Our Land Our Business Campaign
Since 2014, the Our Land Our Business campaign has been demanding the end of World Bank’s Doing Business (DB) ranking and Enabling the Business of Agriculture (EBA).
These ranking systems reward countries for reducing their labor standards, destroying their environment, and providing easy access for corporate pillaging and land grabs. They create a race-to-the-bottom between countries as they clamor for World Bank investment dollars.
Publications
Driving Dispossession: The Global Push to “Unlock the Economic Potential of Land,” sounds the alarm on the unprecedented wave of privatization of natural resources that is underway around the world. Through six case studies—Ukraine, Zambia, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka, and Brazil—the report details the myriad ways by which governments—willingly or under the pressure of financial institutions and Western...
The Highest Bidder Takes It All: The World Bank’s Scheme to Privatize the Commons details how the Bank’s prescribes reforms, via a new land indicator in the Enabling the Business of Agriculture (EBA) project, promotes large-scale land acquisitions and the expansion of agribusinesses in the developing world. This new indicator is now a key element of the larger EBA project, which dictates pro-business reforms that governments should...
Indonesia: The World Bank's Failed East Asian Miracle details how Bank-backed policy reforms have led to the displacement, criminalization, and even murder of smallholder farmers and indigenous defenders to make way for mega-agricultural projects. While Indonesia's rapidly expanding palm oil sector has been heralded as a boon for the economy, its price tag includes massive deforestation, widespread loss of indigenous land, rapidly increasing...
The Great Ventriloquist Act: The World Bank's Bad Business in India exposes how India's one-track focus on improving its DBR has allowed massive environmental, labor, and human rights abuses to take place. Most appalling is the case of Vedanta Resources Plc, a company that benefitted from the removal of environmental safeguards and was able to operate a damaging copper smelter within the city limits of Thoothukudi in Tamil Nadu--a mere 8.4 miles...
A new brief by the Oakland Institute urges member states to deliver the final blow to the Bank’s ranking programs—the Doing Business Report (DBR) and Enabling the Business of Agriculture (EBA). The DBR and EBA face a growing crisis of legitimacy and confidence. Since last year, two anchor donors have ceased funding the EBA; in January 2018, former World Bank Chief Economist Paul Romer resigned after exposing politically motivated...
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Wednesday, September 16, 2020 Andy Currier Shifting land registries onto blockchain is a part of the broader move to "unlock the economic potential of land" in order to put more land and natural resources into exploitation by private interests.
Tuesday, August 25, 2020 Katherine O'Neill The VFV Law, the Farmland Act, and the LAAR Law are designed to encourage the legal takeover of lands that millions of farmers and Indigenous people rely on for their livelihoods. The three laws are a potent combination which ensure that the practice of land grabbing – widespread in Myanmar under its previous military dictatorship – can continue, now concealed by false promises of 'economic development.'
Monday, August 17, 2020 Janhavi Mittal A recent report by the Oakland Institute examines the MCC compact with Sri Lanka and raises alarm over the irreversible consequences of embarking on land privatization – when most of the land is public in the country.
Thursday, July 2, 2020 Frederic Mousseau and Andy Currier Despite the unprecedented nature of the Covid-19 pandemic, the World Bank continues to drive "private sector solutions to development" under the faulty assumption that catering to multinational companies will trickle down and benefit all.
Monday, June 22, 2020 Janhavi Mittal The COVID-19 pandemic has brought up the specter of the Indian partition as the country continues to witness the misery of large–scale human migration on foot and in deathly trains . However, the divide that emerges is not of two nation states but a widening gulf between India’s elite and millions of its second-class citizens—poor, toiling migrant workers. In the midst of this crisis, at a press conference on May 17, 2020,...
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Our Land Our Business Video
Right now, millions of people are being thrown off their land because large corporations are being given special rights. The World Bank is driving this trend with its Doing Business rankings.
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