitation of the climate crisis by the World Bank to advance a global land grab agenda for corporate interests that will fuel dispossession across the Global South.
Under the guise of accessing land for climate action, the Bank intends to open lands for agribusiness, mining, and carbon offsetting schemes – while undermining Indigenous and community land rights.
The Bank’s agenda to change land tenure directly contradicts recommendations made by climate experts, who uphold agroecology and the protection of lands from conversion and overexploitation as real solutions to the climate crisis.

Ahead of the World Bank’s 2025 Land Conference starting on May 5th in Washington D.C., a new Oakland Institute report exposes how the financial institution is using the pretext of climate crisis to push a global land “reform” agenda that favors corporate interests at the expense of people and the planet.

Climatewash: The World Bank’s Fresh Offensive on Land Rights reveals how the Bank is appropriating climate commitments made at the Conference of the Parties (COP) to justify its multibillion-dollar initiative to “formalize” land tenure across the Global South. While the Bank claims that it is necessary “to access land for climate action,” Climatewash uncovers that its true aim is to open lands to agribusiness, mining of “transition minerals,” and false solutions like carbon credits – fueling dispossession and environmental destruction. Alongside plans to spend US$10 billion on land programs, the World Bank has also pledged to double its agribusiness investments to US$9 billion annually by 2030.

“Hijacking the climate crisis, the Bank is attempting to breathe new life and political buy-in to an agenda it has pushed in the Global South for several decades – often met with resistance from local communities against the commodification of their land for exploitation and extraction,” said Frédéric Mousseau, Policy Director of the Oakland Institute and lead author of the report. “Instead of strengthening and securing land rights, this plan will enable land grabs and exacerbate inequity and climate destruction,” he continued.

Climatewash details how the Bank’s land programs and policy prescriptions to governments dismantle collective land tenure systems and promote individual titling and land markets as the norm, paving the way for private investment and corporate takeover. These reforms, often financed through loans taken by governments, force countries into debt while pushing a “structural transformation” that displaces smallholder farmers, undermines food sovereignty, and prioritizes industrial agriculture and extractive industries.

Drawing on a thorough analysis of World Bank programs from around the world, including case studies from Indonesia, Malawi, Madagascar, the Philippines, and Argentina, Climatewash documents how the Bank’s interventions are already displacing communities and entrenching land inequality. The report debunks the Bank’s climate action rhetoric. It details how the Bank’s efforts to consolidate land for industrial agriculture, mining, and carbon offsetting directly contradict the recommendations of the IPCC, which emphasizes the protection of lands from conversion and overexploitation and promotes practices such as agroecology as crucial climate solutions.

“There is a blatant contradiction between the Bank’s narrative of accessing land for climate action and its support for industrial agriculture, which is a major driver of climate change and biodiversity loss,” said Andy Currier, Policy Analyst and co-author of the report. “The Bank’s fresh offensive on land rights highlights an untenable position of the institution. It claims to support climate action while it stands by its core objective – catering to corporate and financial powers seeking more economic growth and profits,” he concluded.

Source: oaklandinstitute.org

NGO WORK

World Bank Fails to Remedy Harms it Caused in Tanzania, Despite a Scathing Investigation by its Inspection Panel

Published

2 months ago

April 3, 2025

witnessradio.org

Oakland, CA – A scathing investigation by the Inspection Panel of the World Bank confirms the responsibility of the Bank in enabling the expansion of Ruaha National Park and related severe human rights abuses in Tanzania. The Panel confirms “critical failures” of the institution in the planning and supervision of the Resilient Natural Resource Management for Tourism and Growth (REGROW) project that resulted in “serious harm” to communities and violated Bank’s safeguards and operating procedures.¹

“The independent Inspection Panel has confirmed the Bank’s grave wrongdoing which devastated the lives of communities. Pastoralists and farmers who refused to be silenced amidst widespread government repression, are now vindicated, and Bank’s efforts to sweep human rights abuses under the rug laid bare,” said Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute.

The REGROW project enabled the government to expand the Ruaha National Park and move ahead with eviction plans – formalized in October 2023 through Government Notice 754. The Bank directly funded TANAPA rangers who committed atrocities with no oversight. In a drastic turn from its initial defense of the project, the financial institution has been forced to recognize “weaknesses in the project design, preparation, implementation, and Bank supervision.” As a result, at least 84,000 people from 28 villages face eviction while pastoralists and farmers have suffered gruesome human rights abuses by Bank-funded rangers and over US$70 million in economic damages.

In documents made available today, the Bank’s management concedes that by “enhancing TANAPA’s capacity to enforce the law,” the project “increased the possibility of violent confrontations” between rangers and villagers. The Inspection Panel found the Bank to have failed to adequately supervise TANAPA and to be unaware of the agency’s operating framework which permits the rangers to use “excessive force,” in violation of international standards. As documented by the Institute, over the course of the project, at least 11 individuals were killed by police or rangers, five forcibly disappeared, and dozens suffered physical and psychological harm, including beatings and sexual violence. The Bank provided TANAPA rangers with 21 different types of equipment to strengthen their patrolling capacity in the project area – including bush knives that the Panel found “could potentially have been used to burn or strip naked” Maasai women in a May 2023 incident.

The Panel’s report documents the timeline of Bank’s failure to act after April 2023, when it was informed by the Oakland Institute about the abuses and violations of its safeguards. Instead, the Bank disbursed over US$33 million to the project over the next year. REGROW task team leader, Enos Esikuri, even publicly stated that the Bank was “very impressed with what is going on,” when meeting with government agencies implementing the project. In April 2024, disbursements were finally suspended as a result of Tanzania’s noncompliance with Bank safeguards, followed by cancelation of the project in November 2024.

“The World Bank failed to act after it was informed of the harms it was financing. It continued disbursements for a full year, allowing cattle seizures and farm closures to drain family savings, kept children out of school, and let TANAPA rangers murder more innocent villagers with impunity. No institution is above law and can be allowed to get away with crimes like this,” said Mittal.

The Bank’s Executive Directors, however, approved the Management Action Plan (MAP) that does not address the Panel’s findings. In blatant disregard of the facts and official documentation, the World Bank has conveniently refused to acknowledge its responsibility in allowing the park expansion, which it falsely claims took place prior to the project. It is this expansion of Ruaha National Park that triggered murders, evictions, and decimated livelihoods. The MAP delusionally places trust in the government that there will be no resettlement while it is already well underway. The impacted communities conveyed their rejection of the MAP to the Bank’s Board and called for it to remedy the harms caused by park’s expansion by reverting boundaries to the 1998 borders, suspending livelihood restrictions, resuming basic services, and providing justice and reparations for victims.

“Instead of remedying harms identified by the Panel, the MAP patches together two projects that have nothing to do with REGROW and are in no way designed to provide redress. The Action Plan put forward by the World Bank is beyond shameful. Suggesting that tens of thousands of people forced out of their land can survive with “alternative livelihoods” such as clean cooking and microfinance is a slap on the face of the victims. It demonstrates World Bank’s continued lack of remorse for harms financed by tax dollars and makes a mockery of its own accountability mechanism. Financing of this institution – responsible for misery of the poor instead of ending poverty – must be challenged,” commented Mittal.

Despite fear of retribution from Tanzania’s repressive regime, the impacted communities were relentless in demanding justice till they forced the cancellation of the project. “For years we have waited for the World Bank to fix the disaster it created. Today the Board of the Bank has undoubtedly failed in its own mission, but we will not give up, no matter what it takes,” said a community representative.

“The World Bank’s financing commitments for operations in Tanzania amount to US$10 billion. It does have the leverage and authority to fix this catastrophe. The United States, as the largest shareholder and funder of the World Bank Group, must also take responsibility,” concluded Mittal.

Source: oaklandinstitute.org