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Publications

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Green Colonialism 2.0: Tree Plantations and Carbon Offsets in Africa

Green Colonialism 2.0: Tree Plantations and Carbon Offsets in Africa examines the African Forestry Impact Platform (AFIP) bankrolled by European development finance institutions, Japanese oil interests, and an Australian investment firm. The AFIP exemplifies the green colonialism that President Ruto of Kenya is promoting on the continent — opening the door for more extraction of Africa's resources. Despite AFIP’s claim of...

Guerre et spoliation couverture

Guerre et spoliation : la prise de controle des terres agricoles ukrainiennes

Depuis l’invasion russe en février 2022, la guerre en Ukraine est au centre des questions de politique étrangère et des médias. Cependant, peu d’attention a été accordée à une question majeure qui est au cœur du conflit : qui contrôle les terres agricoles dans le pays connu comme le « grenier de l’Europe » ?

Additional Languages: War and Theft: The Takeover of Ukraine’s Agricultural Land
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War and Theft: The Takeover of Ukraine’s Agricultural Land

The report from the Oakland Institute exposes the financial interests and the dynamics at play in Ukraine leading to further concentration of land and finance.

Additional Languages: Guerre et spoliation : la prise de controle des terres agricoles ukrainiennes
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Dam and Sugar Plantations Yield Starvation and Death in Ethiopia's Lower Omo Valley

The report sounds the alarm on the severe humanitarian crisis faced by Indigenous tribes in Ethiopia's Lower Omo Valley and urges government and aid agencies to provide relief assistance.

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The Great Carbon Boondoggle: Inside the Struggle to Stop Summit's CO2 Pipeline

The Great Carbon Boondoggle: Inside the Struggle to Stop Summit’s CO2 Pipeline, unmasks the billion-dollar financial interests and high-level political ties driving the Midwest Carbon Express. Led by Summit Carbon Solutions, the project intends to build a 2,000-mile pipeline to carry CO2 across Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota, to eventually inject and store it underground in North Dakota. Having...

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Flawed Plans for Relocation of the Maasai from the Ngorongoro Conservation Area

Flawed Plans for Relocation of the Maasai from the Ngorongoro Conservation Area builds on field research conducted at two relocation sites — Msomera village in Handeni district and Kitwai A and B villages in Simanjiro district — to reveal that the sites lack adequate water resources and grazing land while promises of improved social and health services by the government remain unfulfilled. Additionally, the report exposes...

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The Midwest Carbon Express: A False Solution to the Climate Crisis

The report debunks the world’s largest proposed carbon capture and storage (CCS) pipeline project and reveals the checkered history of the man behind it — Bruce Rastetter.

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Drying Out African Lands: Expansion of Large-Scale Agriculture Threatens Access to Water in Africa

As the escalating climate crisis threatens access to water for millions across Africa, Drying Out African Lands: Expansion of Large-Scale Agriculture Threatens Access to Water in Africa unveils the devastating impact of large-scale agricultural plantations on the right to water on the continent. Since the 2007-2008 food crisis, Africa has been the primary destination of private international investors for large-scale agriculture...

Additional Languages: Menace sur les eaux africaines : comment l’expansion de l’agriculture industrielle assèche l’Afrique
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Meet the Investors Behind the PHC Oil Palm Plantations in DRC

As community efforts to reclaim 100,000 hectares of their ancestral land occupied by oil palm plantations are met with violent repression, unlawful arrests, and murder, Meet the Investors Behind the PHC Oil Palm Plantations in DRC exposes the financiers profiteering from the plantations. Communities in Lokutu, Yaligimba, and Boteka in DRC, forcibly displaced first in 1911 by the Belgian colonial authorities to establish oil palm...

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Stealth Game: "Community" Conservancies Devastate Land & Lives in Northern Kenya

Stealth Game: “Community” Conservancies Devastate Land & Lives in Northern Kenya — reveals the devastating impact of privatized and neo-colonial wildlife conservation and safari tourism on Indigenous pastoralist communities. Although terms like “participatory,” “community driven,” and “local empowerment” are extensively used, the report exposes how the Northern Rangelands Trust...

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People Vs. Agribusiness Corporations: The Battle Over Global Food and Agriculture Governance

People Vs. Agribusiness Corporations: The Battle Over Global Food and Agriculture Governance offers a detailed look and analysis of how the 2021 Food Systems Summit became the most uneventful UN event. The appointment of the President of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), as UN Special Envoy of the summit, was the lightning rod that catalyzed global opposition. AGRA’s push of monocultural, fossil fuel-based...

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The Looming Threat of Eviction: The Continued Displacement of the Maasai Under the Guise of Conservation in Ngorongoro Conservation Area

The Looming Threat of Eviction: The Continued Displacement of the Maasai Under the Guise of Conservation in Ngorongoro Conservation Area, reveals the Tanzanian government’s plans to evict over 80,000 residents — mostly Indigenous Maasai from their land, further restrict the livelihoods of those remaining, and destroy buildings in Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA). Announced in April 2021, evictions of local residents are...

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Doing Business With the Bolloré Group

Violations of the United Nations' Principle and Code of Conduct The Bolloré Group is a major supplier to the United Nations. The UN pays Bolloré over US$50 million every year for logistics and other services. Between 2015 and 2019, different UN entities — including the UN Procurement Division, the World Food Programme, and UNICEF signed over 200 contracts with the Group for a value of over a quarter billion...

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In King Leopold’s Steps: The Investors Bankrolling the PHC Oil Palm Plantations in the Democratic Republic of Congo

As community efforts to reclaim 100,000 hectares of their ancestral land, initially seized over a century ago for oil palm plantations, are met with violent repression, unlawful arrests, and murder, In King Leopold's Steps: The Investors Bankrolling the PHC Oil Palm Plantations in the Democratic Republic of Congo unveils the names of the investors financing the plantations in the DRC.

Additional Languages: Sur les pas du roi Leopold: Les investisseurs dans les plantations de palmiers à huile de PHC en République démocratique du Congo
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Endless War: The Destroyed Land, Life, and Identity of the Tamil People in Sri Lanka

Endless War: The Destroyed Land, Life, and Identity of the Tamil People in Sri Lanka, brings forth shocking new evidence on the extent of the continued persecution of the minority Tamil population in the North and East of the country. Under the guise of “development projects,” government driven Sinhalese colonization is growing within Tamil areas with the intent to change demographics and deny Tamil communities...

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This Is Our Land: Why Reject the Privatization of Customary Land

This Is Our Land: Why Reject the Privatization of Customary Land, is an educational resource that debunks myths used for privatizing land around the world, while providing facts on how customary tenure systems are critical to protecting livelihoods and ensuring sustainable development for the people and the planet. The privatization of land consistently serves the interests of private investors and multinational corporations at...

Additional Languages: Esta es nuestra tierra: por qué rechazar la privatización de la tierra consuetudinariaC’est notre terre, Pourquoi rejeter la privatisation des terres coutumières

Dignity or Exploitation – What Future for Farmworker Families in the United States?

Dignity or Exploitation — What Future for Farmworker Families in the United States? documents the systematic abuse of workers in the H-2A program and its impact on the resident farmworker communities, confronted with a race to the bottom in wages and working conditions. H-2A workers also face disproportionate exposure to the COVID-19 pandemic. The report describes some of the most acute situations, and analyzes the basic...

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Nicaragua's Failed Revolution: The Indigenous Struggle for Saneamiento

Nicaragua’s Failed Revolution details the incessant violence facing the Indigenous communities in the Caribbean Coast Autonomous Regions, as evidenced by recent attacks against the Alal, Wasakin, and Miskitu communities, and provides in depth information about the actors involved — foreign gold mining firms, national and international actors in logging and cattle ranching industry, as well as prominent Nicaraguan...

Additional Languages: Nicaragua: Una Revolución Fallida: La Lucha Indígena Por El Saneamiento
Rio Coco, RACCN

Is Nicaragua For Sale?

In May 2020, the Oakland Institute published an independent report that documented the incessant violence facing the Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities in the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region (RACCN) and provided in depth information about the actors involved — foreign gold mining firms, national and international actors in logging and cattle ranching industries, as well as prominent Nicaraguan officials.

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One Degree Removed

Over the last two decades, three men have exerted control over a set of massive mining concessions in a region of northeastern Nicaragua known as the Mining Triangle (Triángulo Minero) . Despite protections for Indigenous land rights in Nicaraguan and international law, American mining engineer J. Randall Martin and two business partners — Thomas W. Lough of Canada and Sergio Ríos Molina of Nicaragua — have obtained approximately 200...

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From Extraction to Inclusion

From Extraction to Inclusion, analyses Papua New Guinea's economic and development performance since its independence in 1975. While the economy has relied on the large-scale extraction of abundant minerals and other natural resources, on most indicators PNG is faring worse than its Pacific neighbors and any progress that has been achieved does not reflect the huge value of the resources extracted.

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Driving Dispossession

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...

Green Resources’ pine plantation in Kachung. Credit: Kristen Lyons / The Oakland Institute.

Evicted for Carbon Credits: Norway, Sweden, and Finland Displace Ugandan Farmers for Carbon Trading

Evicted for Carbon Credits: Norway, Sweden, and Finland Displace Ugandan Farmers for Carbon Trading, brings forward irrefutable evidence that the Norwegian forestry and carbon credit company, Green Resources, forcibly evicted villagers around their plantation in Kachung, Uganda. The establishment of the plantation on land previously used by subsistence farmers precipitated an on-going food security crisis that has not been addressed by...

Kara parent and child sitting along the bank of the Omo River. Copyright: Kelly Fogel

How They Tricked Us: Living with the Gibe III Dam and Sugarcane Plantations in Southwest Ethiopia

How They Tricked Us: Living with the Gibe III Dam and Sugarcane Plantations in Southwest Ethiopia, reveals the dire situation faced by the Indigenous in Ethiopia's Lower Omo Valley and calls for urgent action by the government. For years, the Oakland Institute has raised alarm about the threats that the Gibe III Dam and sugarcane plantations pose to the local population in the region. Now, several years on, new field...

Gilford Ltd. clearing land in West Pomio © Paul Hilton / Greenpeace

Land Summit or Land Grab?

Jubilee Australia and the Oakland Institute denounce the National Land Summit, organized by the Papua New Guinea (PNG) government, as a dangerous attack on the country’s unique customary land tenure system. Land Summit or Land Grab? details how the summit organized from May 1-3, 2019 is an attempt by the PNG government to ‘mobilize’ customary land to allow greater access to multinational companies and commercial banks for...

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