SPECIAL REPORTS AND PROJECTS
Impacts of Projects funded by Development Finances: Case series of local landlords in Ugandan that have been reduced to casual laborers.
Published
1 year agoon

By Witness Radio– Uganda Team
Communities in Uganda whose land is targeted for industrial agriculture, mining, carbon credit tree planting, infrastructural development projects, and others will take decades to understand the ‘true’ meaning of the word “development” due to sufferings associated with forced land acquisition
To them, the development-financed projects mean kidnapping, causing disappearance and torturing of landowners that resist violence from the time of acquiring land for investments, gang raping of women by companies’ workers, and destruction of properties worth millions of dollars among other human rights violations/abuses.
Kikungulu, one of the villages affected by harmful investments in Kiryandongo, a Mid-Western District in Uganda, was once a community of budding smallholder farmers. Gifted with fertile soils, and hospitable culture attributable to its cosmopolitan fabric is no more.
Between 2017 and 2018, Kiryandongo Sugar Limited, a subsidiary of Rai Dynasty based in Kenya, under the guard ship of soldiers cladding Uganda People Defense Forces (UPDF) uniforms, forcefully evicted communities in the Kiryandongo district without prior consultation, compensation, or being offered alternative resettlement.
Tusabe Emmanuel is one of the farmers whose land was forcefully taken by Kiryandongo Sugar limited. He said before losing his land, he would harvest over 12 bags of maize and eight (8) bags of sorghum from his land, which could earn him at least Uganda Shillings over 3.6 million, equivalent to US dollar 1,100 that would cater to the needs of his family.
“I fed my family well, educated my children, and provided basic needs from the proceeds of my harvest” Tusabe, a 25-year-old, reminisced about his past.
Over 15000 smallholder farmers lost their farming land to the company and were left to gamble for life. The company is currently using land that belonged to smallholder farmers to grow sugarcane as raw materials for its sugar factory.
In May 2022, while commissioning the company’s 60 million United States Dollars Kiryandongo Sugar Plant, President Yoweri Museveni urged the evictees to maximize the low-lying benefits associated with a project by seeking employment opportunities.
From a landlord to a laborer: after losing his livelihood, Tusabe sought employment from his evictor Kiryandongo Sugar limited. In an interview with Witness Radio, he sought and got employment, as a casual laborer and paid a daily payment of 3500/= which is equivalent to 0.98 United States Dollars on which shillings 1500 is deducted for his lunch hence remaining with 2000/= that tallies to 60,000/= UGX (15.94 USD) a month.
After a year, he had to quit the job over low payment. He said because there was no other way one could survive without land other than being a slave to the evictor and getting paid peanuts.
“Our dreams were shattered by a company, which took our land for free and claimed was bringing development and employment. This was a myth. We do not have investors instead we have parasites surviving on our resources” he said.
He further revealed that after losing his land, he can not feed his family as all his children have since dropped out of school.
Another case involves New Forests Company (NFC), which plants monoculture forests for carbon credit mitigation. Between 2006 and 2010, more than 10,000 people were forcefully evicted from their lands in the district of Mubende to make way for monoculture tree plantations.
Following the forced eviction of locals from their land, exemplary villages no longer exist. Acreages of banana, coffee, and maize crops, among others, were razed down, and families were brutally evicted by the London-based New Forests Company (NFC).
NFC is currently also benefiting from a new project supported by the Dutch Fund for Climate and Development (DFCD); 160 million euros (more than 185 million dollars) from the Dutch government fund that aims to mobilize private sector finance into carbon projects. The DFCD is managed by investment manager Climate Fund Managers (CFM), NGO Worldwide Fund for Nature Netherlands (WWF-NL), and NGO SNV, and it is led by the Dutch Development Bank, FMO.
In August 2020, DFCD approved a 279,001 euros (around 327,000 dollars) grant and WWF technical assistance package for the New Forests Company (NFC) to develop the final business investment proposal for carbon certification in Uganda for sustainable smallholder growth and timber market diversification. In reality, this would translate into generating carbon finance to support expanding their monoculture plantations and land grabbing.
A 59-year-old Steven Ndyanabo still recounts the misery caused by the eviction. He said on a fateful day, he lost his garden of 35 acres in Kicucula village, houses were destroyed, and livestock was looted. His property was not inherited from his parents but bought them using his hard-earned money.
“I received no compensation after the eviction not even being resettled. My family of 14 lives in poor life. We currently live on my brother’s half-acre land in the Rakai district. My children have nothing to eat, and dropped out of school as the majority of them have been forced into early marriages because of the situation were forced into by an investor.
He added that he was one of the richest people in the area, with plantations of maize, beans, bananas, and coffee that I grew at my farm. He further said, he would earn about 5 million enabling me to live a better life.
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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
2 months agoon
September 27, 2023
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
8 months agoon
April 13, 2023
- 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
1 year agoon
November 21, 2022

A son of the community defender is shot dead, another critically injured in a retaliatory attack by security guards evicting locals off their land to give way to large-scale sugarcane growing.

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The East African Court of Justice fixes the ruling date for a petition challenging the EACOP project.

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MEDIA FOR CHANGE NETWORK1 week ago
East African Court of Justice is to decide whether it has jurisdiction to try the EACOP case filed by Four East African NGOs today.
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MEDIA FOR CHANGE NETWORK19 hours ago
A son of the community defender is shot dead, another critically injured in a retaliatory attack by security guards evicting locals off their land to give way to large-scale sugarcane growing.
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MEDIA FOR CHANGE NETWORK7 days ago
The East Africa regional court dismisses a case challenging the construction of the EACOP project.