BRICS lessons from Durban If you carve Africa, Africa may carve youPatrick Bond and Khadija Sharife2013-03-28, Issue 623<http://www.pambazuka.org/en/issue/623> http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/86761<http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/86761>[image: Bookmark and Share]<http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&pub=fahamutech>Printer friendly version <http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/86761/print>
*cc B R* <https://picasaweb.google.com/118226792205545993403>Just before the BRICS state bureaucrats and corporate interests met in Durban this week to plan how to continue to extract profits, the tragedy of thirteen SA National Defense Force troops in the Central African Republic lost their lives in a vain attempt to safeguard potential mining deals. A different way is needed in which people-led activism challenges and transforms vulture capitalism The reach of the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) leaders was palpable this week, not just here in Durban where they gathered on Tuesday and Wednesday to plan investments and infrastructure, but everywhere up continent where extraction does extreme damage. One site is the Central African Republic (CAR), where last Saturday thirteen SA National Defense Force troops lost their lives (with 27 wounded) in a fight of 200 South Africans initially against the very CAR troops they were training, according to an army trade unionist, followed by Seleka rebels who then apologized for killing the South Africans. These tragic deaths were in vain: not in support of African democracy, for François Bozizé was such a brutal tyrant that not even France made an attempt to prop him up. Instead, over the past ten weeks, our SA troops have been defending counterproductive, repressive military investments and potential mining deals, as deputy foreign minister Ebrahim Ebrahim let on in a recent interview explaining their deployment. A Reuters correspondent is probably correct: It is particularly embarrassing for South Africa, which is seeking to project itself as an influential regional power on the continent this week as it hosts a summit of the BRICS emerging states and welcomes new Chinese President Xi Jinping on his first visit to Africa as head of state. AN EMBARRASSING TRAGEDY This embarrassment is not just a matter of oft-remarked military incompetence. The Resource Curse reminder is also stark, coming alongside the ongoing socio-economic and environmental chaos in Marikanas platinum mines and Zimbabwes Marange diamond fields. The awful news from Bangui should have been a wake-up call to BRICS heads of state, to clear their heads and contemplate the extractive-industry crises they are amplifying, hand-in-glove with Western corporations and the 15 African leaders who met just after BRICS concluded at Durbans wealthiest gated-community resort, Zimbali. At Zimbali, by coincidence, Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe is putting finishing touches on a glorious mansion, maybe for his coming voluntary retirement. That precedent could explain the BRICS delegations detour far north of the city, followed by their evening return back to the International Convention Centre, and then back again near Zimbali to the airport for their departures in an irrational, manic zigzag through Durbans rush-hour traffic. CRONY CAPITALISM OF TYRANTS The likes of Ugandan tyrant Yoweri Museveni, the most senior member of the African delegation to the BRICS-Africa Dialogue, at least had a chance to check out the local real estate market for a future nightmare scenario when Arab Spring-type democratic revolts succeed. In late 2011, after Ugandans were inspired by Egyptians at Tahrir Square, Museveni outlawed the countrys famous Walk-to-Work protests: the favoured Kampala tactic was simply strolling. Musevenis militarization of the territory now under oil exploration is the predictable precursor for Resource Cursed Uganda. At Marange in eastern Zimbabwe, members of Mugabes closest faction including defense minister Emmerson Mnangagwa, army commander Constantine Chiwenga and others running the junta known as the Joint Operations Command are allied with a Shanghai company via a joint venture known as Anjin, which allows the Chinese to run a tight labour regime (paying unskilled workers just $180/month), while the military manages overall security. Billions of dollars worth of Marange diamonds have already been extracted, with only a tiny trickle flowing back to the finance ministry in Harare. Chiwengas many trips to China sealed military deals including a recently launched $100 million army training school as well as arms purchases that everyone hopes are not used in coming weeks, as the national election approaches. Meanwhile, with Johannesburg hosting the 10th anniversary of the Kimberley Process for corporate social responsibility in the diamond trade next month, we cannot forget how SAs policy manager Abbey Chikane colluded in the five-week arrest (and torture) of Farai Maguwu, who has been watchdogging the diamond trade and winning Human Rights Watch awards for his bravery. Remarked Ian Smillie, a key architect of the Kimberley Process, We dont know where all the [Marange] diamonds went that were approved by Chikane. Chikane was a mistake on several levels. He was closely allied with the government of South Africa, which had demonstrated a pathological inability to be critical of Zimbabwes horrendous human rights abuse in Marange. And he has extensive personal business interests in the Southern African diamond industry that should have disqualified him from the outset. There is similar resource cursing underway in platinum. In recent days, at the Farlam Commission hearings into the Marikana massacre, more Lonmin connections to the SA Police murderers have been revealed via incriminating emails from African National Congress deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa, who owned 9 percent of Lonmin at the time. The incriminating emails were sent to his political allies running the police and mining ministries the day before the killing of 34 miners last August. It all reeks of the crony capitalism that characterized the gatherings between BRICS state bureaucrats and corporate interests, who crowded into the same Durban convention centre hallways this week. Pretorias foreign ministry explicitly excluded anyone from civil society from attending, and SAs most accomplished environmentalist, Bobby Peek, was even prohibited from entering for a debate on national radio on Tuesday. CSO PROHIBITED FROM BRICS MEETING A few hours later on the same radio network, SAs BRICS Ambassador Anil Sukla confirmed Pretorias refusal to send a representative to the brics-from-below civil society conference, which on Monday-Tuesday was located in a church just a few minutes away from the BRICS meeting. Requests to participate in BRICS deliberations made over prior weeks by social movements, NGOs and even major trade unions were swatted away by Suklals colleagues yet big business has pride of place inside today. That leaves BRICS rulers and their corporations to quietly plan the further looting of Africa, joined by the pliable guests led by Museveni. However, subsidized state funding is needed to facilitate deals because commercial banks know there are intolerable risks like those the SANDF troops just suffered. To facilitate, the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) is lining up to play a crucial role, and Suklal lobbied for SA to host the $50 billion BRICS Bank that was supposed to have been launched on Wednesday. Its postponement until further talks when the Russians host the G20, appeared to reflect the lack of confidence of BRICS in Pretoria. ESCHEWING PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENT IDEALS A genuinely counterhegemonic financial strategy would have been for BRICS to instead support the late Hugo Chavezs Bank of the South. The idea was spurned, as BRICS elites apparently want an institution without any residue of more progressive development ideals. The DBSAs team is led by former South African spy chief Mo Shaik, through its subsidiary Development Bank International. Shaik is notorious for political shenanigans dating to the governments notorious late 1990s arms deals. Still, more than $700 million was authorized for DBSA recapitalization last month in SA finance minister Pravin Gordhans budget, in the wake of the DBSAs $40 million loss in part due to gambling in mining concerns like Ramaphosas last year. Revealing its new orientation, the pro-privatisation DBSA has, in recent weeks, been firing most of its social and environmental staff and shutting down its development journal and library. Its record of infrastructure investment including commercialized water and toll-roads does not bode well for people or the planet. Expect the BRICS Banks subsidized rail, road and port credits to lubricate more multinational corporate extraction. The major benefit of BRICS to South African extractive interests was in the railroad loans aimed at extracting coal and iron ore and shipping from our deepest port, at Richards Bay. The contribution to climate change will be prolific, and the resource curse associated with coal-related pollution and political corruption can only intensify. The largest coal-fired electricity generator under construction in the world today is the core of the rail-energy nexus, at Medupi in Limpopo Province, and on Tuesday the workers announced yet another strike. The plant has already been delayed two years due to unrest and supplier chaos, in spite of the World Banks largest-ever project loan ($3.75 billion in 2010) for the hotly contested plant. To pay for it, electricity prices for poor people are soaring, with more rioting over electricity and other municipal services the logical result. Another source of intense contestation over coal is Mozambiques Tete Province, where the worlds largest coal field was recently discovered and is being exploited by Rio-based Vale mining house (the worlds second largest). Vale was named the worlds worst corporation by the Public Eye Peoples Award in 2012, and popular resistance to mass displacement of Tete residents is already becoming fierce. Indeed, as Pretorias commitment to not just Medupi but also Bangui shows, when these elites carve up Africa, the backlash can be brutal. A different way is needed: with more respect for societies and nature than for the profits of BRICS corporates. There are countless forms of resistance being shared by brics-from-below activists from each of the countries and their hinterlands and growing linkages that mean coordinated critique and campaigning can be a logical next step in bottom-up internationalism. *Patrick Bond and Khadija Sharife are based at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society. BRICS grab African land and sovereigntyTomaso Ferrando2013-03-28, Issue 623<http://www.pambazuka.org/en/issue/623> http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/86748<http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/86748>[image: Bookmark and Share]<http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&pub=fahamutech>Printer friendly version <http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/86748/print> ------------------------------ *cc CH* <http://cnn.com/>BRICS states, except Russia, are enhancing and facilitating land grabs abroad in a way that is inconsistent with their proclamations of sustainable development, cooperation solidarity, and respect of national sovereignty. Although there are many different analyses, one general approach to BRICS relationships with the South asserts that they are distinguishable from traditional Northern donors (as opposed to investors which will be discussed below). In particular, it is often claimed that South-South development cooperation does not attach policy conditionalities, provides assistance based on a win-win paradigm, and places emphasis on how to ensure economic sustainability of the receiving country. [1] While China especially stresses the need to respect the sovereignty of the receiving country, all the BRICS promote a development strategy based on equality, solidarity, mutual development and cooperation, these differences from Northern donors, it is said, contribute to more effective cooperation and to a better perception by local populations. Some differences do exist between the way in which Northern donors and BRICS conceive receiving countries sovereignty and their independence when official development assistance is at stake. But not so with foreign direct investments (FDI) in land; for when access to this precious resource is at stake, the approaches and positions of both the North and the South toward low-income countries (LICs) countries converge more significantly than it might be thought. The current land rush is characterized by some peculiar features: it is happening at an unprecedented speed as a product of cumulative local and global forces; it has a direct impact on access to land and water, which have now become scarce resources; it is happening in a world inhabited by more than seven billion people, the majority of whose food security is everyday more at risk; it is almost never the consequence of wars or occupations, but is taking place within the boundaries of the existing legal framework. However, even though land grabbing is a global phenomenon, it is firmly rooted in the local reality and it is this local reality that has to be studied in order to fully grasp its effects. [3] Land grabbing is bad not only because it takes the land away, but also because it implements an economic model which is socially, economically, politically and ethically unsustainable and unacceptable. Looking at where the investments come from, the lack of a central driving region is striking. What we see is the coexistence of actors (public, private and mixed) from the North, Gulf States, emerging economies including BRICS and, in some cases, from Low Income Countries themselves. On average, investors countries have a GDP per capita (four times higher than target countries) and this difference is even higher when we exclude countries that are both the origin and target of investment flows. [3] A June 2011 study by the International Land Coalition suggested that land grabbing concerned around 80 million hectares, 64 percent of which are located in Africa, [4] whereas the latest update by the same organization refers to more than 200 million hectares, that is, eight times the size of Britain, or the entire North-West Europe. [5] According to the most recent data collected by the Land Matrix Initiative and elaborated by Anseuuw et al. (ibid), 83.2 million of hectares of land in developing countries have certainly been targeted by investors, 56.2 million of which are located in Africa, 17.7 million in Asia and 7 million in Latin America. [6] Moreover, the majority of reported acquisitions are concentrated in just a few countries. Data shows that BRICS investors play an increasingly crucial role (except Russia, which remains at the margin of the rush probably due to the amount of available land) demonstrating that land grabbing is happening not only from the traditional core to the peripheries, but also transversally on the geopolitical map of the world. There are zones of interest for each country, with a predilection toward neighbouring countries (especially in the case of Brazil, South Africa and China) and certain areas of the African continent depending on geographical proximity or linguistic ties. BRICS investors target low-income countries, while a recent report released by Oxfam has underlined the close relationship between weak internal governance and land grabbing. [7] Moreover, it can be affirmed that geographical proximity, regional integration, and cultural connections are other three factors that can determine the flow of the investments. Indian investors are particularly active in Indonesia, Malaysia and in the eastern part of Africa (especially Ethiopia [8] and Kenya), while Brazilian interests appear to be reduced and limited to Eastern Africa. Interestingly, South African capital is crossing the borders of Mozambique, Zambia [9] and Swaziland, [10] but also of the Democratic Republic of Congo, [11] Angola, Benin, Congo and Ethiopia. [12] Finally, according to the available data, China is the most active investor, with more than five million hectares of land accessed in all the continents, with a stronger presence in Southern Asia, [13] Oceania and South America, rather than in Africa. [14] BRICS LAND GRABS IN AFRICA Country and Total Land Total Land and Regional Areas Target Countries Brazil 28,000 ha Eastern Africa 28,000 ha Mozambique, Ethiopia India 1,924,509 ha Central Africa: 15,000 ha Eastern Africa: 1,761,800 ha Northern Africa: 8,020 ha South East Asia: 139,689 ha Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao, Philippines, India, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Mozambique, Sudan China 1,140,683 ha Central Africa: 10,000 ha Eastern Africa: 126,171 ha South America: 348,972 ha South-East Asia: 628,139 Western Africa: 26,000 ha Cambodia, China, Sudan, Lao, Philippines, India, Bolivia, Peru, Argentina, Benin, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Mali, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Zimbabwe South Africa 1,416,411 ha Central Africa 340,000 ha Eastern Africa: 367,174 ha South America 55,794 ha Western Africa 650,000 ha Colombia; Angola; Benin; Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique; Madagascar Brazilian rhetoric the dawn of a new economic era between Africa and Brazil [15] is belied by President Dilmas recently-concluded agreement with Mozambique and Japan to develop a 14 million hectares agricultural project in the north of Mozambique. [16] Indeed Brazil is leading the pack when it come to land grabbing. [17] Brazil, Indian, South African and Chinese investors have already obtained access, via lease or purchase, to millions of hectares located in other Southern countries, directly competing with Northern and Gulf countries for the land and water resources which sustain millions of local communities (to say nothing of the environmental equilibrium and biodiversity). Crucial for this land grab are the diplomatic and legislative strategies adopted by the governments of the BRICS. As global players in need of economic expansion, energy and food, the BRICS economies are enhancing and facilitating operations involving land abroad in a way that is inconsistent with their proclamations of sustainable development, cooperation, solidarity, and respect of foreign sovereignty. China, India and South Africa have adopted legal reforms that favour the delocalization of food and energy production. In contrast, Brazil has used its legislative autonomy to reduce access to Brazilian land by foreign investors, while the ongoing accumulation of Russian land is the consequence of the privatization that took place in the 1990s. The role of South Africa in sustaining investments in land abroad is illustrative. Given that the crops produced abroad by South African investors are generally sold on the global market rather than imported back to South Africa, the efforts undertaken by the government primarily concern international trade, rather than the creation of legal incentives to guarantee food security through productive delocalization. Minister of Agriculture Tina Joemat-Pettersson announced in 2010 a fund of six billion South African Rand (ZAR) (or about 680 million US dollars) for supporting South African farmers, half of which would be spent on projects beyond South Africas borders. [18] Moreover, despite the rising concerns about the negative impact of land grabbing, both in South Africa and abroad, the African state has proposed no legal intervention to require a stronger and more effective respect of international human and environmental rights by national investors undertaking projects abroad. The African solidarity supposedly at the base of the relationship between South Africa and its neighbouring countries appears particularly weak when its time to support national investments and profit generation. Brazils approach toward large-scale investments in land is very strategic, not to say hypocritical. On the one hand, parliament has been debating for almost one year the introduction of new legislation to prohibit foreign ownership of Brazilian land [19] while at the same time pursuing a policy of land concentration and massive industrialization, both nationally and abroad, with specific attention to the production of agrofuels. [20] The fight against foreign ownership began in 2010 when limits on the area of land foreign companies can buy were imposed by a new interpretation of the existing law issued by the Brazilian attorney generals office. However this does not appear to be accompanied by a fully coherent politics in favor of peasants and local realities. [21] While it is true that the Lula administration introduced some initiatives that were favourable to small-scale farmers, including the 2009 revision of the productivity indexes that determine which properties are subjected to expropriation, and while the pressure exercised by the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra (MST) has achieved some good results such as securing access to land for 800,000 families, the power of agribusiness and levels of land concentration continue to rise. [22] Brazils economic growth has been strongly dependent on the expansion of arable land and pastures, land consolidation through property regularization,market liberalization, and a clear commitment to agribusiness and agrofuel production in particular in the area of the Cerrado, where the a march toward the West was proclaimed by the state in order to occupy its empty spaces. [23] This combination of policies and preferences has significantly affected the environmental and social equilibrium of vast tracts of the country, where it is estimated that 40-50 per cent of the vegetation has been destroyed. [24]Paradoxically, internal pressure against deforestation is significantly moving the attention of the government and of the investors toward peripheral countries. Land grabbing has been facilitated by the expansion of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) which amplify economic and power asymmetries. The surge in BITs represents the switch from the universal multilateralism of the past to a more fragmented bilateralism. Investments are free to move, and take advantage of their mobility to force countries into a fierce competition whose outcome is a subordination of the collectivity to the interests and economic needs of the investor. The number of BITs is exploding and the Brics are increasingly part of this trend. Between 1959 and 1991, over 400 BITs were signed, a figure that rose to 2600 by mid-2008, while BIT-like provisions have been written into a growing number of broader free trade agreements (FTAs). [25] By 2004, South-South BITs accounted for 28 per cent of the total number of BITs signed. [26] These BITs are first of all utilized by states to create reinforced regional ties with target countries, so as to create an easily reachable zone for investors based on the subordination of sovereign prerogatives and a simpler access to factors of production, such as land and labour, and raw materials. BITs between the Brics and LICs with strongly pro-investor content rebuts, in reality, the South-South rhetoric of the Brics. China has concluded BITs with developing and LICs countries (Chad, Costa Rica, Cuba, Republic of Korea, Cote dIvoire, Gabon, Seychelles, Laos, Libya, Mali, Myanmar/Burma, Madagascar, Ethiopia, Uganda, etc.). Sixty percent of the BITs concluded by China between 2002 and 2007 were with developing countries, mainly African. [27] South Africa too has been extremely active in signing BITs since the end of the apartheid era, as it reorients its international relations according to the economic needs of national investors. In an official 2009 review of South Africas BITS, the Department of Trade and Industry stated, given the sizable intra-Africa investments made by Republic of South Africa (RSA) companies, the RSA ought to assess how best such investments by its citizens may be safeguarded. As a consequence of the intra-regional expansion of South African investments, the government has BIT-type agreements on the promotion and reciprocal protection of investment (plus related protocols) with Angola, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DCR), Gabon, Guinea, Ethiopia, Mauritania, Namibia, Sudan, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. In sum, rather than acting as institutional and legal laboratories for testing new rules and instead of constructing a parallel network of bilateral agreements based on new principles and new relationships between investors and states, South-South BITs reproduce the same logic and, in some cases, the same wording as North-South BITs. And hypocrisy is evident, when in 2009 a notice of the Department of Trade and Industry referring to the ongoing review of bilateral investment treaties entered into by the Republic of South Africa since 1994 to date, states that the Existing international investment agreements are based on a 50-year-old model that remains focused on the interests of investors from developed countries. Major issues of concern for developing countries are not being addressed in the BIT negotiating processes. BITs extend far into developing countries policy space, imposing damaging binding investment rules with far-reaching consequences for sustainable development. [28] However, although RSA has decided to adopt a policy of not renewing BITs concluded during the apartheid period which impose a huge burden over states prerogatives such as the ones with Luxembourg and Belgium [29] in the same period, South Africa was adopting the same approach when concluding a BIT with Zimbabwe. Looking at the 2009 BIT concluded between the two African countries, it clearly replicates the same legal architecture that is so openly criticized included an extremely generous expropriation clause which requires the state to fully compensate the market value in any case of nationalization, expropriation or equivalent measures, with no admitted exceptions. [30] Likewise, South-South investment contracts in land replicate the same content as North-South agreements. One of the most striking elements contained in the contracts involving BRICS investors is the use of sovereignty in order to define land as void and immediately disposable, particularly in the case of Sub-Saharan Africa. Although studies conducted on the availability of land and the voices of the people themselves tell us that there is no underutilized or void land in Sub-Saharan Africa, the exercise of sovereignty over public land legitimizes the production of a different vision of reality that is then codified and crystallized in the clauses of the contract. In the name of the people, the representatives of the states assume the obligation to hand over vacant possession of the land or to ensure that such lands shall be free from Encumbrances at the date of handover of such lands in accordance which the Development Project, and noncompliance would represent a contractual breach. [31] According to the majority of the constitutions of African nations, non-titled land belongs to the public, the nation or the state, that is the institutionalized authority, which has the duty to manage but can never fully dispose of it. The occupation of the land by people without any official title is thus admitted but not legally recognized, and the state has the legitimate power to dispose of its natural resources. Whenever it concludes an investment contract that defines occupied land as void and available, the state is therefore looking at the legal reality, leaving aside the evidence on the ground: acting as the owner of the land, and by maximizing its power and prerogatives, the state constructs a functional legal reality and has the coercive power to legitimately enforce it. Whoever does not respect the new legal canon defined into the contract is immediately wiped out from the sphere of legality, becoming illegal. Peasants who do not treat nature as an exploitable source, farmers who practice shifting cultivation, nomadic pastoralism or hunting and gathering, suddenly become legally non-existent or, even worse, outlaws. [32] Despite the fact that investors and the state claim that the projects are taking place in available marginal lands that is marginal, under-utilized or un-used, empty or sparsely populated, geographically remote, and socio-politically and legally available lands evidence shows that land investments around flex crops and other food sectors also compete for fertile land, creating struggles that are silenced by the contracts. In conclusion, the investment contract concluded between states and BRICS investors allows a reinterpretation of reality according to the needs of the investor through the exercise of the prerogatives of the state, which is subsequently enforced by the possibility for the investor to trigger principles of international law in order to ensure the contract is respected. In this way, sovereignty is exercised neither autonomously nor for the good of people. Millions of people have already been displaced or prevented from accessing their traditional land, and this is happening under the cover of a complex legal network formed by contract, national, international and investment law. Moreover, in order to fully develop large-scale projects, investors frequently have to rely on massive inputs, including water which is frequently diverted from its natural course and utilized for their production. Wherever large-scale agriculture is adopted, water is crucial and its diversion can seldom be achieved in a way that is entirely consistent with the needs and survival of small-scale peasantry. Interception, diversion or storage of water creates downstream effects or may place demands on upstream land users. Investment contracts are the legal instrument that legitimizes the appropriation of water for industrial needs and the codification of a power asymmetry that is detrimental to peoples fundamental rights. In sum, my intention has been to look at whether the BRICS rhetorics of respect of national sovereignty and the promotion of solidarity [33] are valid and applicable in the case of the current large-scale investments in land, which is an issue of mounting global concern, and has been variously described as land grabbing, neo-colonialism, modern imperialism, green rush, scramble for Africa, etc. The dominant narrative about the BRICS approach to development is based upon G77 principles that affirm South-South cooperation, equality, solidarity, mutual development and complementarity. [34]Yet in reality, the proliferation of South-South bilateral investment treaties together with an extraordinary level of capital mobility provides investors with the possibility to generate a regulatory competition between peripheral countries, who in turn utilize their sovereignty (in particular, their sovereignty over natural resources, ability to set taxes, etc.) to become more attractive than their neighbors. The consequence is that formally public or common goods such as land, water, labor and fiscal resources have been progressively privatized and accumulated under cover of private investment agreements. As in the case of North-South investments by hedge funds, pension funds, and agrobusiness, BRICS relationships with African LICs are based on investment contracts that emerge from asymmetrical positions, and codify and crystallize the legal order that best fits the interests of the investors. In this way, it is not only the communities and the environment that are kept outside the framework, but public scrutiny as a whole. Instead of respecting national sovereignty and promoting solidarity, most BRICS (not Russia) are utilizing international law and diplomatic powers in order to bind foreign governments in bilateral agreements which inherently favor the investors and reduce the scope for national autonomy. Yet as we can see by the mounting tensions around the numerous Chinese investments in Brazilian land, BRICS can also attack each others sovereignty over natural resources, a situation that could degenerate into the freezing of international relations and in deepening diplomatic tensions. Finally, BRICS can also be competitors for the same finite resource, a contingency that could potentially produce a race to the top in the quality and content of the investments, but that could also degenerate in an acceleration of resource grabbing, exacerbating the negative impacts over people and the environment, but also creating deeper political instability. The case of land demonstrates that South-South relationships have to be studied more deeply and critically and that the notion of BRICS has to be fragmented in its pieces and tested on the ground. In order to do so, we need to re-centre the study of international relations in order to finally take people into account. Land grabbing as a form of neo-colonialism is not a matter of names and origins, but simply a matter of global expansion of the capitalist system through what David Harvey calls accumulation by dispossession. [35] ENDNOTES [1]. This article is excerpted from an extremely detailed analysis prepared for the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. We are very grateful to TNI for permission to extract this portion. [2]. Mwase N. and Y. Yongzheng, Brics philosophies for development and their implications for LICs, IMF Working Paper, WP/12/74, March 2012 [3]. Boaventura de Sousa Santos brilliantly affirms that it does not exist a global problem which is not rooted in a local reality (Santos B.S., Globalizations, 23 Theory, Culture & Society 393399 (2006). [4]. Anseeuw W., et al., Transnational Land Deals for Agriculture in the Global South: Analytical Report based on the Land Matrix Database, The Land Matrix Partnership, April 2012, p. 39. [5]. Global Land Project (GLP), 2010, Land Grab in Africa: emerging land system drivers in a teleconnected world, The Global Land Project: http://goo.gl/B2b6T;Borras, S.M. Jr., R. Hall, I. Scoones, B. White and W. Wolford, 2011, Towards a Better Understanding of Global Land Grabbing: An Editorial Introduction, Journal of Peasant Studies, 38(2): 209-216. [6]. Oxfam, Land and Power: The Growing Scandal Surrounding the New Wave of Investments in Land, 151 Oxfam Briefing Paper, Oxfam International , London, UK, 2011. [7]. For the moment, the Land Matrix Initiative has elaborated only half of the available data, because the other half has not been confirmed with a sufficient degree of certainty. Therefore the figures might be significantly higher. Moreover, the member of the Matrix (GIGA Institute, CDE, ILC, CIRAD and GIZ) have decided not to take into account operations of merge and acquisition (M&A), which are undoubtedly increasing all over the world. [8]. Ricardo Fuentes-Nieva and Marloes Nicholls, 2013, Bad governance leads to bad land deals: The link between politics and land grabbing, Oxfam International, available from http://www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/?p=13636 [last visited 4 March 2013]. [9]. According to the data collected by Grain, Indian corporations are involved in at least twelve agricultural projects in India, ranging between 3,000 to 311,000 hectares. [10]. Cf Mulenga N., Foreign Farmers Undermine Food Security in Zambia, November 1st, 2012, available from http://goo.gl/OpUxD, last access November 11th, 2012. [11]. Grain, 2012. [12]. Cf Commercial farming in the Congo not for the faint-hearted, October 26th 2012, available at http://goo.gl/NUzAm, last access November 11th, 2012. [13]. Source Land Matrix 2012. Last accessed November 11th, 2012. [14]. Mainly in Indonesia, Laos, Philippines, Pakistan. Source, Grain 2012. [15]. Chinese interests are significantly strong in Australia and New Zealand, where Grain (2012) has evidenced at least two agrobusiness projects, one financial and the acquisition of a local farming corporation. The largest agricultural Chinese public corporation, Beidahuang, had concluded a 320,000 ha investment agreement with the governor of the Rio Negro Region, in Argentina, which has been halted by judicial decree, and has also triggered a legislative proposal against foreign access to land. [16]. Calestous Juma, Africa and Brazil at the Dawn of New Economic Diplomacy, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Governance, Harvard University, February 26, 2013, Available fromhttp://goo.gl/2GcSR ted by judicial decree, and has also triggered a legislative proposal against foreign access to land. [17]. The Land Matrix Initiatives data concerning Brazil do not take into consideration the future implications of ProSavana, a 14 million hectares project of agricultural development based on a trilateral agreement concluded between Mozambique, Brazil and Japan. Although the final document will only be disclosed in September, the struggle between the Mozambican government and the Mozambican civil society has already started. Cf. All Africa, Mozambique: pro-Savana Will Not Deprive Farmers of Land, Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo), December 26, 2012, http://allafrica.com/stories/201212270644.html (last visited feb 19, 2013); Xicuana, Camponeses Moçambicanos desconfiam do projeto Pro-Savana ndhaneta (2012), http://goo.gl/p0JYg (last visited Feb 19, 2013). [18]. Interestingly enough, Brazil is both a target and source countries, as recently evidenced by Borras et al Saturnino M. Borras, Jennifer C. Franco & Chunyu Wang, The Challenge of Global Governance of Land Grabbing: Changing International Agricultural Context and Competing Political Views and Strategies, 10 Globalizations 161179 (2013).. However, in the specific case of the Latin American countri, the Land Matrix database does not appear to fully represent the relevance of the intra-regional and global land grabbing that is nationally and internationally conducted by Brazilian investors. In particular, Grain (2012) reports of investments in Argentina (7,000 ha), Australia (1,876 ha for livestock), Colombia (13,000 ha for agrobusiness), Ghana (5,000 ha for rice production), Sudan (100,000 ha for cotton production in cooperation with Agadi, a Sudanese state corporation). Moreover, Luis A. Galeano has recently stressd the relevance of Brazilian investments in Paraguay (Luis A. Galeano, Paraguay and the expansion of Brazilian and Argentinian agribusiness frontiers, 33 Canadian Journal of Development Studies/Revue canadienne détudes du développement 458470 (2012). In addition, the Land Matrix database reports of 255,000 ha of land acquired in Brazil by foreign investors. Finally, we cannot forget the planned ProSavana investment in the North of Mozambique, (Cf Mozambique: Pro-Savana a Priority Programme PM, available from http://allafrica.com/stories/201204230099.html, last access November 11th, 2012; Patel Raj, Pro-Savanna Anti Peasant, available from http://rajpatel.org/2012/10/24/prosavana-antipeasant/) Moreover, Grains latest report has evidenced the presence of Brazilian investments in Argentina, Colombia, Ghana, Mozambique, Sudan and Australia, but there are evidences of large investments in Paraguay too. Source, Grain 2012. According to a recent analysis conducted by Rabobank, in fact, the Latin American country is seeking to expand within its immediate region (Rabobank International, New Models of Farming in Argentina, Rabobank Industry Note, 2011). [19]. R. Hall, The next Great Trek? South African commercial farmers move north, 6 in International Conference on Global Land Grabbing 8 (2011) quoting SA, Zim not safe for investments, Farmers Weakly 2010, 9 May 2010. The same Minister was first quoted saying If we cant find opportunities for white South African farmers in this country, we must do it elsewhere in the continent (Hoffstatter S. 2009a. Government drive to set up white SA farmers in Africa, Business Day, 12 October, accessed 15 November 2012 at: http://allafrica.com/stories/200910120009.html [20]. According to the Movimiento Sim Terras, the project is currently facing a moment of impasse due to the different positions adopted by Beto Faro, who presented the bill, and Homero Pereira, who is president elected of the Agriculture Parliamentary Front (FPA). The MST defende proibição da aquisição de terras por estrangeiros e pede mobilização contra retrocessos, Movimiento Sim Terras, 28 March 2012. [21]. Franco et al., supra noteErrore: sorgente del riferimento non trovata . [22]. As an example, since the beginning of the ethanol programme (ProAlcool) in the 70s, in fact, the government has been providing economic and legal support for increasing the area of sugarcane plantations and structuring the sugar-alcohol industry. More recently, decree n 85.297 of 2005 institutionalized the Biodiesel Program, introducing a Social Fuel Stamp which prioritizes the cultivation of castor bean plants (mamona) and palm trees (dende) over other crops, by guaranteeing tax breaks, fiscal benefits and funding from the BNDES (Brazilian Bank of Economic and Social Development). Moreover, beginning in 2008, national law has been enacted to support the production of ethanol for export and internal consumption, recently accompanied by the softening of the Law of Environmental Crimes, chronologically followed by the authorization for the construction of sugarcane factories in conservation areas and close to natural springs. Cf. [23]. Cf. Leandro Vergara-Camus, The legacy of social conflicts over property rights in rural Brazil and Mexico: Current land struggles in historical perspective, 39 Journal of Peasant Studies 11331158 (2012); Gustavo de L.T. Oliveira, Land regularization in Brazil and the global land grabbing: A State-making framework for analysis, paper presented at the [24]. Gustavo de L.T. Oliveira, Land Regularization in Brazil and the Global Land Grab, 44 Development and Change 261283, 264 (2013). The Cerrado, which occupies almost 25 per cent of Brazilian territory represents the most attractive state for foreign investors. According to recent surveys, the total land in the hands of foreigners within that state accounts to 180.581 squared kilometers, which is the 20% of the Mato Grossos land. Alastair Stewart, Brazils Foreign Land Ownership Saga, The Progressive Farmer, January 02, 2012, available from http://www.dtnprogressivefarmer.com/ (last visited Apr 17, 2012); Chang Bao, CGG is setting up a soybean base in Brazil Companies, chinadaily.com.cn(2011), http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2011-11/24/content_14153948.htm (last visited Apr 17, 2012). However, a critical analysis should not buy into the anti-foreigners rhetoric of the Brazilian government, and understand that partnerships and national investors are actively involved in an internal and inter-regional land grabbing. [25]. Ministry of the Environment, 2009, Monitoramento do Desmatamento no Bioma Cerrado 2002-2008: dados revisados [Monitoring the Deforestation in the Cerrado Ecosystem 2002-2008: Revised Data], Brasilia: MMA/IBAMA. Cited in Oliveira, ibid. [26]. UNCTAD, Recent Developments in International Investment Agreements 2007-June 2008, IIA Monitor, no. 2, 2008, available from www.unctad.org/en/docs/webdiaeia20081_en.pdf [27]. UNCTAD, 2006, South-South Investment agreements proliferating. IIA Monitor No. 1 (2005) International Investment Agreements. New York: United Nations. Available from: http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/webiteiit20061_en.pdf [28]. Malik M., 2010, South-South, Bilateral Investment Treaties: The same old story?, IV Annual Forum for Developing Country Investment Negotiators Background Papers New Delhi, October 27-29 [29]. Republic of South Africa DTI (Department of Trade and Industry), NOTICE 961 OF 2009, 3 NO.32386, July 7, 2009. [30]. Adam Green, South Africa: BITs in piece, Financial Times, beyond the brics blog, 19 October 2012, available from http://goo.gl/UULTb [last visited 19 February, 2013]. [31]. Cf Article 5 of the Agreement between the Government of the Republic of South Africa and the Government of the Republic of Zimbabwe for the Promotion and Reciprocal Protection of Investment, done at Harare on November 27t 2009. Available from http://goo.gl/j8Y5s [last visited February 18, 2013]. [32]. Cf. Article 6.1 of the contract concluded between the Ethiopian government and Karaturi Agro Products Plc. (R. Rowden, Indias role in the new global farmland grab, 29 Economics Research Foundation and GRAIN, (2011). [33]. In Ethiopia, for example, a statement issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in January 2010 affirms that the Agricultural Investment Support Directorate has identified more than 7 million acres available now for lease [and that] Ethiopia has 74 million hectares of land suitable for agriculture out of its total 115 million hectares, but less than 15 million hectares is currently in use agriculturally. FDRE Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Politically motivated opposition to agricultural investment, A Week in the Horn, 22 January 2010. http://www.mfa.gov.et/Press_Section/Week_Horn_Africa_January_22_2010.htm. See Stebek, E.N., 2012, Between Land Grabs and Agricultural Investment: Land Rent Contracts with Foreign Investors and Ethiopias Normative Setting in Focus, Mizan Law Review 5, 175214. [34]. Mwase N. and Y. Yongzheng, supra note 1. [35]. For the South-South Cooperation principles see http://www.g7.org/doc/Declaration2009.htm [36]. Harvey, D. 2003, The New Imperialism, Oxford University Press, Oxford. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:la...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com laamn-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: laamn-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
