Stealing People’s Land Can Only Impoverish Them Further

The World Bank, an institution devised to divert aid money on its way to developing countries back to the rich and powerful, seems to have woken up to the sort of negative impact that its policies have been having on developing countries. I wouldn’t get too excited, though, because the negative impacts they are concerned about follow from their policies, which they haven’t changed in any way. And no matter how they appear to equivocate, it’s always worth bearing in mind who ‘international’ financial (and other) institutions are intended to benefit.

Grabbing land goes back a long way, hundreds of years, as does using people and resources in developing countries for the enrichment of people in developed countries. The monumental disaster, the Tanganyika Groundnut Scheme, which started in the late 1940s and was abandoned in the early 1950s, is just one out of many examples.  Like all of today’s land grabs, the grabbers were quick to claim numerous advantages for those who were being dispossessed of their land; employment, food security, development, mechanization, efficiency, modernization, etc. Such terminologies have changed little since the 1950s!

The flaws of the Tanzanian scheme were many and obvious from very early on, but there were those who thought they would make a lot of money from it. So vast tracts of land were destroyed and lots of equipment and other resources were wasted. Someone did make a lot of money out of the scheme, though it’s not certain who. But the losers were Tanzanians, the Tanzanian economy and the Tanzanian environment.

Land grabbing schemes of the last few years have already appropriated tens of millions of hectares, at very low cost. It is difficult to estimate how many people have been displaced and dispossessed but the number affected by the process will be enormous. ‘Investors’ will not be counting those costs, that’s for sure. They are anxious that we think of ‘feeding the starving’, even though 80% of the land hasn’t yet been used for anything. Ultimately, much of it is destined for non-food crops and for export to rich countries, though. What else would it be used for?

The World Bank has been talking about how to protect people in developing countries and their land. But they have been talking about a lot of things throughout their history. International agreements about accountability and transparency are a great idea, even better if there is some guarantee that they are upheld. But we know that all sorts of agreements are discussed, fewer are made and hardly any are ever upheld.

Land grabbing on a scale that is taking place presently is not happening despite the existence of institutions like the World Bank. On the contrary, such institutions were set up by rich and powerful countries so that they could stay rich and powerful. So we need different institutions, not the same ones saying the right thing while continuing the policies that have brought developing countries to their knees. The institutions are doing what they were intended to do, that’s why the World Bank needs to be abolished and replaced by something that genuinely represents the interests of the world.

The kind of land grabbing that is occurring at the moment will further devastate the most vulnerable communities, economies and environments in the world. People in rich countries may not be able to witness these phenomena as they occur, and the corporations currently enriching themselves are certainly not going to record them or make them publicly available. But by the time a handful of sound bites and photo opportunities are considered to be newsworthy by the world’s media, it will already be too late to reverse the damage.

The Gates/GM Progeny

Some of the most deceitful and unscrupulous people in the business world want to exploit Africa and one of the richest people in the world is spending huge amounts of money trying to help them. This person, Bill Gates, considers himself to be a philanthropist. Yet he is party to efforts to tie farmers into agreements that will commit them to expensive farm inputs, such as seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, will probably reduce yields, will have significant health consequences, will increase dependence and food insecurity and will generally make things worse than they already are.

Someone who really wanted to benefit people in developing countries with a lot of money at their disposal could do many things. In agriculture, they could develop indigenous crops that are selectively bred to resist drought, flooding, increased salinity and other adverse conditions. In infrastructure, they could provide people with clean water and give them access to better and more sustainable forms of energy and fuel. This would also confer great health benefits. There are numerous things that could be done to improve people's economic conditions, their education and their skills.

But Gates prefers technical solutions, mostly ones that will make his foundation, along with some people connected with it, rich. Never mind that these 'solutions' will worsen the situation in developing countries, that doesn't seem to be a worry for this 'philantrocapitalist'. Perhaps he's just an old style capitalist in disguise. Genetically modified (GM) crops have been a disaster in developed and developing countries alike. His efforts to tackle a handful of diseases while ignoring the conditions that allow those diseases to spread will have few long term benefits. Just because he is rich, he shouldn't have the right to interfere with the welfare of so many vulnerable people, especially at the same time as claiming to be doing good.

Another article sees Gates as propping up a form of neo-colonialism. GM crops are an inappropriate, imported technology, designed for large scale industrial farming like that predominant in the US. Most African farmers are small farmers and they are the ones likely to suffer if they are pushed out of farming by GM. It's not the big farmers and landowners who can afford industrial scale farming that are suffering from food shortages. And those who are suffering from food shortages will quickly find that GM will not feed them, either. They are short of food because they are poor, GM foods will only increase the prices and reduce access further.

It's time that people realised that GM does not have any advantages for poor people, or even for relatively well off people. It is designed to make money for the handful of multinationals that develop the technology. And anyone who claims to be doing good by imposing GM on poor farmers in developing countries is a liar and an opportunist.

Deciding Who Gets to Eat and Who Gets to Starve

A curious feature of some of the big famines in history is that the countries experiencing the famine were not necessarily short of food. Likely as not, the majority of people were very poor and did not have the money to buy food, but food was being produced and exported.

Many millions of people in a number of developing countries currently face food shortages, malnutrition and probably famine at a time when the world is producing record crops. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates that 2008 saw the highest recorded cereal crop production figure ever. It is predicted that 2009 will see the second highest figure.

Wikipedia is a great source of information but their bald statement that "[f]amine is caused by a human overpopulation relative to the available food supply" is in need of qualification. It is estimated that as many as 10 million Kenyans face serious food shortages, but this is not clearly because the country is overpopulated. There are several other significant pressures on food production and access to food.

For example, many people are extremely poor, have always been poor and have little prospect of ever becoming less poor. Food prices have been driven up over the past few years by market speculation and by the use of productive land for growing biofuels. So poorer people, who could barely afford enough food before these trends began, are now facing starvation.

Other pressures include droughts, often followed by serious floods, which result in poor harvests and destroy large tracts of arable land. There was also widespread unrest in Kenya in 2008 and people abandoned their land. A number of these internally displaced persons (IDP; the Kenyan government is not keen on releasing figures for just how many are still displaced) now have little means to feed themselves and no chance of returning to where they came from. And the majority of people have only a tenuous hold on land, renting it from unscrupulous landlords, who can treat tenants as they wish and sell their land at the drop of a hat.

In addition to growing biofuels in Kenya, there are other trends that result in less land being used for affordable food. Land is bought up by natural resource prospectors, such as those in search of oil around Isiolo and those in search of gold in the Mara. This land will not be used to benefit any Kenyans and certainly won't be used to grow food. And much of Kenya's land is used for non food crops or for food products intended for export, such as coffee, tea, flowers, fruit and vegetables. Controversially, a lot of land comprises national parklands, preserved for use by those who can afford to visit it. Most can't.

Despite all these pressures, there is a lot of food being produced in Kenya for export and a lot of arable land available for food production. The reasons people face food shortages and poor nutrition are the same as they have always been: widespread poverty and increasing levels of impoverishment along with rising food prices that mean the poorest will lose out.

When things get really bad and people are dying of starvation, maybe other countries will start shipping in relief food, but this will not improve food security in Kenya. Food security refers to access to food, as well as its production. As with other countries that experienced famines throughout history, resilience will continue to be low, there will be widespread disease, many people will have abandoned rural areas and moved to cities; there will be no remaining seed to grow the next season's crops, no fertilizer, no chance of resisting whatever new pressures arise.

The more I read about famine, the more it seems like a process whereby the rich systematically deny food to the poor in order to increase their profits. But that couldn't be correct, could it?

Will We Prevent the Next Genocide?

The land grabbing orgy currently taking place in developing countries is a lot more serious than I thought. There are some countries buying up or leasing land but the biggest buyers are actually corporations. Corporations have amply demonstrated in the past that they don't care anything for the lives or livelihoods of people, they only care about maximizing profits for their shareholders and other interested parties.

In addition to grabbing land and denying millions of subsistence farmers their only means of survival, this trend is part of what has been driving up the price of food, especially staple foods. These corporations can also indulge in some practices that would be more difficult or expensive or perhaps even totally illegal in other countries. For example, land in developing countries is seen as ideal for biofuel crops. It's also seen as a good place to grow genetically modified crops that have not been given the go ahead in other countries.

Everyone feels the effects of rising food prices, of course. But for people who were barely able to afford enough food to eat a couple of years ago, the rush to buy up or otherwise occupy land in developing countries will push many people well below the threshold of having enough food, however lacking in nutritional value, just to survive.

Developing countries are also presently experiencing severe water shortages. Rich countries growing their food in developing countries means that they are effectively exporting huge quantities of water from those who have least to those who have most.

Corporate nobs may talk of 'win-win' situations, or even 'solving world hunger' but it is only people who are now rich who have any chance of winning anything and those who are now poor who face starvation. There is nothing in this for development, it is purely motivated by the need to make big profits. In addition, land and water supplies will be contaminated by the large scale agricultural practices which are absolutely necessary for this sort of investment to be really profitable.

I realise that those driven purely by profit are not going to be interested in these questions: but what will people now on the brink of starvation do once they have been thrown off their land? And what will those now barely able to afford basic foods do when the price has gone just that little bit too high? What will the rest of the world do when most of the land and water that have been supplying them with food are contaminated to the extent that they are no longer productive?

Kenyan Politicians Hold Key to HIV Prevention

After the civil unrest in Kenya early last year, many Kenyans ended up in camps for internally displaced people (IDP). They went to these camps for immediate security but many have stayed because their security is still not guaranteed and, in many cases, they have nothing to go back to. There are hundreds of thousands of Kenyans in IDP camps, although not all of them are there as a result of last year's post election violence.

Whatever about the conditions in IDP camps, people leaving these camps face acute hardships. They need to find a safe place to live and a way of making money, for a start. For some, cities are considered the best place to find work. If work cannot be found or if the pay is not adequate, some resort to various forms of transactional sex for survival, at least for a while.

Unemployment is very high in Kenya, people are facing high prices for basic goods such as water, food, fuel and accommodation. Therefore, finding work is not always enough. When employers know they can get cheaper, they pay less. The same applies to the clients of those depending on sex for survival. For some time, it has been a buyers' market. Certain bars in Nairobi have noticeably more females than males. The men can find what they want and negotiate a low price and even refuse to pay. There is no one to protect those engaging in survival sex.

This scenario can increase the pressure to have more clients per night and to take more risks, such as agreeing not to use a condom, agreeing to anal sex, group sex, anything that will attract more money. This increases the probability of contracting and transmitting HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STI). It also increases other dangers that sex workers face because of their increased vulnerability, the increased amount of time spent on the street and numerous other considerations.

To make matters worse, there are extreme food shortages in many parts of the country right now. More and more people are moving to urban areas, especially Nairobi and Mombasa, but also other towns and cities. They are looking for work and access to basic goods. This is adding to the existing flow of people and creating a very dangerous situation.

Something curious happened in the mid 1980s in Nairobi. At this time, there were far more men than women in the city (and there probably still are). But in 1986, rates of HIV (and gonorrhoea) peaked among commercial sex workers (CSW). HIV peaked at 81%, one of the highest rates experienced anywhere. But the reasons why HIV peaked at this time, nearly a decade before HIV incidence (the rate of new infections) peaked in Nairobi, are not clear.

I have yet to hear a plausible explanation of why HIV peaked among CSWs, especially as the figures are for those who were new to sex work. There was very little prevention work being carried out at the time and what work had been done would hardly have had much time to produce results. Is it possible that there was a reduction in the number of CSWs, possibly because of an improving economic climate, and a consequent sellers’ market?

Well, rather than speculate further on that phenomenon, after all, I could just research it, I would like to speculate on what is happening right now in Nairobi and other parts of the country, especially urban areas.

If an increasing number of people are currently depending on survival sex, this could give rise to a huge increase in transmission of HIV and other STIs. Current crises, such as the water, food, fuel and economic crises, all increase vulnerability. An estimated 10 million people face starvation. A huge percentage of the population is extremely vulnerable.

HIV can take ten or eleven years to kill you. But you can die of thirst in a few days. Starvation is pretty quick too. Add to this the fact that you may have children and other dependents and survival sex doesn't seem nearly as dangerous.

Whatever politicians may say and whatever newspapers may publish about biofuels, world economic crises, global food shortages, global warming or any other reasons for current food shortages, around 70% of recently acquired maize has disappeared. Those to whom the maize was entrusted are known to those distributing it, but no one has yet been held accountable. Somewhere in the country, there is either a large amount of maize or a large amount of money.

Kenyan politicians are asking international donors for help, yet help may be closer at hand than they think. Their colleagues may have the maize or the money or they may know where it went to. Politicians raise a lot of questions but they should be closer to the answers than anyone. Ultimately, large stocks of food are under their care. If anyone can answer the questions, it is politicians or their friends and associates, people close to the top.

A survey in 2007 found that HIV prevalence in Nairobi had fallen slightly since 2003 (although it has been increasing in most provinces). In years to come, if HIV transmission is rising right now, it will probably be said that there was a food crisis, a fuel crisis, an economic crisis or any other crisis that has yet to come. But poor people in Kenya have been poor and vulnerable for a long time.

True, these crises make things a lot worse, but HIV is increasing because vulnerabilities are still not being addressed, more than 25 years after HIV was identified. Many social indicators have been disimproving since the 1980s but these issues continue to be ignored. Perhaps politicians can continue to hide behind multiple crises but when has there been a time that there wasn't some crisis, ostensibly beyond their control, that they could blame?

We may have the opportunity, right now, to intervene and prevent a significant number of new HIV infections that are about to occur under our noses. The technology to prevent these infections is well known and widely available. It's called food.

Will the Kenyan government do what it can to reduce the vulnerabilities faced by so many Kenyan people? Or will they just allow them to die and later attribute their deaths to circumstances beyond their control? Not all circumstances are beyond their control.