Land Grabbing?

In reading the literature I have discovered far greater confusion and disagreement than I had anticipated. The link between land and water is obvious, indeed, literature refers specifically to the practise of "water grabbing" - with land deals used as a means of gaining access to freshwater resources (Rulli et al., 2012). I therefore would like to keep this post as short as possible, so that I can continue to explore land grabbing/acquisition throughout the blog. It would not be appropriate to force this complex topic into a single entry.

Land grabbing has been widely defined by researchers and NGOs. EJOLT (Environmental Justice Organisations, Liabilities and Trade) characterises land grabbing as including 'large scale displacement of the rural poor without proper compensation and the destruction of the local ecology to make space for industrial agriculture and biofuels' (EJOLT, 2014: 3). They, and others, stress that there is often private and foreign involvement, typically in the form of investment, with most of the profits flowing to other parts of the world. Where there is consensus across sources is that the land grabbing/acquisition process has been concentrated in Africa (see World Bank, 2010; EJOLT, 2014; Hall, 2011)

Land grabbing is fundamentally a pejorative term. It strongly implies exploitation and abuse of both systems and people. It is used most often by NGOs, who have their own interests and objectives; it is refuted and/or avoided by corporations, and institutions that back market-led solutions. The apparently widespread phenomenon of land grabbing has, however, been extensively challenged.

The European Union (EU) has been seen as a major source of demand for biofuels. ePURE (a European renewable ethanol lobby - based in Brussels) commissioned a consultancy, Ecofys, to look into the issue. Ecofys looked at Land Matrix's data - Land Matrix being an organisation set up to monitor global land acquisitions. Their data is often cited and relied upon, especially by organisations such as Oxfam (which is a financial supporter of the Land Matrix initiative), who have campaigned against what they perceive to be land grabbing. Ecofys (2013) could only confirm 35% of the deals in the sample, with only 1.4-7.6 Mha of the total 38.3 Mha of deals in the Land Matrix data being potentially related to biofuels (the lower end of that range is likely to be closer to the true value).

Cotula et al. state that 'data on land acquisitions in Africa is scarce and often of limited reliability' (2009: 3). The above example of biofuels shows the difficulty in assessing these deals. Both Land Matrix and Ecofys are working with incomplete data, looking at a topic scattered with secret deals. Some deals have failed - Madagascar's botched 1.3 Mha lease deal for example - some have fallen through after approval, and others have only been partially implemented (ibid), which only adds to the complexity of the issue. 

This post has hopefully shed some light on just how murky the world of land grabbing is. The agricultural focus of land grabbing means it has significant implications for water management, especially in the context of IRBM. Hesitation as a result of this uncertainty may be exploited by corporations for maximum gain; but overzealous action may detract legitimate, necessary and beneficial investment. In posts to come, I will explore this issue further, hopefully uncovering positive goals with realistic chances of success. 

North Africa

With a lot of attention given to the situation in Sub-Saharan Africa, it was interesting to come across this article looking at the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. So here’s a quick little post looking at an issue this article got me thinking about.

Water Scarcity: Cooperation or Conflict in the Middle East and North Africa?

The focus of my blog remains on Africa, but the relationship between North Africa and the Middle East is an important one and shouldn't be ignored.

North Africa presents a picture that in many ways is quite different to much of Sub-Saharan Africa. There is far greater ethnic homogeneity in the region and the GDP per capita of these countries (especially along the Mediterranean) is generally higher. Over the last few decades, the “War on Terror” and the “Arab Spring” have brought considerable foreign interest and engagement across the MENA. 

Ethnicity map of Africa

The article is hopeful and states that the MENA is moving more towards cooperation over conflict in the handling of water.

But the situation in the Middle East is highly volatile. Over this century, the place of oil in society is likely to change. And the growth of China is increasingly drawing the attention of the “West”. Foreign involvement in the Middle East is therefore likely to change, and the ambitions and finances of the Middle East will change with it.

These movements in the coming future should not be ignored when considering the water situation in North Africa. New alliances may be forged, both within the MENA and in other parts of the world. Whether North Africa looks south towards other African countries will have serious implications for water management.

Wider geopolitical movements and trends need to be considered when looking at the future of water management schemes. I’m not suggesting that we must predict the future, but we can’t be ignorant of the fact that change can and will happen. Hopefully in the weeks to come I can explore this issue further and see what the literature has to offer.

Hello and Welcome

Hello and welcome to my blog, Water and Politics. Over the following months I’ll be looking at the political issues surrounding Water and Development in Africa. This will include some past examples (both in Africa and, where relevant, from around the world), current discussions and views for the future. In this introduction I’ll introduce some of the ideas and topics that I will explore in greater detail in later posts, and hopefully uncover new areas for exploration.

When managing a resource as vital as water, there are a multitude of voices to be heard – each with its own insights, experiences and (potential) power. The political stage is where many, if not all, of these voices are heard. Some are put at the top of the pile, others at the bottom, and some voices are completely snuffed out. Politics is where the laws that enable land grabbing are carved out, the developments that dry the land are drawn up – it is the place where I believe you have the greatest opportunity to enact change and manage water effectively and fairly.

From approximately the latter half of the 20^th Century, in the aftermath of the World Wars, moves were made towards greater international cooperation, especially on the economic stage. Organisations including the United Nations, World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were founded. For the management of water, large-scale, highly visible, structural solutions were proposed and pushed through, with loans provided to many developing countries around the world (e.g. the Inga Dams). These policies have faced considerable criticism, with some arguing this forms part of a neo-colonialism, engineering a laissez-faire world structure that does little to help the world’s poor. Whether these policies were indeed a new system of control, and what lessons we can learn from them in the future of water management, will be covered in the weeks to come.

Big, top-down projects persist, and some indications suggest the mega dams of the past are enjoying a resurgence. However, since the 1990s, there is increasing emphasis on switching to Integrated River Basin Management (IRBM). This approach attempts to tick all of the right boxes: holistic, long-term, sustainable, inclusive, multi-sectoral, iterative etc.

The question remains however, of whether this is a politically viable approach.

• Is it being adopted by political parties?
• Can governments survive elections if their management plans are not as striking as the dams?
• Is there a pragmatic, real-world strategy for implementing and sustaining these plans in Africa?

Agriculture is a major user of water in Africa (and around the world). When commodity prices rose in 2008, there was a rush to buy land (some have labelled this land grabbing) in Africa in the hope of significant returns from future agricultural projects. These investments have brought considerable criticism (Cotula et al., 2011) on companies and governments for uprooting people and offering inadequate compensation. Alongside this, there is a drive for a Green Revolution in Africa (backed by major organisations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). All the while, smallholder farmers continue to form a large proportion of the agricultural activity in Africa.

The agricultural situation therefore is highly complicated, with contesting priorities on the local, national, regional and international scales. A “Green Revolution” may only give rise to larger, unsustainable farms (Blaustein, 2008). Smallholder farms, in the medium- to long-term, are not predicted to fair well against this competition (FAO, 2009). Large-scale, irrigated agriculture poses several risks, such as the pollution of groundwater sources (Agrawal et al., 1999). As has been seen in the Indo-Gangetic Basin (MacDonald et al., 2016), water quality, as well as quantity, must be seen as a key consideration. However, if the pressures and promises of “Western”-backed, considerably-sized investments have not been resisted in previous decades, a strategy must be proposed for resisting them now.

As stated in the beginning, this post is just an introduction to some of the considerations that must be made in the management of water in Africa. Alongside these considerations, I’ll try to explore whether the integrated, holistic, sustainable solutions that have been proposed, in all sectors, for so long, appear to have any real chance of continent-wide success. Are our current political, social and economic structures amenable to such solutions, or are they an impossibility on a large scale? Are the approaches of the World Bank, the IMF and others, whilst flawed, far more pragmatic?

Please feel free to comment, correct and challenge my posts!


List of References

Agrawal, G., Lunkad, S. And Malkhed, T. (1999). Diffuse agricultural nitrate pollution of groundwaters in India. Water Science and Technology, 39(3), pp.67-75.

Blaustein, R. (2008). The Green Revolution Arrives in Africa. BioScience, 58(1), p.8.

Cotula, L., Vermeulen, S., Mathieu, P. and Toulmin, C. (2011). Agricultural investment and international land deals: evidence from a multi-country study in Africa. Food Security, 3(S1), pp.99-113.

Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (2009). ‘The special challenge for sub-Saharan Africa’, High Level Expert Forum - How to Feed the World in 2050 (WWW) Rome: Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/wsfs/docs/Issues_papers/HLEF2050_Africa.pdf)

MacDonald, A., Bonsor, H., Ahmed, K., Burgess, W., Basharat, M., Calow, R., Dixit, A., Foster, S., Gopal, K., Lapworth, D., Lark, R., Moench, M., Mukherjee, A., Rao, M., Shamsudduha, M., Smith, L., Taylor, R., Tucker, J., van Steenbergen, F. and Yadav, S. (2016). Groundwater quality and depletion in the Indo-Gangetic Basin mapped from in situ observations. Nature Geoscience, 9(10), pp.762-766.