Land Grabs and Fragile Food Systems

Sophia argues that the globalization and the free trade agreements of the last 20 years have combined with fears over climate change to create the conditions for the current wave of land grabs. But the immediate trigger was the 2008 food price spike, which eroded the confidence of food-importing countries like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait that they could rely on the trading system to feed their people (so many of them started grabbing land instead).

The problem with the WTO is that its insistence on removing import tariffs (which we campaigned on when prices were low) was not matched by any effort to discipline export controls, making it completely irrelevant when prices rose and exporting countries slapped on export taxes to try and keep the food at home, thereby compounding the price spike. Sophia also takes a swing at the WTO’s inability/unwillingness to do anything about corporate concentration in the food sector. When the price spike hit ‘the four companies that between them control an estimated 75 percent or more of the inter­national grain trade saw their profits soar.’

Failures in other areas have aggravated the problem. Food reserves have been run down, biofuels have added a new degree of uncertainty by tying food prices to those of oil and gas (when fossil fuel prices rise, more land gets turned over to biofuels, so less food is produced, so food prices rise). Climate change, both current and rapidly approaching, has only added to that sense of vulnerability on food security.

How to reduce the pressures that are driving the wave of land grabs? The report has a rather convincing policy shopping list arising from this analysis:

• Reformed trade rules that ensure export measures are subject to transparency and predictability requirements and that allow all countries policy space for food security policies. She also proposes ways to ease food price spikes by reducing biofuel production during price surges
• Publicly-managed grain reserves to dampen the effects of supply shocks
• Readily accessible funding for the poorest food importers, which would be triggered automatically when prices increase sharply in international markets
• The development of strong national and international laws to govern investment in land, respecting the principles and guidelines set out in the Voluntary Guidelines on Land Tenure. Tanzania’s recently announced limits on how much land foreign and domestic investors can lease is a hopeful example of a national government taking the initiative to get serious about regulation.

At 12 pages, a very useful addition to the land grabs literature. And in case you missed it here’s what the fuss is about.

Ah the perils of age – am I becoming one of those annoying old guys who greets every new idea (however excellent) with a weary sigh and ‘we already did/discussed all that back in the 19XXs’? I ask because I have a distinct sense of ‘here we go again’ as today, a smorgasbord of 100 NGO logos will adorn the press releases for the launch of ‘If’, a big campaign to tackle global hunger. Logotastic, lots of killer facts, a smart video (below) and, wait for it, white wristbands! Yep, it feels a bit like a rerun of Make Poverty History (2005, for the younger readers). I may blog about this properly when I’ve had time to gauge the debates around the launch, but initial impressions are:

What’s the same as MPH?

Northern focus, pegged to this year’s UK presidency of the G8 (although the G8 is not the global steering committee it was (or at least thought it was) back in 2005).

The wristbands and celebs, which should take development debates outside the usual circuits (a good thing, in case more wonky readers are in any doubt).

The big coalition of NGOs managing the tensions of any alliance in terms of pushing their particular priorities while maintaining a clear enough message to get media ‘cut-through’. More subtly, they also have to balance the dangers of over-hyping impact, ‘make poverty history’ style, with the risks of disappearing into an academically rigorous but entirely incommunicable message of ‘hey everything is context-specific, and there are enormous limits to the efficacy of international action, but we think this would probably help a bit.’

The focus on aid – this is a big year, with UK government becoming the first G8 country to meet the international aid target of 0.7% of national income, even as other governments are tearing up their aid promises under the weight of economic crisis.

What’s different

We didn’t say ‘cut through’ back in the day.

Many more technological options for viral campaigning – twitter (#If) being the most obvious. Linked to that is a much greater focus on transparency (helpfully, if clunkily, translated as ‘seeing clearly’ in the campaign literature). And a seriously funky website (left).

If reflects the shifting development agenda: in come tax dodging, biofuels, agriculture and nutrition, out go trade (Doha round going nowhere) and debt (successful cancellation in dozens of countries). More of a focus on the rich countries putting their houses in order (tax, biofuels etc), which has to be a good thing (its lack was one of the main critiques of MPH by Dani Rodrik and Nancy Birdsall, among others). Climate change is one of If’s core issues, whereas in Gleneagles, it was put on the table by the British government, not MPH.

This one feels more UK-centric (at least for now).

No sign of Bob Geldof so far (but the year is young….)

So what do you think?

One other consequence of age: for my generation ‘If…..’ conjures up images of the 1968 film, which ends with a young Malcolm McDowell on a rooftop machine-gunning the parents and teachers of his posh public school (as we call private schools in the UK). It even has a memorable reference to Oxfam. Trust that’s just a coincidence.

You’re getting a lot of guest posts this week, not least because I’m in India – expect a spate of India posts next week. Here’s Hannah Stoddart, Oxfam’s

Oxfam’s land grabs campaign, launched on 4^th October, highlights the alarming increase in the speed and scale of large land deals in the past decade. It calls on the World Bank – as an investor in land deals, as a global standard setter and as an adviser to developing countries on their land policies – to freeze those of its agricultural investments that involve large land deals for 6 months while it reviews its policies and practices to ensure land grabs are prevented.

The World Bank has responded through official statements, blogs and interventions on panels. Here’s Oxfam’s response to some of the Bank’s main counter-arguments:

• Extent of World Bank involvement in land-grabbing

Some at the World Bank have suggested that it is not the right target – it is only involved in a ‘few cases’ that could potentially constitute land grabs and at any rate it is not as bad as most other investors. Oxfam stands by its focus on the Bank for a number of reasons. First, given the Bank’s mandate for poverty alleviation, even one land-grab case is a case too many.

Secondly, in reality we know that there are very likely more than a few controversial cases relating to land. 21 cases involving land disputes have been brought by communities since 2008 (Oxfam is involved as a complainant in a number of them). We also know that between 2000 – 2012, 56% of the complaints to the Compliance Adviser Ombudsman (CAO) have been in relation to land. The CAO also confirms that in the past 4 years there has been a growing number of complaints in relation to agri-business.

Lastly, while the World Bank may not the worst culprit when it comes to land-grabbing, it IS the only global bank with a mandate for poverty alleviation and it is a crucial institution for setting the bar high in this area. In other words, we believe that if Oxfam can’t convince the World Bank to raise its standards, we have no hope of getting other financing institutions to do so. If the Bank takes leadership, we hope we can leverage change in other institutions as a result, from regional development banks to private investors.

• World Bank’s role in agriculture

In reaction to our call for an investment freeze, the World Bank contends that it has increased its agricultural investments precisely in response to calls from organizations such as Oxfam for it to focus on a sector that has been neglected for too long. It argues that to suspend its agricultural investments – which overwhelmingly benefit smallholders – will only end up harming the very people that Oxfam seeks to support.

In response, we have never argued – and never will – that the World Bank should not be investing in agriculture. We welcome increased investment in agriculture by the Bank that genuinely benefits smallholders. This is why we are not arguing that the Bank should get out of agriculture altogether. And this is also why we are not calling for a freeze of all agricultural investments, but for a temporary 6 month freeze on agricultural investments that involve large-scale land acquisition – which the Bank acknowledges is not the majority of its investment portfolio. To put it another way, we’re invoking the precautionary principle – something the Bank has done itself in the past when it froze lending to the palm oil sector as a result of a controversial case in Indonesia.

As the World Bank’s investment in agriculture has increased from $2.5 billion in 2002 to $6-8 billion in 2012, the risk of some of these investments involving problematic land acquisition is heightened (for the record, this figure was misquoted by some media as being up to $8 billion in land investments, Oxfam has always been clear that the overall figure is for agriculture more broadly, some of which will involve land acquisition).

We welcome models of agricultural investment – both large-scale and small – that benefit communities and genuinely lead to shared benefits based on consultation and consent. We have recently published a paper outlining models of positive agricultural investment, and Oxfam GB CEO Barbara Stocking reiterated this message recently in the Financial Times. What we oppose is a model of agricultural investment that involves the mass transfer of land rights away from poor farmers and communities, a model that  frequently leads to conflict and for which there is very little evidence of pro-poor outcomes.

• Transparency

The Bank has suggested that it is a leader in the area of transparency. While Oxfam agrees that it has made great advances over the years, we feel that there are still some real areas of concern. First, we can’t even tell the full extent of the Bank’s investment in this area: there is no clarity on the overall size of its land portfolio. For an institution that rightly prides itself on the huge advances it has made in making  its data accessible, this is disappointing.

Second, 17 of the 21 complaints involving land raise issues relating to inadequate transparency. Third, over 50% of lending through the International Finance Corporation (the private sector lending arm of the World Bank) is channeled through financial intermediaries: these investments are far more opaque, and these bodies are also not subject to the same standards as the World Bank. And it makes it almost impossible for Oxfam to judge whether the Bank’s claim is true that ‘only 2% of IFC agribusiness loans in the past financial year involved land acquisition’. Furthermore, the trend towards new lending instruments and technical assistance makes it far more difficult to hold the World Bank accountable for cases where it might not have directly funded a project that results in controversy, but has provided the advice that made it possible.

So if the Bank wants to know #whatwillittake to end poverty, Oxfam thinks taking leadership on stopping land grabs is a great place to start.

Hannah Stoddart is Head of Economic Justice Policy at Oxfam GB

land rush is doing an awful lot of damage. A hard-hitting, killer fact-tastic Oxfam briefing written by my colleague Kate Geary published today summarizes the stats (as far as we know them).

• In the past decade, an area eight times the size of the UK (203m hectares) has been sold off or leased out globally.
• The land acquired between 2000 and 2010 has the potential to feed a billion people, equivalent to the number of people who currently go to bed hungry each night (Oxfam calculation, all explained in footnotes).
• Two-thirds of agricultural land deals by foreign investors are in countries with a serious hunger problem.
• Two-thirds of foreign land investors in developing countries intend to export everything they produce on the land.
• According to the IMF, most of the land being sold off is in the poorest countries with the weakest protection of people’s land rights.

Once the land has been given away, it becomes a much harder and potentially nastier battle to take it back. The danger is that when the dust settles on this property rights freezing frenzy, millions of people will have l2ost access to land, countries will be saddled with bad deals, and investors will face a resentful population and a legal quagmire. So Oxfam is arguing that we need a freeze on investments involving large-scale land deals while we sort out the mess.

The organization we want to lead this is the World Bank, whose role its new president Jim Kim is currently reviewing. The Bank is the preeminent global development institution, and is ideally placed to send a big signal to governments and investors.

According to its critics, the Bank is also part of the land deal problem. Its private sector lending arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), has an official complaints mechanism known as the Compliance Advisor/Ombudsman (CAO). This has seen its case-load triple in the past two years, while in the decade to 2010 over 60 per cent of cases that it assessed related to land conflicts. Oxfam is a co-signatory to three formal land-related complaints to the Bank, one in Indonesia and two in Uganda – here and here.

Moreover, through its advisory services, the IFC encourages governments to streamline and consolidate investment-related policies and activities – in essence to create a ‘one-stop shop’ for investors. Recently, the Bank’s Investment Climate Advisory Services helped to create or support investment promotion agencies (IPAs) in Sierra Leone, Cape Verde, Senegal, Zambia and Tanzania, among others. In

Tanzania’s case, its IPA is mandated to identify and provide ‘available’ land to investors and to set up a ‘land bank’ of some 2.5 million hectares considered suitable for investment. That might all make sense in a well-governed land market, but is not helping if it smoothes the path of the current land rush.

But whatever the views on ‘Bank as problem’, it can most definitely be part of the solution. Its influence is huge, not just through its own actions, but its role in setting standards for other donors and investors. So Oxfam is asking it to declare a 6 month freeze, a time out during which it should review the World Bank Group’s investments, publicly support and help implement the catchily-titled ‘Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Land Tenure’ and lobby other investors to follow suit, overhaul its investment procedures and revise the kinds of advice it is giving to developing country governments.

Over to you Jim Kim

P.S. If you’re in Oxford this evening with nothing better to do, come to Blackwells for 7pm, grab a glass of cheap wine and help me launch the second edition of From Poverty to Power. Details here.

, published today, on a really simple, bad policy that rich countries can fix – biofuels.

The past five years have seen two record spikes in the price of food; and prices are rising again, with corn and soy hitting record highs in summer 2012. There is intense disagreement about what causes food price spikes and how to address them, and this often gives rise to confusion and inaction. But, unusually, there is one thing most experts agree on: scrapping biofuel policies would make a real difference. In June 2011, ten international organisations were so convinced of this fact that they made an unprecedented call for G20 governments to scrap biofuel policies. Last week, the European Commission and the French government finally woke up to the fact that it is simply unacceptable to burn food while millions around the world go hungry.

In 2009 EU governments agreed that by 2020 all ground transport fuel sold in the EU would contain about 9 parts biofuel to every 91 parts petrol or diesel. In a new report published in advance of today’s meeting of EU Energy Ministers to discuss renewable energy, Oxfam shows that EU biofuel mandates are inextricably connected to hunger and land grabs in developing countries. Modelling by the UK government suggests that suspending the EU biofuel mandate in 2018 could reduce international price spikes by up to 35 percent. And that is just the impact that is relatively easy to model. A drop in local or regional food production has a much greater impact than international commodity prices on retail prices, especially in regions that are relatively isolated from international markets, like sub-Saharan Africa. As biofuel production displaces local, national and regional food production, not only do people have to buy the food they would otherwise have grown, but there is less for sale; increased demand and reduced supply push up local prices.

The leaked European Commission proposal is welcome in so far as it recognises, for the first time, that EU biofuel mandates exacerbate both climate change and hunger. But, as the proposal stands, it is no solution and could in fact make matters worse. At the moment about 4.5 percent of ground transport fuel used in the EU is made up of biofuels, of which about 90 percent comes from food crops. Not only would the Commission proposal increase that amount to 5 percent, but it would allow biofuel made from non-food crops to make up the difference – which uses up scarce resources of land, water and soil when they should be used to produce much-needed food.

According to Oxfam’s calculations, the land used to produce the biofuels used in the EU in 2008 has the potential to produce enough wheat and maize to feed 127 million people. As the proportion of biofuel in our petrol and diesel rises, so does the amount of land it gobbles up. Most land deals happen in the poorest countries with the weakest protection of people’s land rights, according to the IMF and World Bank; economic regressions show that other variables, like availability of land and ranking on the Doing Business indicators, are simply irrelevant. Affected communities rarely have a say, and women are the least likely to be consulted even though they are often the most seriously affected. The overwhelming consensus from research on the welfare impact of large-scale biofuel production shows that benefits are reaped by a small elite. As research from Indonesia concludes, ‘there are some winners but many losers’.

EU governments have it within their power to make a difference to the lives of millions of hungry people. It is completely unacceptable that we are burning food in our petrol tanks while poor families go hungry and millions are being pushed off their land. Fighting hunger has never been so simple: it’s time to scrap the mandates.

Ruth Kelly is an economic policy adviser for Oxfam

Here’s the headlines from the overview:

“This report introduces the four big commodity traders – Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Bunge, Cargill, and Louis Dreyfus, often collectively referred to as “the ABCD companies”. It looks at these traders in relation to a number of the global issues pressing on agriculture: the “financialization” of both commodity trade and agricultural production; the emergence of global competitors to the ABCDs, in particular from Asia; and some of the implications of large-scale industrial biofuels, a sector in which the ABCDs are closely involved. It includes a discussion of how smallholders in developing countries are affected by some of these changes, and highlights some development policy implications.

1. The ABCDs matter. They are not alone, nor unchallenged, but they remain the overwhelmingly dominant traders of grain globally, and what they do is central to understanding international markets (and the domestic politics of food in many countries, too). Too often invisible in policy debates about farmers and consumers, these companies are careful about where and when they get involved in such debates, rarely seeking the limelight. They do not have brand names to protect in the way that a food processor such as Nestlé does. ADM is publicly listed and Bunge is also a fully public company. Dreyfus and Cargill remain essentially family-owned businesses. None of the companies is very forthcoming about its activities, and to track their activities requires patience and guesswork. However, despite the difficulties, it is important to understand their role and their interactions with other companies, national and global.

2. The ABCDs are evolving. This is inevitable, given globalization. At this stage in their evolution (and some of the companies are over 150 years old), they have begun operating in some cases like banks (and banks, in turn, have found themselves trading on commodity exchanges). The ABCDs continue to trade grain, but grain is not their only activity, nor is it where their growth is most impressive. As they grow, they need more capital, and there is constant pressure for the historically family-owned company, Dreyfus, to undertake public share offerings. With that will come legal demands for greater transparency, although probably not enough to satisfy concerns about the potential for abuse of oligopolistic market power.

3. The ABCDs do not operate in a vacuum. New realities, particularly the rise of new economic powers, including China, Brazil, and India, as well as the re-emergence of Russia and some of the former Soviet republics as agricultural powerhouses, are reshaping the global economy. The ABCDs are responding and adapting to those changes, as well as playing their part in deciding the direction that events should take. The new emerging powers are not as wedded to open trade, deregulated markets, and deregulated capital flows as are the governments they now challenge (the United States and the European Union, in particular). One effect of this change in the balance of power has been to make the likelihood of a meaningful outcome to the Doha negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) improbable.

Between 2006 and 2008, average world prices for rice rose by 217%, wheat by 136%, maize by 125%, and soybeans by 107%. Rising and volatile prices define the context in which policy debates on food and agriculture are taking place today.

Many explanations have been offered for these steep increases, and recent summaries can be found in the intergovernmental agency report to the G20 and the High Level Panel of Experts’ report on food price volatility. Explanations ascribe higher food prices to increasing demand for meat-based products, which require animal feed made from grains; higher oil prices, which have led to higher costs for fertilisers and other inputs; the increased use of maize and soybeans for biofuels production, in part due to government policies in Europe and the USA; and deregulation of financial markets opening the way for commodity derivatives, which link food commodities in significant ways to other commodities in financial markets.

There has been a particularly heated debate among economists over whether the increase in investment in agricultural commodities futures markets via new financial derivatives is a main driver of recent food price volatility. However, a growing number of analyses link at least some of the food price volatility of recent years to increased investment in these markets. The Bank for International Settlements, for example, has noted that financialization affects commodity prices, especially in the short term; a conclusion that several UN reports have also recently come to recognize.

While supply and demand fundamentals remain important, herd behaviour among investors, which is often linked to the availability of imperfect information, may make price swings more dramatic than they otherwise would have been. Financial actors who know little about the physical production of food are affecting the real world of food production and consumption through investments on commodity futures markets. As such, financialization has further abstracted food from its physical form. This financialization has occurred in a broader context of capital deregulation that has reshaped the way in which food markets interface with financial markets.

The report does provide some new evidence on these complicated issues and suggests some avenues for further work. It starts from the analysis (by Oxfam and others) that (a) food price volatility is a problem and (b) speculation and biofuels, alongside other factors such as export bans, are helping to drive volatility. It goes on to show that the role played by the ABCD trading firms is important, but that how to address them and limit their power is not obvious, and regulations and changes will probably need to target broader reforms. But understanding the economic and political power of the ABCDs is essential to developing a smart strategy to realize changes that will protect the interests of smallholder farmers and poor consumers in developing countries.”

I have skimmed a few of the curtain raisers for next week’s Earth Summit in Rio, and sure enough, they fall into the familiar pattern of ‘If I ruled (or at least ‘managed’) the world’ documents: a summary of the research evidence, a call to arms (in this case save planet and species, preferably both), and a shopping list of policy recommendations.

In such reports, all solutions seem to be win-win. Beyond vague appeals for political will, there is almost no discussion of politics (there’s an election going on in the US – do you think that might be germane?), power (who gets to decide what, and what are their motivations) or the chain of events (shocks, elections, scandals, cumulative pressure from citizens, peer pressure from governments) that might possibly lead to something being agreed. Reports typically employ the passive tense – ‘innovation/cash/leadership is needed’, neatly avoiding having to identify just who has to do it, and why they might decide to do so.

Exhibit A: ‘Confronting Scarcity: Managing water, energy and land for inclusive and sustainable growth’ is the latest European Report on Development. I’ve been a bit rude about the ERDs in the past, but within the limits of the genre (see previous para – the exec sum has 84 uses of ‘manage’ or ‘management’, but only 8 of ‘politics’, ‘political’ or ‘empowerment’), this one’s actually quite good, in that it joins up issues and thinks in terms of whole systems. I think the ‘DSER framework’ (see below) may also stick. Highlights:

“This Report focuses on water, energy [actually, only renewable energy] and land (see graphic). It examines the constraints on each, the interrelationships between them and then considers how they can be managed together to promote growth in developing countries that is both socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable.

All actors must consider the full range of options in managing pressures on water, energy and land. So far the focus has been on partial solutions: Businesses emphasise the opportunities in increasing supply and raising resource efficiency; the green economy concept at Rio+20 highlights enhancing the resource base, resource efficiency, and sustainable consumption and production; NGOs highlight fair resource shares for the poor; others emphasise resilience against climate shocks. This ERD argues that the scale and urgency of the problems require transformative action in a combination of four pillars (DSER):

•  influencing demand patterns to reflect scarcity values (e.g. sustainable consumption and production by cutting waste and changing lifestyles)
•  improving the quantity and quality of supply (e.g. partnerships on renewable energy, soils, water storage through appropriate finance, regulation and knowledge sharing)
• increasing efficiency (e.g. technology transfer, national innovation systems)
•  increasing resilience against shocks and benefits for the poorest (e.g. benefit-sharing, social protection, Corporate Social Responsibility, inclusive land policy)

Action is particularly required in five areas:

1. Radically reduce the environmental footprint of consumption (especially, but not only, in developed countries such as the EU) to promote inclusive growth without increasing resource use.
2.  Promote innovation to increase agricultural productivity to feed more than 9bn people sustainably by 2050 and scale up renewable energy technologies that help to deliver sustainable energy for all by 2030.
3. Establish or reform institutions for an integrated approach towards managing resources.
4. Push for inclusive land policy to ensure access to land and water for the poorest and most vulnerable.
5.  Price natural resources and services comprehensively and appropriately (e.g. using instruments such as payments for ecosystem services, PES), whilst safeguarding the welfare of the poorest.

And a couple of other choice quotes:

“The new context for the management of natural resources poses severe risks for both inclusiveness and sustainability. The world has already trespassed three of the nine planetary boundaries within which it can operate safely: biodiversity loss, nitrogen and phosphorus loading and climate change. Ocean acidification and freshwater boundaries are expected to be next in the coming 50 years. The risk that tipping points are being reached, or will soon be reached, will jeopardise the future wellbeing of the poorest, who will be the hardest hit by environmental degradation. Applying the technology that lay behind the Green Revolution of the 1960s will not sustainably produce food for 9.3 billion people by 2050. The Earth’s natural resource base does not allow developing and emerging economies to reach consumption patterns that developed countries have followed and continue to follow (e.g. a reliance on meat consumption), hence distributional issues will have to be addressed, especially since technological progress has not been sufficient to decouple consumption of natural resources from economic growth.”

“Countries and groups that possess relevant assets will have new opportunities, but these come with social and environmental risks. Less well-endowed countries, regions and groups face different types of risks and opportunities (e.g. parts of northern China, India, Middle East and Southern Africa have little water, while countries such as Ethiopia, Ghana, Madagascar and Sudan have large tracts of land).”

There are good case studies on biofuels, managing the WEL Nexus in Kenya (see video) and the Brazilian ag boom.

Has anyone read any other particularly good curtain raisers, preferably with at least some discussion of power and politics? (and no, you’re not allowed to suggest your own…..)

First the big number: the Land Matrix Partnership, a coalition of NGOs, academics and donors, has come up with a ceiling figure of 227m hectares (the size of Western Europe, 10x the UK) for the total area affected over the last 10 years. Big pinch of salt required – finding out exactly how much land has changed hands is incredibly difficult due to the lack of transparency and secrecy that often surrounds the deals. The 227 million figure is based on information on land deals from a whole range of different sources including government reports, academic research, company websites, international finance institutions media reports and the few contracts that are publicly available. My understanding is that this builds on the methodology used by other players like the World Bank, which came up with a 56m hectare figure in 2009, for deals over the 11 months to August 2009.

Due to all the different sources, with different company names and subsidiaries used, and different levels of information provided, there is bound to be some double counting or proposals that never materialised, (but also, no doubt, a bunch of deals we didn’t catch). So we are working through it all and cross-checking the data, but with over 2000 land deals this takes time. We’re up to 67 million hectares so far. I’ll keep you posted on where we get to.…

The case studies each contain different experiences and lessons. In Uganda, over 20,000 people have been evicted, many (and we talked to several hundred of them) claiming it was done violently, to make way for a forestry project of the UK-based New Forests Company.  The evictions were carried out by the government (although locals claimed they recognized NFC employees). NFC is saying the villagers were illegally on the land, they have received no reports of the use of violence, and take refuge in two independent endorsements of one of the plantations – certification by the Forestry Stewardship Council and a field assessment by the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation.

This raises important issues for even the best-intentioned investors – in many developing countries systems of formal and customary law coexist, and both need to be taken seriously – some of those evicted say they have been living on the land for 40 years or more. And the huge edifice constructed around sustainability, climate change and carbon sequestration (in this case involving both the FSC and the Clean Development Mechanism) really needs to be overhauled to make sure that if they are displaced, the people already living on the land exercise their right to Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), get proper compensation, and are found alternative livelihoods. None of that seems to be happening in the case in Uganda.

Palm oil-based biofuels is emerging as a driver of some nasty land grabs, and the Indonesia case looks at the role of a Malaysian/Indonesian joint venture company named PT MAS (subsidiary of palm oil giant Sime Darby), which is alleged to have backtracked on promises of land and investments to displaced communities. We found similar things going on in South Sudan, Honduras and Guatemala (eviction pictured here).

Overall, what emerges is a mess. Dodgy authorities, whether local or national, out for a quick buck; investors all too willing to turn a blind eye and be content with box-ticking and legalistic excuses; land lying idle despite promises to turn into a productive marvel; land tenure systems that are murky and offer little defense to poor communities; legal systems that are inaccessible to poor farmers. But in a few cases, civil society protest and/or action by the authorities seems to be correcting some of the worst excesses, which at least gives grounds for hope.

Agricultural investment can be a real boon to poor farmers, but not if it’s done like this. The balance of power has to be shifted to local communities, who need a much greater say (through FPIC) in what happens to their land. Host country governments need to clean up their act and be much more transparent about the deals being negotiated; the home country governments of the investors need to do more on regulation and disclosure and drop their daft biofuels mandates, which are contributing to the scramble; investors need to stop looking for excuses and follow the example of other sectors such as garments or supermarkets in accepting responsibility for the whole supply chain, not just the bit they directly own (we used to hear these kinds of denials from the shoe and clothing companies ten years ago – not any more).

Public campaigning played a big role in shifting the clothes companies and needs to get behind campaigns on land grabs too. That example does at least offer hope – the land deals are a short-term response, but high prices are probably here to stay, so the more we can do to civilize big agriculture investments  and turn them into drivers of development, rather than misery, the better.

I can’t keep up with the flood of research on the issues related to the GROW campaign, so my ever-hungry colleague Richard King is riding to the rescue……

This occasional ‘blog series is a nutritionally dense (but non-exhaustive) collection of links, highlighting major recent publications and miscellaneous happenings that are relevant to Oxfam’s GROW campaign.

Like any growbag, this series requires planting and watering (to overextend a shocking pun). Seedlings for inclusion in future posts (along with any suggestions for improvements) can be emailed to research@oxfam.org.uk. Let’s get started:

1. ‘Price volatility and food security’ - UN Committee on World Food Security’s (CFS) High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE)

The report considers the causes and solutions to higher food prices and higher levels of food price volatility. It proposes three different explanations for recent international food price increases.

“The first explanation defines food price rises as a problem of agricultural price volatility‘ (implying that high prices will not last) and as a quasi-natural and permanent problem of agricultural markets. The second explanation points to the existence of periodic international food crises (1950s, 1970s, and present) and claims they can be explained by the dynamic of investment in agriculture. The third explanation sees current price increases as an early signal of coming and lasting scarcities on agricultural markets. The report does not choose between these three explanations. Instead, it emphasizes their complementarities. For example, the need for significant public investment in agriculture will be conceived of differently if the third explanation (coming scarcities) is taken into account. The main concern here is that short and medium-term measures should be compatible with and even contribute to resolution of the long-term problems.”

Key policy recommendations to address price volatility and its consequences for food security fall under six objectives:

- Building a food security oriented trading system
- Precautionary regulation of speculation
- International coordination of national storage policies
- Food reserves and the World Food Programme
- Refocusing public investment to achieve long term food security
- Curbing the growth of developed country demand for agricultural products

One aspect of the report that has been widely picked up on is the relative contribution to growing cereal consumption of biofuels and emerging markets’ demand for food. From Triple Crisis:

“…despite continued claims that growing demand for meat in China and India is driving food and feed demand, the growth in demand for cereals, excluding biofuels demand, averaged 1.3% since 2000, only slightly higher than in the 1990s and slower than in the previous three decades. Biofuels demand added half a percentage point to that global demand.”

Thus, one of the report’s more striking recommendations is “Given the major roles played by biofuels in diverting food to energy use, the CFS should demand of governments the abolition of targets on biofuels and the removal of subsidies and tariffs on biofuel production and processing.” 

The similarities with the earlier inter-agency report for the G-20 are striking.

2. ‘Policy Solutions to Agricultural Market Volatility’ - ICTSD
This takes a more pessimistic view of what is doable in the face of price volatility:

“A review of possible options for reducing volatility on international markets shows that none of them is likely to work… The conclusion is as disappointing as it is important. There is no effective way of doing much about price behaviour on world markets for agricultural commodities. These markets will continue to exhibit volatility, including the occasional extreme price spike, and there is no recipe against that malady. The only available policy response, then, is to try and minimize the negative implications of volatility.”

Developing countries, it seems, have more limited options: Trade policies can help shield domestic markets from international volatility, but they can’t target the most vulnerable and they exacerbate international instability. Domestic market interventions are deemed ineffectual, as are national stock policies (though there may be a role for emergency stocks in import dependent countries). Social safety nets can help poor consumers ride out the storm, but they need to be implemented when the sun is still shining, not when the storm is raging.

3. ‘Price formation in financialized commodity markets: The role of information’ – UNCTAD
UNCTAD makes the case for “soft regulation” of financialised commodity markets (increased transparency of both physical commodity stocks, and in financial exchanges and OTC markets; tighter regulation and limits on financial players’ positions). It also suggests considering a financial transaction tax to slow down investors’ activities in financial commodity markets. Why? Because, in the absence of full information, financial traders are like rampaging sheep (above): “Trading decisions are… taken in an environment of considerable uncertainty. In such a situation, it is rational to follow other participants’ trading decisions… In an environment of herd behaviour there are limits to arbitrage. Acting against the majority, even if justified by fundamentals, may result in large losses, often of borrowed money. It may therefore be rational for market participants to ignore their own information and follow the trend.”

4. ‘A Warming Planet Struggles to Feed Itself’ - New York Times
“For nearly two decades, scientists had predicted that climate change would be relatively manageable for agriculture, suggesting that even under worst-case assumptions, it would probably take until 2080 for food prices to double. In part, they were counting on a counterintuitive ace in the hole: that rising carbon dioxide levels, the primary contributor to global warming, would act as a powerful plant fertilizer and offset many of the ill effects of climate change. [the ‘carbon fertilization effect’] Until a few years ago, these assumptions went largely unchallenged. But lately, the destabilization of the food system and the soaring prices have rattled many leading scientists.”

5. ‘Biofuels and Climate Change Mitigation’ - World Bank
“If biofuel mandates and targets currently announced by more than 40 countries around the world are implemented by 2020 using crop feedstocks, and if both forests and pasture lands are used to meet the new land demands for biofuel expansion, this would cause a net increase of greenhouse gas emissions released to the atmosphere until 2043, since the cumulative greenhouse gas emissions released through land-use change would exceed the reduction of emissions due to replacement of gasoline and diesel until then.”

Pretty remarkable finding. However, “if the use of forest lands is avoided by channeling only pasture lands to meet the demand for new lands, a net increase of cumulative greenhouse gas emissions would occur but would cease by 2021, only a year after the assumed full implementation of the mandates and targets.” Better. But this would still require mass-scale livestock intensification and much-improved productivity on remaining pasturelands to prevent second-order, knock-on deforestation by people who would otherwise be using the pasture lands given over to biofuels. And there’s still the small issue of having enough land to feed 9 billion people by mid century…

6. Meanwhile, a report for ICTSD ‘The Impact of US Biofuel Policies on Agricultural Price Levels and Volatility‘ finds that US ethanol subsidies may have artificially inflated maize prices by as much as 17 percent in 2011. 

7. ‘Protein efficiency per unit energy and per unit greenhouse gas emissions: Potential contribution of diet choices to climate change mitigation’ - Food Policy journal
Interesting new paper on the impact of our dietary choices on climate change. Looking at the production and transportation of 84 common animal and vegetable foods to a port in Sweden, it finds “animal-based foods are associated with higher energy use and GHG emissions than plant-based foods, with the exception of vegetables produced in heated greenhouses.”

Importantly, it also considered the nutritional value (in terms of protein) of the foods per unit of energy and GHG emitted. “Whether in terms of energy spent or emissions of GHGs, this study showed that the efficiency of delivering protein… was much higher for plant-based foods than for animal-based. In addition, plant-based protein had the specific attribute of increasing efficiency with increasing protein content of the food. Therefore, strategies aimed at feeding a growing world population and reducing contributions to climate change should include measures to encourage a more vegetarian diet with the focus on consuming vegetable products with high protein content, such as legumes, nuts and grains.”

For further analysis related to this, see the excellent Food Climate Research Network

You’d be forgiven for not clocking that that there’s a major UN sustainable development conference on the horizon.  In less than a year, governments will convene in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, 20 years on from the 1992 Rio ‘Earth Summit’. 

So far Rio+20 is shaping up like many anniversaries.  Everyone agrees that the occasion is VERY IMPORTANT and must be marked.  The date and venue is set, and guests alerted.  But people are still scratching their heads over what to do on the big day – let alone what gifts to give.   

The politics are way off course for achieving anything as groundbreaking as the 1992 Earth Summit.  That produced two binding UN conventions (climate change, biodiversity), two sets of principles (the Rio Declaration, Forest Principles) and an implementation plan (Agenda 21). 

This time round no new treaty is on the cards.  Still nursing their scars from Copenhagen, and locked in a tunnel vision focus on growth, governments have said that Rio+20 will be about discussing ‘progress, gaps and future challenges for sustainable development’ and – in true anniversary style – securing ‘renewed political commitment’.  You don’t have to be a hardened cynic to worry that we’re headed toward the ‘rhetoric plus photo op’ formula for international summitry.   

Still, it would be a huge mistake to dismiss Rio+20.  The threats of resource scarcity and environmental shocks are greater than ever, especially for poor people. Nowhere is this clearer than in the food system, as years of slow progress on hunger risk being reversed as demand outstrips supply, and food production and farmers’ livelihoods are hit by depleting natural resources, a scramble for fertile land and water, and climate change. 

These challenges cannot be solved without global co-operation to share resources fairly and help people cope with crises.   A thoughtful paper by Alex Evans and David Steven out last month argues that Rio+20 could play a path-finding role – exploring where future deals are needed, the interests at stake and what’s needed to change political calculus surrounding them.  

And let’s not forget the conference does have a theme – two in fact:  the ‘green economy’ and the ‘institutional framework for sustainable development’.   The latter is important but unfortunately sounds breathtakingly dull to the grassroots activist (“What do we want? An upgraded UNEP!”).  The discussions are also weighed down by inter-agency UN politics and governments’ unwillingness to increase the power of multilateral bodies – including the US, which will be in full-on Presidential election mode by mid 2012.  A shifting of the institutional deckchairs seems more likely than significant reform. 

The Green Economy, however, has hit a political sweet spot.  The G20 and G8 have been promising to ‘green’ their growth since mid-2009.  Several developing countries –  from China and South Korea to Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda – are promoting green investments, in areas such as renewable energy, organic agriculture, waste management and forest conservation.  A slew of reports, like those from UNEP and the OECD, catalogue these efforts and make the case for why economies need to shift to a sustainable path.   And many hope that the UN Secretary-General’s High Level Panel on Global Sustainability will provide concrete ideas for Rio+20 on how to achieve this transformation.  A new set of Sustainable Development Goals to mirror the MDGs is one proposal on the table. 

The trouble is that Green Economy is still conceptually fuzzy and politically contentious.   Some campaign groups and Southern governments fear that this is all a cover for business-as-usual, whereby powerful governments and businesses will exploit new environmental markets or policies for their own gain – like through ‘green border tariffs’ – and the inequality and unsustainability of growth will remain untouched.  Jim Thomas at ETC group wrote a piece in the Guardian on this. 

At Oxfam, we’re still reading the runes on this one.  One option for civil society is to use Green Economy as a political hook to campaign for a vision of development that is truly transformative – which weans rich countries off over-consumption and enables developing countries to reduce poverty and cope with resource scarcity.  A reformed food system, which promotes food security, investment in smallholders and sustainable agriculture – and reverses distorting policies such as biofuel mandates – must be at the heart of that vision.  So too should the whole issue of “fair shares” – a complex but vital issue, which Alex Evans helps unpick in a new Oxfam/WWF paper.

So what is needed to raise the ambition for Rio?  A few ideas.  First, campaigners can tap into public concern over the outcomes of growing demand and resource pressures, such as food and fuel prices.  Even Finance Ministries care about these issues. 

Second, we need to identify the public policy changes to call for at Rio.  It sounds obvious, but there’s a huge shopping list of ideas out there.   Some are general (“we need something on agriculture, biodiversity, forest etc”) and others specific (end fossil fuel subsidies, introduce green product standards, agree energy access goals, measure green GDP). Which ones really require a global push at Rio and can get buy-in politically?  This leads to a third point, which is about spotting where political opportunities will open up, for instance, because of a crisis (famine in the Horn) or because another process has created political space (G20 on fossil fuel subsidy reform?).  

Finally, we urgently need to figure out where the BRICS are on this.  Northern-based NGOs and civil servants are pinning a lot of hope on emerging economies to provide leadership for Rio.   This is partly a counsel of despair: their own governments are busy battling a debt crisis/looming election.   But there is something in the “go BRICS” approach.  In the next year, a series of summits will be hosted by these countries: South Africa on climate, South Korea on aid effectiveness, Mexico on the G20 and Brazil for Rio+20.   Plus, they all face pressure to find an alternate development path as sustainability challenges threaten to slow growth, foment domestic opposition or simply bring countries to a standstill (pollution, gridlocked cities).  And they’re still building major infrastructure rather than being already locked-in, like in the West.

But does this add up to leadership for global co-operation, or will the same old games of narrow self-interest still apply?  Look at the G20.  Despite soaring food prices, Brazil isn’t budging on biofuel mandates, nor Russia on export bans.  And in the UN Security Council, China is said to have watered down recent efforts to get climate change recognised as a threat to peace and security – even as the Maldives sinks beneath the waves.   Smart analysis of politics in the BRICs would help.  Are there resource shocks round the corner that threaten growth and security, cannot be dealt with through national policy alone (safety nets, foreign resource ‘grabs’) and have multilateral solutions that yield direct benefits in the short-term (cf UNFCCC)?   What other potential domestic drivers of change exist?