2) James North in The Nation writing on Publish What You Pay’s exciting victory in getting the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to force oil, gas, and mining companies that are listed with the U.S. stock exchange to divulge their payments to foreign governments. North highlights the truly global impact the SEC decision will have:
In Angola, where the oil giants have transferred vast wealth to the one-time Marxist elite but left the vast majority of the people in poverty, a growing opposition will also celebrate. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, members of the outspoken Journalists’ Association whom I met recently in Fungurume, near the $2 billion Freeport-McMoRan copper mine, will have more specific information for their reports. Cambodians for Resource Revenue Transparency will be able to keep closer watch on Chevron, Total and ConocoPhillips. In East Africa, the distinguished journalist Charles Onyango-Obbo is probably licking his chops at another chance to scrutinize his old nemesis, the Museveni regime in Uganda, where sizable oil reserves have recently been discovered.
More updates to come, but we wanted to quickly share this recent Witness report. It’s very much thought-provoking, and lays bare some of the tensions, dynamics and contradictions we must deal with in discussing resource rights.
Greetings all! We’re hoping those in the DC area have power after the storms, or have at least been managing to keep cool. In project-world, we’re excited to announce we officially have a logo! Will debut soon. On to what’s been interesting us lately…
Saving the best for first, Beth Geglia for Waging Non-Violence has a piece out on the anti-extractive movement in Guatemala,pointing to the peaceful efforts being made in Huhuetenango for communities’ self-determination, especially given the recent 18-day imposition of martial law.
Most importantly, she provides an extremely helpful explanation of the consulta process that is being fought for all throughout Latin America. It’s built into the rest of the article which gives a real-world example of where these sorts of efforts towards autonomy are needed, making it a really ideal introduction for English-speaking readers who are unfamiliar with the process and the reasoning behind it.
She writes:
In the department of Huehuetenango, and in the Western Highlands generally, communities have put up resistance to the kind of resource extraction that has been taking place throughout the country. Faced with over 400 mining exploration and extraction licenses authorized by the state between 2000 and 2004, and a national energy transformation plan that includes the construction of more than 47 hydroelectric dams, indigenous peoples have relied on a process called the consulta comunitaria de buena fe, or good faith community referendum, and their right to self-determination to maintain control of their territories and natural resources.Backed by international law — International Labor Organization’s Convention 169, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Inter-American Democratic Charter — as well as Guatemalan national and municipal law, communities have used their right to the consulta to indicate to the state and to the private sector that mining extraction and hydroelectric dams will not be permitted on their lands. Carried out through local organizing committees, and often with the celebratory spirit of a “civic party,” the consultas are public gatherings where men, women and children vote with the raising of the hand on the projects proposed in their particular municipality. In most cases, the municipal government issues an ordinance banning the activity and the legality of this ordinance then enters into conflict with the licenses authorized and promoted by the state.
The full article, which has additional links about the We Are All Barrillas (Todos Somos Barrillas) campaign, can be found here.
A brief note about Mexico:As the vote counts in Mexico wrap up today, and as the reports of electoral abuse come fast, it’s also worth thinking about the resource rights future of the country. Today’s Diane Rehm Show coverage touched on this somewhat, discussing the PRI’s goals of diversifying energy resources away from mainly oil, and moving into natural gas fracking in the shales of northern Mexico, anarea which was obviously PRI-dominated. Meanwhile, a report from Deloitte is saying that of the more than 280 mining companies that have begun extraction in Mexico in recent years,none are paying any taxes on their activities,and that currently no mining tax in Mexico exists. They anticipate that this may change with a new presidency, but the question is left more or less open. All of which helps account for the amazingly rapid growth of the mining industry in Mexico. At the risk of sounding wide-eyed and crazy-haired about the matter, it should really beg the question of how well this whole planned fracking thing will work out for the Mexican people.
Slightly old, the African Development Bank points out that any potential benefits from large-scale land acquisitions in Africa are significantly undercut by the lack of transparency and fairness in the process, that not enough is done to address the needs of smallholder farmers, or the eviction of people who depend on land for their livelihoods. At the very least, it’s heartening in light of a broader public discourse sounding something like… this. The ADB offers a set of proposals for African countries to move forward with more fairness and transparency, including consultation processes, food security contracts, and employment commitments on the part of investors. Their concluding proposal:
The flow of land investments in Africa is exceedingly driven by land fees that are either minuscule or missing altogether. By setting land fees so low, countries set a precedent where others do not have an option but to set their prices lower. This perpetuates the low rental price observed across Africa. A continental policy coordination facility could prove useful in ensuring that the land fees are not set too low. The floor prices for tracts of land differing in quality could be set at agreed upon thresholds.
While laudable in its’ efforts to take the needs of the people living on the land into account, and recognizing certain key, root issues, it’s not entirely clear if or how any of the proposals are to be implemented.
While on the topic of land acquisitions in Africa, see this video from theResponsible Endowments Coalition, featuring the Oakland Institute’s Anuradha Mittal and Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and students from Harvard and Vanderbilt, on the responsible investment campaigns at those two universities that were initiated after land grabbing abuses by those university endowments came to light.
And while we’re on El Salvador, the indigenous people of El Salvador are to be recognized in the constitution, IPS News reports. Article 63 of the Salvadoran constitution will be amended to acknowledge the language and culture of the country’s mostly Nahua-Pipil indigenous communities.
“Water resource management is inherently political“: This is an interesting report by the Danish Institute for International Studies on the problems around pre-existing power structures in attempts made at Integrated Water Resource Management.
Fred Pearce, with an article in The Guardian on why the Rio+20 meeting must take small-holder peasant farmers into account. He writes:
Next month, the UN committee on world food security will probably agree voluntary guidelines on “responsible” land grabbing. But I hold out no hopes for their success. As one British venture capitalist, with a 100,000-hectare stake in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, candidly admitted at an investor conference last year: “Industrial-scale farming displaces and alienates people, creates few jobs and causes social disruption.”
Vermont has become the first state in the U.S. to ban hydrofracking, according to the Associated Press. Although Vermont has little to no known natural gas reserves and no drilling activity currently taking place, the Governor hopes that this will serve as an example to other states. Meanwhile, Boston NPR’s Here and Now reports that officials in Michigan have contacted Vermont lawmakers for advice on how to make their own ban, and that North Carolina moves closer to passing a bill that would legalize fracking.
A Spanish language video in support of Wirikuta, for those who have not yet seen it:
We are pleased to announce an upcoming Learning Call with Anil Naidoo from the Council of Canadians/ Blue Planet Project. Anil will talk with us about the upcoming Rio+20 conferences, where a “Green Economy” approach will in fact serve to green-wash a set of problematic proposals. Anil will be explaining those “Green Economy” proposals in greater detail, and talking about recent and upcoming civil society efforts to contest them.
For a bit of further background on the dynamics behind the upcoming Rio+20 conference, see this article in the Guardian. A key quote in that article comes from Andy White of the Rights and Resources Initiative, stating: “there is nothing in the draft Rio+20 text that even mentions the rights of poor people to their land and their forests, even though we know they are far better custodians of nature than governments or private corporations.” If you’re looking for further reading along this theme, this set of commentaries in conversation with one another around environmental economics is interesting.
The call will be at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, March 8th. If you would like to RSVP for the call-in number, or ask for more information, please email lela@ips-dc.org.
In other resource rights developments,
Edgardo Ayala reports for the Inter-Press Service on the distant goal of environmental courts in El Salvador. While budgets are prohibitive, the piece underlined the importance of El Salvador having such a court: environmental law is complicated, and specialized judges are needed to deal with cases arising around the widespread environmental degradation that has been taking place in that country. One example was the notorious case currently under proceedings against the Baterías Récord company. According to Ayala, the attorney general’s office places the lead contamination damages caused by this battery plant at 4 billion dollars.
China and Resource Rights: When it comes to non-intervention, foreign investment in resource exploitation, and engagement with First Nations, the Chinese government has some really complicated politics to navigate. This article illustrates those dynamics quite well. A more detailed look (brought to our attention by Jamie Kneen at MiningWatch!) at increasing civil society advancements towards corporate social responsibility in China can be found here.
These are interesting times we are living in. A few new things to check out:
Today is the day that the 2,000+ participants in the National Water March in Peru begin to arrive in Lima, after eight days of marching. The march is in protest of the Minas Conga project, which has been generating prolonged controversy and unrest in the Cajamarca region. The march will culminate with the group submitting their own bill to Congress that would protect the water sources in Cajamarca. For updates, videos and photos from the march, see here. The results of the march and demonstrations will be of interest in the context of Peru’s passage of a law late last year requiring consultation for projects affecting indigenous groups. The Global Voices update page includes contradictory statements by Ollanta Humala around consultation and the Conga project:
“President Ollanta Humala indicated that “no project will be paralysed by prior consultation, and that it is not a pretext to halt investment”, in reference to the lack of regulations governing the implementation of the law, that should have been ready last December. In August last year, however, the President himself wrote on Twitter: “The right to prior consultation on the development of indigenous communities is a sign of greater social inclusion. Let’s create a Peru for everyone”” Source
Also, a Canadian mining company’s plans for a gold mine in Famatina, Argentina have been halted. This would not be the first time that community members in Famatina have fought against a planned mine. Read here a blow-by-blow account of their 2006/2007 push-back against Barrick Gold Co. It would appear that as long as there is a difference of opinionbetween the Provincial governor of La Rioja and the Mayor of Famatina on the usefulness of mining as a development framework, this sort of repeated struggle is bound to continue.
In other news, there is a new BBC podcast on the solutions to today’s food problems. You can listen here. While on the topic of food solutions, there are a number of videos on YouTube that Geoff Lawton‘s Permaculture Research Institute does on greening deserts and creating food forests, as well as looking at ancient food forests still thriving today. These links may seem a bit off-topic- since this blog tries to look at matters pertaining to the intersections between the environment, human rights, and the global economy, but Lawton’s work highlights the importance of understanding what resources are already available to us, and the value of retaining traditional ecological knowledge in natural resource management. Lawton’s efforts in that sense strike at the heart of what we have been talking about; as agribusiness expands into areas where traditional farming and land tenure was secure (see our recording below of Anuradha Mittal’s talk on land grabbing in Africa), as global trade regimes create disincentives for sustainable agriculture, the desertification that Lawton is trying to combat grows. If the knowledge isn’t shared, how will we know what the solutions and alternatives are?
This meeting took place from January 26th-29th, in which anti-mining and environmental groups from Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Panama came together in Valle de Siria, Honduras. They also met with representatives of solidarity groups from the United States and Canada. The meeting marked a new approach, a more cohesive and regional way of organizing for groups fighting mining and the extractive industry model. They issued a declaration, of which some key points are translated below:
” The Mesoamerican movement commits to a coordinated struggle to demand the cancellation of mining concessions which have been imposed without the consent of the people, the withdrawal of companies from our affected communities and a comprehensive payment for all damage they have caused.”
“We denounce the repression and harassment that our brothers and sisters have suffered in the fight to defend their territories, in particular in El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico and Guatemala.”
“We demand respect for the decisions of communities regarding their land, for the right to consultation, and for the implementation of international conventions in favor of human and environmental rights which our countries have signed.”
“We denounce the interference of transnational corporations and embassies such as that of the United States and Canada in promoting legal reforms around mining which privilege the interests of transnationals without taking into account the proposals of organizations and communities, as is the case in Panama, Honduras, and Guatemala.”
Peruvian Government will fight illegal mining:Justice Minister Juan Jimenez Mayor said the country’s Public Ministry and National Police now had the power to seize property used in illegal mining activities, as well as the power to destroy any infrastructure if it is affecting the environment.
BankTrack releases information on 93 banks’ coal financing– “This allows you to have access [to] and know which are the financiers of a coal company you’re campaigning on, or…which coal companies the bank(s) you’re campaigning on have financed since 2005.”
OECD developments with Norweigan Intex case: OECD Watch reports that complaints that were lodged in 2009 at the OECD against a Norwegian-based company, Intex Resources, have received a response from the Norwegian National Point of Contact (NPC).The complaint was in regard to abuses at the Mindoro Nickel mine project in the Philippines, which stated that improper consultations with the surrounding indigenous groups had been carried out, it had downplayed the anticipated environmental damage the mine would cause, and that in order to obtain its exploration permit, Intex had engaged in bribery. The Norwegian NPC found the consultation that was carried out to be lacking:
“On the basis of the OECD Guidelines, the NCP applied a broad interpretation of “consultation” and states that it does not only include those that inhabit a specific land, but also those who use it according to their tradition and culture. In the view of the NCP, Intex should have systematically investigated how many indigenous people would be affected by their activities and consult them.”
The Oakland Institute (OI) decided to start looking into what are now called ‘land grabs,’ because of growing investments in agriculture that began to take place in Africa after the food crisis in 2008. The Institute noticed that there was a shift in the discourse around land and agricultural investments in Africa – talk about investing in land and agriculture in Africa being a means for Africa to “not only feed herself, but the world,” and that such investments would create a “win-win” situation. These seemed like myths to OI, because there was never any data being given to back up these statements, which is why OI undertook this investigation. OI was not prepared for the scale at which land grabs are happening, nor for the lack of transparency that they found.
OI’s conservative estimates are that between 2008 and2009, nearly 16 million hectares of land have been leased or purchased by foreign investors. 70-80 percent of these deals have taken place in Africa.
“We have a report that will be coming out in 2012 that will say that it might actually be around 200 million hectares in the last decade or so.”
There are virtually no records of these land deals, no easy way to find out who has been behind these investments, and if there are records of the land deals they are nearly impossible to obtain.
In exchange for a bottle of whiskey, OI was able to find that the Government of Mozambique has determined there are 7 million hectares of land to be given away. Official from Mozambique implied to OI that whenever a land deal is made, they have no problem displacing inhabitants from their land.
Communities do not know their land has been given away until the bulldozers arrive, or government officials show up and tell them to move.
OI studied over 50 land deals for their reports, inSouth Sudan, Tanzania, Mozambique, Zambia, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone and Mali.
In its biggest surprise, OI finds that land grab purchases are not limited to purchases by China, India, and Gulf States. In actuality, U.S. and E.U. investors are also heavily involved, particularly through private equity and hedge funds. The financial crisis has led investors to look to invest in soft commodities that are considered safer to invest in. 20-40 percent returns are being promised on these investments. So now we see pension funds and university endowments becoming involved.
The numbers being put forward on how much land is actually available for purchase or lease is problematic. In Sierra Leone, the FAO website lists 85 percent of its arable land as available, that is, that is not owned by or being used by local people. OI shows that those numbers are based on research that was done 40 years ago. Since the OI report, the FAO had to change its country page on Sierra Leone to show the truth, that there is no unused arable land that is available for foreign lease or purchase.
The government of Ethiopia has begun what is almost a 7 million hectare lease project wherein around a million people are being displaced from their lands and moved to newly-set up population centers. In South Sudan, a country that was just born this year after years of civil conflict, the role of mass land purchases on spurring further conflict is going to be significant.
OI also examined the reasons that investors are getting such high returns of 20-40 percent on these investments. It found that this has to do with the tax holidays and incentives being given by governments for this type of activity, as well as the exceedingly low cost of the land to the investors. In Tanzania, for example, very good land is being sold at $0.50 per hectare, land that in the UK would sell for $26,000 per hectare or $16,000 per hectare in Iowa. Even in Brazil or Argentina, such land would sell for $8-9,000 per hectare. In addition, in all of the deals that OI examined, the investors did not have to pay profit taxes or import duties, and profits could be repatriated at 100 percent. Although the investors did not generally report on job creation, in the one case that did, the company listed the investment as creating 18 jobs, while it had displaced a community of 7,000 people from their lands. This picture shows clearly that these investments do not create a win-win situation, but rather a substantial net loss for the host communities and countries.
Many of these deals are also for agrofuel creation or forestry, so that fertile land that was once feeding communities is now being taken over for the growing of agrofuels.
These will also have a major impact on water quality and accessibility. Anuradha points out that many investors say that they internally refer to their funds in Africa not as “land funds” but “water funds,” with the goal of securing water rights.
“Who is invested in these pension funds? Whose university endowments are promoting this trend? Whose development agencies are promoting this trend? It is our government, our universities, our pension funds. So it really opens up opportunities for us to do some real concrete activism. Though Harvard has never come out and said it openly because of their policy, when we exposed their investment in emergent asset management, we have a lot of evidence that shows that they have now pulled out.”
OI is frequently asked if there is a way to have this type of type of investment in a more sustainable way, without such negative consequences. OI responds that it is not against investment in agriculture, in fact one of the biggest problems of food insecurity has been a result of the World Bank and others advising people not to invest in agriculture over the last 30 years. But, the question needs to be what kind of investment. If the goal is to increase livelihoods, create jobs, deal with climate change, smallholder farmers need to be put at the center of policy-making. If governments put in place schemes to support farmers’ control over their land and their access to credit, those goals will be accomplished. Places that have nothing to do with agriculture, like pension funds, university endowments, JP Morgan Chase, emergent asset management, people with financial backgrounds; they should not be involved in agriculture. Because agriculture is about feeding families, communities, and preserving biodiversity, not getting 20-40 percent returns to finance investors when the rest of the economy is tanking.
Many thanks to all those who participated in the learning call on land grabs in Africa on Tuesday, December 13th. Anuradha Mittal, the Executive Director of the Oakland Institute gave us a wonderfully nuanced and informative talk about the patterns of land grabbing in Africa, who the major players are and how civil society both in the United States and internationally are finding spaces to have an impact.
The following day, the Oakland Institute issued a press release particularly on the problems that come along with private land investment in the newly formed South Sudan. As Anuradha explained during the phone call, international development groups attempting to lay groundwork for international private investments in South Sudan at a time when the government has not even fully formed holds the potential to create a lot of conflict. The press release stated:
“As South Sudan opens for business, foreign companies are flocking to invest in the new country and buy up land. For a school, a health center, some vague promises of employment opportunities, or a couple thousand dollars in annual lease payments, companies are given long-term leasehold rights of up to 99 years, often without the knowledge of the local populations living on the land.”
2)A community in Costa Rica managed to get a Canadian gold mining concession canceled. The transnational company, Infinite Gold, has had its concession definitively cancelled and will be required to pay for the damages it has done to the environment. The company has said it has not ruled out taking the case to international courts.
5) Peru has, however decided to put a ten-year ban on its bringing genetically modified seeds into the country, and farming with genetically modified seeds. There is an exception being made for “derived products that have been imported with the purpose of direct human or animal consumption, or with the aim of processing those products,”(our translation) so it appears that the ban is more concerned with preserving Peru’s biodiversity than potential human health concerns. That said, food products that do have GMOs will be required to be labelled as such, and the Peruvian government is saying that the ten year ban will give them enough time to scientifically study the effects of GMO products. Regions are allowed to declare themselves GMO-free zones, which Lima has now done.
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