Someone at the World Bank just leaked the FT’s Javier Blas a draft copy of a report on ‘landgrabs’ that was due to come out in August (the leaker apparently wanted to prevent the Bank from publishing the report when everyone was off on holiday). According to Javier,
Investors in farmland are targeting countries with weak laws, buying arable land on the cheap and failing to deliver on promises of jobs and investments, according to the draft of a report by the World Bank.
“Investor interest is focused on countries with weak land governance,” the draft said. Although deals promised jobs and infrastructure, “investors failed to follow through on their investments plans, in some cases after inflicting serious damage on the local resource base”.
In addition, “the level of formal payments required was low”, making speculation a key motive for purchases. “Payments for land are often waived … and large investors often pay lower taxes than smallholders … or none at all.”
The full report will be worth a close look when it everntually comes out. I’ve been working on land and food issues with the Bank in recent months (though not with the department working on this report), and they’ve been doing a lot of good analysis – including some pretty alarming maps I’ve seen that show (a) community land and (b) land access deals. Guess what? They overlap massively.
Interestingly, the World Bank draft apparently enthuses about the idea of developing a ‘Land Transparency Initiative’ – kind of like an EITI for land. I’ll be interested to hear what Global Witness make of that – but have to admit that my default position will be with the critics referred to in the FT article who point out that “eight years after its launch, only Liberia, Timor-Leste and Azerbaijan, were full members of the EITI”.
Sure, it’s worth exploring international standards like this. But let’s be clear: the battle for fair access to land and water will really take place at country level, between those that stand to be winners and those that stand to be losers in a world of growing scarcity – and let’s not forget that in many countries, it’s the home government, rather than overseas investors, that’s the most voracious grabber of land.
