PHM-Exch> World Bank Dispossessing Rural Poor

[Claudio Schuftan]

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From: Jomo <jomoks at yahoo.com>

*World Bank Dispossessing Rural Poor*

*Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Anis Chowdhury*

KUALA LUMPUR and SYDNEY, Apr 16 (IPS)  - The World Bank's Enabling the
Business of Agriculture (EBA) project, launched in 2013, has sought
agricultural reforms favouring the corporate sector. EBA was initially
established to support the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition,
initiated by the G8 to promote private agricultural development in Africa.

The New Alliance has been touted as "a new model of partnership" for
agricultural transformation in Africa. The Bank has used the EBA to address
the land issue in developing countries, particularly in Africa. The effort
is strongly supported by the US and UK governments as well as the Gates
Foundation, all strong proponents of corporate agriculture.

Emulating the influential annual World Bank Doing Business report, the EBA
scores countries on the ease of doing business in agriculture. It purports
to measure ‘legal barriers' to agribusiness and to prescribe reforms in
twelve areas, including seeds, fertilizers, trade and machinery.

It advocates reforms in favour of agribusiness. For example, governments
should weaken regulations over seeds, fertilizers and pesticides and
strengthen foreign agribusiness power and influence. Missing from the
partnership are peasants and indigenous peoples whose livelihoods depend on
traditional land uses.

Dangerous new indicator
The 2017 EBA report proposed a new indicator on land. Introduced as a pilot
for 38 countries, the land indicator is expected to be extended to more
countries in the 2019 EBA report. The Bank claims to be seeking to better
protect land rights and to ensure more equity in land access.

EBA best practices point to a very different agenda based on promoting
large-scale industrial agriculture at the expense of family farmers,
pastoralists and indigenous peoples. It is biased towards industrial
agriculture and agribusiness, and the intent of the new indicator makes it
even more urgent to challenge the EBA initiative.

The EBA advocates certain reforms and policy measures, raising concerns
about its likely impact, if implemented by governments. To enhance land use
productivity, the Bank advocates formalizing (private) property rights,
easing the sale and lease of land for commercial use, land expropriation
and public land auctions.

UNCTAD's 2009 World Investment Report cautioned that "Greater involvement
by TNCs will not automatically lead to greater productivity in agriculture,
rural development or the alleviation of poverty and hunger".

Even joint research by World Bank and IFPRI staff is circumspect about the
claimed benefits of large scale commercial farming in light of likely
environmental, social and productivity impacts. Large scale commercial
farming has often involved environmental degradation, forced evictions and
human rights violations, worsening food insecurity and livelihood
destruction.

Legal land grabbing
Since the turn of the century, large-scale land acquisitions by
transnational corporations (TNCs) in developing countries, especially in
sub-Saharan Africa, have accelerated. Such land targeted by ‘investors' has
often long been used by local people who may not have property titles,
often deemed unnecessary.

Land use practices have often evolved with changing demography, ecology,
knowledge and technology. Legally, such land may be deemed either public or
state land, and/or land to which local communities claim customary rights.

Unsurprisingly, such land grabs have encountered resistance from many
opposing expropriation of their land. Some have been successful in
delaying, disrupting or blocking new plantations, large farms and ranches.

Enabling land privatization
Much public land in developing countries is used in line with customary
practices. Communally managed natural resources -- water, forests, grazing
land -- are generally recognized as essential for sustaining the
livelihoods of hundreds of millions of rural poor.

In customary law, land is typically valued as a shared inherited resource,
often with deep social and cultural significance. Ignoring this, the Bank
is urging governments to privatize public land with ‘potential economic
value' for commercial use, so that it can be put to its ‘best use'.

The Bank has been promoting the formalization of private land ownership to
encourage agribusiness investments in capital-intensive agriculture, to
increase productivity. Commodifying land will enable more capital-intensive
agricultural production as the Bank believes that "undocumented [land]
rights pose challenges and risks to investors".

By scoring countries in terms of ease of accessing land for agribusiness,
the new EBA land indicator seeks to accelerate land privatization and to
facilitate corporate access to land in developing countries. By enhancing
property rights and making land a ‘transferable asset', its use as
collateral for credit is also enhanced.

Marginalizing rural poor
The Bank strategy either ignores or seeks to take advantage of the
considerable vulnerability of many family farmers, worsened as the land
they depend on for their livelihoods becomes a tradable asset.

The development of land markets increases commercial pressure on land,
destroying the livelihoods of many depending on land and the
commons—grazing and fishing grounds, and forests.

By promoting land as a marketable commodity, the land indicator inevitably
enables greater concentration of land ownership. In economies with ‘formal'
land tenure systems, farmers often lose their land to creditors.

Spreading such property rights will legally facilitate land dispossession,
concentration and grabbing. While jobs may be created for some locals, many
more may be marginalized without much hope for alternative livelihoods
elsewhere.

Thus, facilitating corporate agriculture by concentrating control over land
use is likely to exacerbate rural poverty and overall inequality.    Land
titling, purportedly to protect land users from eviction, thus accelerates
dispossession of current land users. Hence, the EBA should be ditched.

Instead, governments should be helped to design food and agriculture
policies that empower family farmers, pastoralists and indigenous peoples
to address the major challenges of poverty, hunger, malnutrition,
environmental degradation, resource depletion and climate change.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram, a former economics professor, was Assistant
Director-General for Economic and Social Development, Food and Agriculture
Organization, and received the Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the
Frontiers of Economic Thought in 2007.
Anis Chowdhury, Adjunct Professor at Western Sydney University & University
of New South Wales (Australia), held senior United Nations positions in New
York and Bangkok.

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