Verdensbanken ødelegger miljøet

Av Julie Hval, FIAN Norge

– Flere tiår med Verdensbankens promotering av markedsbaserte løsninger for arealforvaltning har medført en massiv overtakelse av folks landområder, massive miljø-ødeleggelser og massive tilbakeslag for bønder og andre miljøer som kjemper i front, sier Giulia Franchi fra Campana per Riforma della Banca Mondial (Kampanjen for reform av Verdensbanken).

På den internasjonale dagen for småbønders kamp, 17.april 2012, ble det arrangert om lag 250 ulike aktiviterer over hele verden for å markere avstand fra en slik utvikling. Utviklingen går i retning av færre eiere både av jord som skal brukes til matproduksjon og vannområder.

– Folk i rurale områder mister kontrollen over land og vannområder som følge av det globale landranet, forteller den honduranske bonden Rafael Alegrìa i forbindelse med Verdensbankens årskonferanse om land og fattigdom.

Her ble Verdensbankens nye og svært kontroversielle policydokument Prinsiples for Responsible Agricultural Investments (RAI) ble lagt frem. Med de nye prinsippene legger banken opp til at nye 80 millioner hektar landområder skal kunne kjøpes opp av private investorer. Banken ønsker videre å drøfte strategier for store utenlandske selskapers mulighet til å kjøpe opp landbruksjord i utviklingsland.

I løpet av de senere årene har mellom 80 og 230 millioner hektar med land har blitt leid eller kjøpt opp, med mål om å produsere mat, fôr eller drivstoff for det internasjonale markedet. Slike oppkjøp skjer ofte i områder der det bor mange småbønder, som mister kontroll og tilgang til jorda de har bodd på. Resultatet er ofte mangel på tilgang til mat, vann og bolig – brudd på grunnleggende menneskerettigheter.

Økt etterspørsel og interesse for jord har bidratt til økende priser på mat, biodrivstoff, fôr og andre råvarer. Med økende priser kommer også en økende interesse for å investere i slike landområder. I denne utviklingen bidrar Verdensbanken med mye kapital for å bidra til å bygge opp under et positivt investeringsmiljø for private aktører.

Sammen med flere andre organisasjoner, har FIAN International skrevet under på utropet “World Bank, get out of land, now” (se under).

Konferansen ble arrangert 23.-26 april, under temaet Arealforvaltning i en verden i rask endring. De andre organisasjonene som har tilsluttet seg oppropet mot Verdensbanken er: La Via Campesina, Campana per Riforma della Banca Mondial, Focus on the Global South, Friends of the Earth International, GRAIN og Transnational Institute.

– WORLD BANK: GET OUT OF LAND! –

“Land governance in a rapidly changing environment” is the theme of the 2012 World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty being held April 23-26 in Washington DC. Corporate investors, governments and International Financial Institutions are meeting at World Bank headquarters to “discuss issues of concern to land practitioners and policymakers worldwide”. While they devise ways to help corporations acquire land around the world, people on the ground are suffering from the corporate-friendly land policies and laws promoted by the World Bank and its allies.

The World Bank has for decades pushed a market-based approach to land management based on its political and economic recipes for poverty reduction. It has promoted land privatisation and sought to create the conditions for land markets to be established by transforming traditional and customary land rights into ready-to-be-marketed titles and by funding land-titling programs in many countries — in support of a corporate-led agri-industrial model of development.

Its land programmes have increased the concentration of land in the hands of a few and set the stage for a massive global land and water grab. Attracted by high food prices and an increasing demand for agrofuels, feed, and raw materials, multinational agribusiness corporations and players from the financial industry, such as private banks and pension funds, are rushing to gain control of land and other associated resources such as water. An estimated 80 to 230 million hectares of land have been leased or bought up in recent years, mainly to produce food, feed or fuel for the international market. As a result, peasants, herders, fishers and rural households are losing their access to and control over natural resources (land, water, fisheries, forests, pastures) and production processes, and therefore being dispossessed of the means to feed themselves and their communities. Local populations are being evicted and displaced, human rights such as the right to food and housing are being violated, and the environment, as much as traditional community structures, are being destroyed.

The World Bank is playing a key role in this global land grab by making capital and guarantees available for big multinational investors, providing technical assistance and support to “improve the agricultural investment climate” in so-called recipient countries, and promoting policies and laws that are corporate-oriented rather than people-centred. All this is being done while the Bank promotes its seven principles of Responsible Agricultural Investment (RAI) to legitimise the global capture of people’s lands by big corporate investors for industrial agriculture. The World Bank continues acting in total impunity. States must stop it and fully comply with their extraterritorial human rights obligations.

While the World Bank meets inside its headquarters with the global land grabbers, people outside are mobilizing around the world to outlaw land grabbing and to reclaim all the grabbed territories. They assert that no corporate-led transparency or responsibility schemes will ever make the expropriation of people’s land or the agri-industrial model acceptable or sustainable.

In the framework of the International Day of Peasant Struggle launched by La Via Campesina for April 17, we join with farmers and fisher-folk movements, agricultural workers’ organisations, students, human rights activists and environmental groups, women’s organisations and social justice movements in the struggle to oppose land grabbing and the corporate control of lands and to stop any attempts by the World Bank and its corporate allies to package the expropriation of peasant farmers’ land worldwide as a responsible deal.

World Bank, get out of land, now!

Signed by Campagna per la Riforma della Banca Mondiale, FIAN International, Focus on the Global South, Friends of the Earth International, GRAIN, La Via Campesina, and the Transnational Institute – 23 April 2012