A Response to Klaus Deininger’s Blog Post The World Bank’s Land and Poverty Conference: 20 years on

Image: Highland scene in Amhara, Ethiopia with US dollars overlaid. © The Oakland Institute

March 22, 2019

Dear Mr. Deininger, Your recent blog post surprisingly contradicts the prescriptions and policy guidance that your organization, the World Bank, gives to governments around the world, particularly in Africa. You stress the need “to base interventions on land, on solid empirical evidence rather than ideology.” Yet, when it comes to land and agriculture, the World Bank clearly follows an ideological blueprint, which focuses on...

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Norwegian Oil Money in Dirty Business
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On Our Land, a new report and documentary film on land grabbing in Papua New Guinea (PNG), exposes an alarming global black market in contraband wood that is used in kitchens, bedrooms, and living rooms across Europe and the United States. Driven by demand for high-end furniture and flooring and aided by complex global laundering schemes, illegally felled timber is devastating forest-dependent communities, ravaging ecosystems, and depleting PNG...

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Papua New Guinea: The Land at the Core
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“In a sense, Wola belong to land as much as it belongs to them.” Paul Sillitoe’s [1] consideration about the Wola farmers of the Southern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea (PNG) brings us to the heart of a critical question: what is the value of land in a country like PNG? In the current context of land grabbing, why is it important to preserve traditional systems of tenure? In the West, people understand land as a private piece of...

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Notes on Global Structural Inequality: Land and Neoliberal Politics in Africa
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Africa’s arable lands continue to receive growing attention for research and policy debate mainly due to the pressing social, political, and environmental challenges that African countries face with regard to food insecurity and foreign direct investments. “Securing Africa’s Land for Shared Prosperity: A Program to Scale Up Reforms and Investments,” a book published by the World Bank and authored by Frank Byamugisha, is the latest in this debate...

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What is the Future We Envision for America?
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According to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), Washington should care for the generations ahead. Yet, his recent austerity measure undermines investment in America’s future. If the $40 billion cut to the existing Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in the House of Representatives should pass in the Senate, the government will have failed the nation’s poor.

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World Bank’s Land Strategy: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
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Released on July 22, 2013, the World Bank’s report, Securing Africa’s Land for Shared Prosperity, provides a ten-step program to “boost governance,” “step up comprehensive policy reforms,” and “accelerate shared and sustained growth for poverty reduction” in sub-Saharan Africa. [1] At first glance, these ambitious objectives, aimed at addressing the ongoing crisis of land grabbing on the African continent seem promising; however, the report’s...

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US Immigration Reform Bill Makes Splash, but Mass Firings Continue
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While the United States Senate made final tweaks to pass its highly publicized immigration reform bill S.744 last Thursday, community members in the San Francisco Bay Area protested the firing of hundreds of undocumented immigrant workers. On June 11, 2013, fired workers and their supporters participated in a 72-hour hunger strike in San Jose and Oakland, California. This “Fast Against the Firings” drew attention to the insidious effects of the...

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The Herakles Files: CEO’s False Image
June 5, 2013 Jettie Word
Bruce Wrobel, the CEO of Herakles Farms and founder of the nonprofit organization All for Africa, is a self-proclaimed “environmentalist and activist for the poor.” Upon first glance, his initiatives in Africa seem to support these claims--but scratch the surface and the evidence to the contrary is overwhelming. A new report by the Oakland Institute and Greenpeace, Herakles Exposed, reveals the company’s internal documents that highlight the...

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Herakles Farms Double-Speak
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Herakles Farms doesn’t seem to value providing straightforward information or answers to the Cameroonian government, the local population impacted by their palm oil plantation in Southwest Cameroon, nor their own investors. Which version of the company’s own documents are we to believe when they present completely opposite information depending on the audience?

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State Department Underscores Human Rights Abuses of Key US Ally in Africa
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The just-released 2012 Human Rights Practices country report for Ethiopia, compiled by the US State Department, confirms an uncomfortable fact—most US government officials are aware of the repressive nature of Ethiopia’s US-backed regime. The State Department document recognizes reports of unlawful (politically-motivated) detention, instances of torture, political use of the 2009 Anti-Terrorism Proclamation, and the often-unchecked use of force...

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Unheard Wisdom: Ethiopian Activists Bring Knowledge of Land Grabs to India, Investors and Policymakers Absent
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In early February, the Oakland Institute organized a three-day forum in New Delhi with the Indian Social Action Forum, Kalpavriksh, and Centre for Social Development on the impact of large-scale land acquisitions in Ethiopia and India by private enterprises on indigenous communities in both countries. Since 2008, Ethiopia has leased out nearly 600,000 hectares of farmland to Indian agribusinesses--the largest share of investors in the country--...

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Report from the Indian-Ethiopian Civil Society Summit on Land Investments New Delhi, February 5-7, 2013
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The Oakland Institute, in partnership with Indian civil society groups Indian Social Action Forum, Kalpavriksh, and Centre for Social Development, organized a discussion forum on issues pertaining to land rights in Ethiopia and India in New Delhi from February 5 to 7, 2013.

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As part of the Oakland Institute’s (OI) continued research and reporting on the ever unfolding and unfortunately more distressing news coming out of Ethiopia, OI recently published a new briefing paper titled Unheard Voices: The Human Rights Impact of Land Investments on Indigenous Communities in Gambella. Prepared by the International Human Rights Clinic at New York University School of Law, this briefing paper provides an overview of the human...

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Opportunity in Deepening Indian-Ethiopian Relations
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Mounting evidence indisputably shows that the brand of agricultural investment spreading in Ethiopia is accompanied by, or rather dependent upon, military violence and the suppression of civil rights.

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The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)’s report, State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012, was released on October 9, 2012. Although one might be tempted to celebrate the decrease in the number of undernourished people from nearly 1 billion in 2009 to 870 million today, this new report is not a harbinger of good news.

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Enough Is Enough: Gambella, Ethiopia Update
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Beatings, rape, and torture have become the new normal for many living in the Gambella region of Ethiopia. New reporting by Human Rights Watch (HRW), sheds light on the current living conditions of Ethiopians in the Gambella region as a result of the government’s villagization program. Marred in human rights abuses in the aftermath of an unfortunate shooting that left five Saudi Star employees dead this June, the Ethiopian government has...

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Launching the OI Blog

As part of the Oakland Institute's mission to bring fresh ideas and bold action to the most pressing social, economic, and environmental issues of our time, we are launching a blog that will feature coverage of fast-changing focus areas such as land rights, the high food price crisis, food sovereignty, and more, as well as analysis and opinion articles by the Institute's international staff, fellows, and researchers. Our hard-hitting reports and...

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A New Revolution? Chinese Working Classes Confront the Globalized Economy
July 1, 2006
Rapidly changing conditions of the working classes in China, and their struggles in response to the new circumstances, have enormous implications for people everywhere. Chinese workers, peasants and migrants, together with elements of the “new middle class,” make up one-fifth of the population of the world. The transformation in their circumstances, and the choices that they make over the next few years, will not only have an impact in China,...

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Inequity in International Agricultural Trade: The Marginalization of Developing Countries and Their Small Farmers
March 1, 2005
State of Agricultural Commodity Markets (SOCO) is a new report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) that analyzes global trends in agricultural production and trade and documents the inequity and unfairness of the global trade system in terms of its impact on the poorest nations and their small farmers. The study’s findings, based on the examination of 40 years of international trade in agricultural products, expose...

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Oakland Institute: Our Take