JOHN BARKER/INES DOUJAK
GRAB: ENCLOSURE in ONE HUNDRED EPISODES, 2018. Wwith a few more recent additions. ( Most of this text appeared in the form of posters shown at exhibitions in Vienna, Kyiv and Jakarta)
1/ “We shall reclaim them from their barbarous manners…populate plant and make civil all the provinces of that kingdom…as we are persuaded that it is one of the chief causes for the which God hath brought us to the Imperial crown of these kingdoms.” Francis Bacon, English propagandist, on the conquering and occupation of Ireland, 1603
England has indirectly exported the soil of Ireland without even allowing the cultivators the means for replacing the constiturnts of the exhausted soil. Karl Marx, Capital Volume original German edition1867
2/ “They inclose noe land, neither have they any settled habitation, nor any tame Cattle to improve the Land by, and sow have no other but a Naturall Right to those countries.” John Winthrop, white Massachusetts politician, on the Natives of New England, 1660
3/ The veneration, wherewith men are imbued for what they call nature, has been discouraging impediment to the empire of man over the inferior creatures of God.” Robert Boyle founding fellow of the Royal Society and governor of the New England Company, 1670
4/ Out of the economics of Eden came an ideology of development which was fundamental to the making of the British Empire … God had given the world to any who was willing to apply labour and knowledge to making it like a ‘fruitfull garden’. Richard Drayton, Nature’s Government, 2005
5/ There’s a scrabble now for remaining land, because if you look at the map, it’s in the areas of Indigenous peoples where resources remain. That’s not coincidental. That’s because we know how to take care of land and resources. … [But] they are subject to further plunder and exploitation for commercial purposes, for “feeding the world,” for economic development, even in the name of sustainable development. Joan Carling who has been campaigning for Indigenous sovereignty and gender equality for decades, was placed in 2018 on a list of ‘terrorists’ by Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte.
6/ Earth is the best planet in our solar system. We go to space to save Earth. Jeff Bezos, Space Entrepreneur, CEO of Amazon, 2019. The billionaire has plans for mining, manufacturing, and setting up space colonies.
The people that built their heaven on your land are telling you yours is in the sky. Nina Simone, pianist, jazz singer, and civil-rights activist, 1965
The Sky is (Not) the Limit .In the past there was an Outer Space Treaty (1967) and Moon Agreement (1979). Now, instead of space being a shared resource for all humanity, it is a free-for-all for the uber-rich and their corporate vehicles. The skies are already full of satellites like those of the Starlink brand, a for-profit owned by Mr Elon Musk
7/ If God were not pleased with our inheriting these parts, why did he drive out the natives before us? And why doth hee he still make room for us by diminishing them as we increase … For the natives, they are neer all dead of small Poxe, so as the lord hath cleared our title to what we possess. John Winthrop writing to John Endicott, North America, 1634
8/When the tsunami came, it did what the fire couldn’t: it cleared the beach of Arugam Bay, Sri Lanka completely.” Naomi Klein
Hotel industry lobbyists had been pushing to relocate the fishermen of the Bay before the Tsunami and 24 fishing huts had been burned down in mysterious circumstances.
A wave of “land theft” swept across Southeast Asia, obscured by the aftermath of the tsunami. Thailand, Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka all imposed ‘buffer zones’ as part of their ‘coastal redevelopment’ post-tsunami. Motives other than residents’ safety were behind the policy. In Sri Lanka and India in particular, high-end tourist businesses and large-scale fishing industries were exempted from the new rules
9/ At the far edge of copper-coloured water, a white egret steps through the shallows, an eye sharp for fish. On the other side of water’s edge stands a solitary blue heron. Herons are fragile birds, and it is not unusual for them to die from stress. I think of them when hearing that Hmong men, forced to leave their country and rootless in America, die of no apparent cause while they are sleeping. I understand the loss that leads to despair and to death. … what happens to people and what happens to the land is the same thing. Chickasaw poet Linda Hogan, 1995
10/ The provisions serving to the support of humane life, produced by one acre of inclosed and cultivated land are ten times more than those, which are yielded by an acre of Land of an equal richnesses lyeing waste in commonb. John Locke, Two Treatises on Government, 1668
The World Bank likes to claim that a large percentage of agricultural land is ‘marginal’ but only 10% of grabbed land was so categorised. In addition this land is likely to be a source of wild food plants, building materials, firewood or as a grazing area to rural communities.
11/ The earth pertaining, then, by divine right to the children of God, there is here no question of applying the law and policy of Nations, by which it would not be permissible to claim the territory of another. Marc Lescarbot on Acadie, modern day Quebec,. 1618
For over a century now, there has been encroachment onto Ashaninka land in the Amazon region not just from rubber
tappers, but also illegal loggers, drug traffickers, and oil companies. Today, a large communal reserve set
aside for the Ashaninka is under threat from the proposed Pakitzapango dam, which would
displace some 10,000 of them. The dam is part of a large set of hydroelectric projects planned
jointly by the Brazilian and Peruvian government
12/ We shall be a grain-importing country for all Europe who are dependent on grain imports. … We’ll supply the Ukrainians with headscarves, glass bead necklaces or whatever tickles the fancy of colonial peoples. Adolf Hitler, Monologues, 1941
13/ Mr. Johnson, who was originally a trader amongst the Mohawks, indulged them in all their whims. They were continually dreaming that he had given them this, that, and the other thing; and no greater insult can, according to their opinions, be offered to any man than to call in question the spiritual authenticity of his dream. At length the chief dreamed that Mr. Johnson had given him his uniform of scarlet and gold. Mr. Johnson immediately made him a present of it: but the next time he met him, he told him that he had now begun to dream, and that he had dreamed that the Mohawks had given him certain lands, describing one of the finest tracts in the country, and of great extent. The Indians were struck with consternation. They said: “He surely had not dreamed that, had he?” He replied that he certainly had. They therefore held a council, and came to inform him that they had confirmed his dream; but begged that he would not dream any more. He had no further occasion. William Howitt, Colonization and Christianity, 1838
14/ What sort of men must Europeans be? What species of creatures do they retain to? By what right do you possess them? They have always belonged to the Algonquins before.” Adario, Chief of the Huron Indians speaking to Baron de Lahontan, French Colonizer of Newfoundland, 1691
For ten years 2008 the de Beers mining company has been taking 600,000 carats of the world’s 2nd-highest quality diamonds from its Victor Lake mine on lands taken from the Attawapiskat First Nation in 1930. The Nation has declared states of emergency related to a severe housing shortage and a suicide epidemic.
15/ The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying, “This is mine”, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. … “Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody“. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, 1755
16/ Any person who neglects the present opportunity of hunting out good lands and in some measure marking them out for his own, in order to keep others from settling there, will ever regret it George Washinton 1767
17/ “The business people are the ones who want us out of here because we’re claiming our rights and our land. We’re like a rock in their shoe,” Maria Chaverra, a 67 years-old advocate for the land rights of the displaced campesinos of Curvaradó in Colombia.
18/ The Native Americans unsettled habitation in those immense regions cannot be accounted as true and legal possession and the people of Europe, finding land of which the savages made no actual and constant use, were lawfully entitled to take possession of it. Emmerich de Vettel, Swiss legal philosopher’s justification of land grabbing the Americas, 1770
19/ “The last thing our civilization is willing to permanently tolerate is the wasting of the resources of the richest regions of the earth through the lack of the elementary qualities of social efficiency in the races possessing them.” Benjamin Kidd, British bureaucrat, on “Tropical Peoples”, 1907
20/ The land of Palestine is waiting for cultural industrious people. Enriched by material and spiritual resources; armed with the weapon of Science and Technology. The country craves for this people to come and settle in it, bloom its arid mountains, fertilize its uncultivated land, forest its sands and the deserted country would become heaven. David Ben-Gurion, future first Prime Minister of Israel, 1915
The settlement enterprise has been characterised, since its inception, by an instrumental, cynical, and even criminal approach to international law, local legislation, Israeli military orders, and Israeli law, which has enabled the continuous pilfering of land from Palestinians in the West Bank. B’Tselem, Israel human rights group, 2010
21/ The fundamental deprivation of human rights and citizenship is manifested first and above all in the deprivation of a place in the world which makes opinions significant and actions effective. […] Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1958
Far-right Israeli Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich claimed that Israel would expand “little by little” and eventually encompass all Palestinian territories as well as Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.
“It is written that the future of Jerusalem is to expand to Damascus,” he said, citing the greater Israel ideology, which envisions the expansion of the state across the Middle East.
Over 1,200 hectares of Palestinian land have been declared ‘state land’ by Netanyahu’s government in 2024. The decision, taken in the context of the war in Gaza, is Israel´s largest tract of West Bank land grab in three decades.
22/ Some of the land rights activists, environmental defenders, human rights campaigners, journalists and lawyers who were killed for defending land, wildlife or natural resources
2018 MEXICO Adrián Tihuilit, Julián Carrillo, Guadalupe Campanur, Noel Castillo Aguilar, Quintín Salgado Salgado RUSSIAN FEDERATION Natalia Estemirova IRAQ Su’ad Al-Ali GUATEMALA Ronal David Barillas Díaz, Luís Arturo Marroquín, Mateo Chaman Paau, Florencio Pérez Nájera, Ramón Choc Sacrab, Ronal David Barillas Díaz, Héctor Manuel Choc Cuz BRAZIL Katison de Souza, Paulo Sérgio Almeida Nascimento, Valdemir Resplandes, Evaldo Florentino, Juvenil Martins Rodrigues, Haroldo Betcel, Eduardo Pereira dos Santos, Nazildo dos Santos Brito, Márcio Matos, Aluísio Sampaio dos Santos, Jorginho Guajajara INDIA Antony Selvaraj, Ranjith Kumar, Sandeep Sharma, Selvasekar, Karthick, Gladston, Jancy Rani, Suresh Oraon, Maniraj, B Sailu, Swami Gyan Swaroop Sanand, S Jegadish Dura, Tamilarasan, Kanthiah, Poipynhun Majaw, Jayaraman, Shanmugam, Snowlin CHILE Alejandro Castro DRC Barthelemie Kakule Mulewa, Faustin Biriko Nzabakurikiza, Théodore Kasereka Prince, Liévin Mumbere Kasumba, Kananwa Sibomana, Ila Muranda HONDURAS Carlos Hernández, Luis Fernando Ayala PHILIPPINES Lando Perdicos, Dominador Lucas, Beverly Geronimo, Ricardo Mayumi, Bronsel Impiel, Marcial Pattaguan, Ricky Olado, Ronald Manlanat, Agudo Quillio, Mark Ventura, Jose Unahan VENEZUELA Ramón Rosario, Pedro Vielma, Reyes Orlando Parra Kenya Jomo Nyanguti, Robert Kirotich CAMBODIA Thul Khna, Teurn Soknai, Sek Wathana GUATEMALA Francisco Munguia, Alejandro Hernández García, Juana Ramirez Santiago, José Can Xol, Mateo Chamam Paau, Florencio Pérez Nájera, Luis Arturo Marroquín, Ramón Choc Sacrab, Alejandro Hernández García COLOMBIA Yolanda Maturana SENEGAL Moustapha Gueye PERU Flor Vallejos, José Napoleón Tarrillo Astonitas, Olivia Arévalo Lomas PAKISTAN Safeer Hussain Iran Kavous Seyed Emami, Rahmat Hakiminia, Mohammad Pazhouhi, Sharif Bajour, Omid Kohnepoushi CHINA Li Baiguang GAMBIA Bakary Kujabi, Ismaila Bah Kolumbien Temistocles Machado
2017 In BRAZIL a minimum of 46 persons were assasinated, among them Luiz Alberto Araújo Kátia Martins, Jane Julia de Oliveira, Maria da Lurdes Fernandes Silva, Waldomiro Pereira Willian Aljure, Hernán Bedoya, Mario Castaño Bravo Tansania Wayne Lotter COLOMBIA Emilsen Manyoma, Yoryanis Isabel Bernal Varela, Luz Yeni Montaño, Efigenia Vásquez Astudillo, Ruth Alicia López Guisao PHILIPPINES 60 Ermordete, darunter Mia Manuelita Mascariñas-Green, Leonela Tapdasan Pesadilla, Lolita Pepita, Reneboy Mayagano GUATEMALA Laura Leonor Vásquez Pineda MEXICO mehr als 32 Ermordete, darunter Meztli Omixochitl Sarabia, Miroslava Breach Velducea, Benjamín Juárez José, Juan Ontiveros Ramos, Silvestre de la Toba Camacho, José Alberto Toledo Villalobos, Miriam Rodríguez Martínez IRAQ Arkan Sharif MALDIVES Yameen Rasheed BAHRAIN Mohamed Kazem Mohsen Zayn alDeen HONDURAS Sherlyn Montoya Faustino Murillo VENEZUELA Freddy Menare DRC Alphonse Luanda kalyamba Nguba, Tsongo Sikuliwako Alex SOUTH AFRICA Sibonelo Patrick Mpeku, Soyeso Nkqayini, Mohahu Daniel Maseko TANZANIA Wayne Lotter UGANDA Erasmus Irumba BANGLADESH Abdul Hakim Shimul MYANMAR U Ko NI, Htay Aung THAILAND Chaiyaphum Pa-sae INDIA Lafiqul Islam Ahmed, Kanhaiyalal Patidar, Abhishek Patidar, Bablu Patidar, Prem Singh Patidar, Surendra Singh Patidar, Sathyanarayan Dhangar, Suhas Haldankar, Rajesh Savaliya, Rathia Jailal, Mukesh Dube, Gauri Lankesh NICARAGUA Felipe Perez Gamboa, Celedonia Zalazar Point, Camilo Frank Lopez BAHRAIN Mohamed Kazem Mohsen Zayn al- Deen EGYPT Gamal Sorour IRAQ Arkan Sharif PALESTINE Ibrahim Abu Thuraya TURKEY Ali Ulvi Büyüknohutçu, Aysin Büyüknohutçu YEMEN Amjad Abdulrahman Mohammed, Mohammad Kheir Othman PAKISTAN Hina Shahnawaz, Muhammed Jan Gigyani BELIZE Albert Cattouse
2016 more than 200 land defenders were killed, among them BANGLADESH Mozibur Rahman, Anowarul Islam, Mortuza Ali, Zager Ahmed, Zaker Hossain, Dudu Mian Peru Yrineo Martínez, Felicie Cherres Garrido, Jesús Guerrero HONDURAS Berta Cáceres
2015 PERU Hitler Ananias Gonzales Rojas PALESTINE Riyadh Ibraheem Dar-Yousif, Tharwat Ibrahim Salman Sha’raw, Yousef Abu Sbeikha al-Boheiri
2014 PERU Edwin Chota, Jorge Ríos Pérez, Leoncio Quinticima, Francisco Pinedo
23/ “Tropical peoples forfeited their independence because under the guidance of native rulers, they were unable to qualify as citizens of the modern world by complying with its requirements.” J.S. Furnivall Colonial Policy Cambridge University Press, 1948
24/ The report suggests that African governments should examine the possibility of relying more on the private sector in agriculture. It emphasizes that this is not a recommendation, which derives from any preconceived philosophy of ownership. It derives from considerations of efficiency. AW Clausen, World Bank president, introducing the Berg Report “Accelerated Development on sub-Saharan Africa”, 1981
Over hundreds of years the claim for greater efficiency is a constant in the land grabbers´ sense of entitlement. The industrial monoculture, whereby one crop for export is grown year after year, characteristic of land grabs, will produce a higher ‘yield’ of a single crop. However, if the measurement of efficiency is total output per unit area, small farms with crop rotation and self-produced manure is always higher than that of large farms.
25/ When done right, large-sale farming can provide opportunities for impoverished countries with ample endowments of land.” World Bank, 2010
Without regard to long-term soil health, the question is whether the application off nitrogen-based fertiliser which has made for massively increased protein yields needs large-scale farming or is fertiliser itself a matter of access to the capital that owns and has created large-scale farming. The World Bank chooses never to ask why some countries are “impoverished” as if it were an act of God
26/ “But our large-scale industry does not constitute the whole of the economy. On the contrary small peasant economy still prevails in it. Can we advance our socialized industry at an accelerated rate while we have such an agricultural basis as small peasant economy, which is incapable of expanded reproduction and which, in addition is the predominant force in our national economy? No we cannot.” J.V. Stalin in Concerning the Question of Agricultural Policy in the USSR, 1929
In 1932-3 there was a famine in Ukraine. That millions died as a result is not disputed. The cause()s remain in dispute though not in Ukraine itself. .
27/ “we see the importance of creating a favourable environment that encourages innovation and fosters the continued development of agriculture. Ukraine has the opportunity to further develop the potential of conventional crops … We hope that at some point biotechnology is a tool that will be available to Ukrainian farmers in the future.” Jesus Madrazo, Monsanto Vice President of Corporate Engagement, 2013
Monsanto and the other biotech giants are all active in the land grab business with the support of ‘development’ banks.
28/ One of Ukraine’s former leaders once said Ukraine is not Russia. That concept needs to disappear, Ukraine is definitely Russia . Dymyty Medvedev, former President Russian Federation 2024
Since 2014 the Krelmin where Medvedev is an insider have been calling Central and Eastern Ukraine by the Tsarist colonial name of Novi Rossiya, “New Russia”. To make the wished-for idea real, Ukraine was militarily invaded by Russia in 2022
29/ Occupation, settlement, and encouragement of emigration. Only in this way can we solve the problem of Gaza. To occupy all the land. To settle in all the land. And of course, to encourage the voluntary emigration of as many [Palestinian] people as possible to other countries. Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel National Security Minister 2024
“Voluntary” involves making Gaza impossible to live in for its residents by means of unlimited bombing and starvation as a strategy of the Israeli state
30/ Whenever any citizen of the United States discovers a deposit of guano on any island, rock, or key, not within the lawful jurisdiction of any other government, … and takes peaceable possession thereof, and occupies the same, such island, rock, or key may, at the discretion of the President, be considered as appertaining to the United States. The Guano Islands Act of 1856, which is still on the books as 48 U.S. Code
The Act is the earliest land grab made by the U.S. outside the continent. It says that any American who discovers deposits of guano on an island can legally claim that island as U.S. territory. About 200 guano island claims were made and then the U.S. Navy mobilized into the remote Pacific to protect these American interests. Guano is dried faeces from birds and an extremely potent fertilizer and is considered to be the start of industrial farming. Its introduction to European and American markets in the mid-19th century caused a mad rush for more supplies by the U.S. and other powers. The Act enabled the taking of these islands for purely extractive purposes without responsibility for them within the federal system.
31/ For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity. President-elect Donald Trump, who also threatened to take over the Panama Canal by force, 2024
In the past Danish controlled Greenland´s commodity-price boom attracted oil explorers. In 2011 the government decided to cease issuing new licenses for oil and gas exploration, a step taken for environmental reasons. The region’s rocks contain an estimated 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil adding up to 54 billion barrels, and 30% of undiscovered gas-carbon.
Meanwhile the Arctic is the fastest warming part of the planet. The ice that shields these deposits is thinning, leading to sea levels rising globally about 9 inches since 1880, a quarter of which increase comes from ice melting around Greenland.
32/ “the gap between potential and actual performance is high as shown by international comparisons…Specific and selected support “(is needed) to develop new legislation and improve existing laws to ease conditions of doing business and improve the investment attractiveness and competitiveness of agriculture and agribusiness in Ukraine.” International Finance Corporation of the World Bank, “Investment Climate for Agribusiness in Ukraine”, 2015
33/ In Ukraine “I am faced with the question whether it will be necessary to carry out major resettlements of indigenous people under the terms of the new, reprivatizing, agrarian order…there is no possibility of allocating land to these people. That would lead to fragmentation, with large numbers of small farms that are no longer economically viable. It would also be a waste of manpower.”Hans-Joaquim Reiecke Agriculture Under secretary of the Hitler regime, awarded Knights Cross with Swords in 1944 in a Lecture given 24th March 1942 in Berlin
34/ And why is it that the Polish peasants are winning East Prussian territory? Is it their superior economic intelligence or financial strength? Quite the contrary. The Polish smallholder is gaining ground not despite of his inferior physical and intellectual endowments but he is satisfied with lower living standards, would indeed survive on grass. Max Weber, 1895
35/ The landless peasant movement is a product of the hatred that Catholic immigrants in Rio Grande de Sul feel for modernity, technology and the uncertainties of capitalism. Raul Jungmann, Brazilian Agriculture Minister, 1997
36/ “I disagree when people say, ‘Oh, you have to preserve the local culture.’ If you preserve it, people will starve, and you won’t have a culture to preserve.” Calvin Burgess, CEO, Dominion Farms 30, 000 hectares on Nigeria, 2012
The claim made by land grabbers and their World Bank cheerleader that they increase food security is not true. Cereal crops account for only an estimated 20 percent of such land, while 44 percent is estimated to be in oilseeds such as palm oil and another 10 percent is in sugar and other biofuels and increasingly for carbon sequestration. What food is produced is usually for export as in the case of soya and palm oil.
37/ Indigenous people are like a gardener’s dog they do not only eat from the garden, but they also prevent others from eating. Peruvian President Alan Garcia justifying an Executive Order allowing the taking of land by foreign corporations, 2008
Worldwide 197 environmental defenders have been killed in 2017 while protecting their community’s land or natural resources. Among them 6 farmers who were shot dead over a land rights battle in Peru. The victims were targeted by a group who wanted to use their lands to grow lucrative palm-oil.
38/ “Lands you are using are not utilized. We have investors coming who will use more efficiently. Against those who resist we will take all possible action” Regional governor in Gambella Ethiopia to local communities subject to involuntary displacement under the label ‘villagization’, 2012
There is no land grab and there will be no land grab. Indian companies should not be constrained by such loose talk. Ethiopian Presiden Meles Zenawi 2010
Indian companies are the largest investors in the country, having secured more than 600,000 hectares of land. It includes the Lower Omo valley of southern Ethiopia. 375,000 hectares of biological diverse land is to be turned into an industrial-scale sugar plantation involving the eviction of some 260,000 people from their farmland. 34 million people in the country suffer chronic hunger.
39/ Africa is like one big sewer — and I’m like a plumber… I want to control that ground, I don’t want someone saying, ‘Thank you for your investment, now get out.’ I want a country that’s weaker. There’s a cost to dealing with strong countries: resource nationalism. People forget that. The US investor Phil Heilberg has leased 1 million hectares of land in Southern Sudan. Development is postponed due to civil war in the country, 2011
For Indigenous people where they live is a geography of landscapes, memories, expectations and desires encompassing perception of and responses to a shared sense of belonging to the natural world.
40/“The Mansholt Plan bravely declared that a policy had to be advocated based on the conviction that to make agriculture viable, a priority attack on the structures was a must, if need be with drastic action where outdated and rigidly inadaptable structures are a drag on development.” Newsletter of the European Union’s Common Agriculture policy, 1972
In 2018 3% of all farms control half of European farmland whereas a third of the continent’s small farms were lost from 2003 to 2013, coinciding with the great part of subsidies from the EU’s Common Agriculture Policy going to large-scale farms.
41/ Rabo Farm is active in rural regions where the economic and social situation is usually below the country’s average. Rabo Farm believes that its investments contribute to the local social and economic developments of the communities where it takes place. Company statement, 2016
Rabo Farm, a subsidiary of the Dutch Rabobank, acquired 21,000 hectare of agricultural land in Romania in the period between 2002 and 2013 during which the price of land in Romania increased by 2500%. It is facing numerous legal claims for illegal purchase involving fraud and intimidation.
42/ “Foreign investors choose not to make short-term investments in manufacturing sectors which are subject to various danger.” Latvia’s Forests during 20 Years of Independence brochure of 2011
This particular claim led to deforestation of the country, with trees cut down at a far faster rate than replenishment would allow. In the especially severe shrinkage of Latvia’s economy after the 2008 crisis, which also saw a spurt of foreign investment in its forest land, trees were being cut at an unsustainable rate to such a degree 2016 half of its managed forests lost their Forest Stewardship Council’s certificate. It was typical too of primary commodity export: the Swedish manufacturing sector, despite promises, did not develop timber processing in Latvia.
43/ /Farmland consolidation is expected to create opportunities for private sector investment and growth of efficient, modern farming companies, which, in turn are key to a competitive Bulgarian agriculture World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC), 2014
With such support the Austrian Raiffeisen Bank was early in seeing the opportunity through its investment in the Ceres Fund to acquire Bulgarian farmland whose price has increased 400% since 2010, and still remains hugely undervalued in European terms. The Bank has also enjoyed IFC support in a Myanmar mining land grab investment.
44/”For 200 years this region belonged to Austria, so I feel good here…The small farmers here are not organised. They have no representatives to talk to investors and government.” Count Andreas (von) Bardeau, Timisoara, Romania, 2009
where he now owns 21, 000 hectares of farmland and unknown thousand hectares forest. His company and subsidiaries have faced numerous court cases alleging illegal purchase from peasants of the Caras-Severin region.
The Count played a role in pushing for Romania’s accession to the European Union and with his holdings in the country has benefitted with millions from the Union through its SAPARD programme. He has also teamed up with another Austrian, Count Esterhazy to make more Romanian farmland purchases. Their company’s brochure talks if “vast forest production potential…the need for more private ownership…and an increased focus of rural development funds.”
45/Our overseas agricultural projects are mainly located in Africa and Southeast Asia where the local agriculture is relatively backward.” Hou Wei gui Chairman and Founder, Zhongxing Telecommunication Equipment, 2010. The company is proceeding with a 1 million hectare programme for palm oil in Indonesia and Malaysia.
46/There is a real willingness among our officials to help the people, instead of damaging the country and benefiting only a certain group of people, which is what some people claim. Seng Loth, Cambodia’s Ministry of Land Management, 2017
Neak ta, spirits associated with natural features – a rock, a tree, a patch of soil – represent a village-based morality and are inseparable from the land. In Cambodia this connection is so strong that in past times even some kings were seen to be only renting the land from neak ta. The last decade saw some 800,000 people being displaced by land grabs in the country and some, mostly women, have been killed and others imprisoned for defending land.
47/The world is nearly all parcelled out, and what there is left of it is being divided up, conquered and colonised. To think of these stars that you see overhead at night, these vast worlds which we can never reach. I would annex the planets if I could; I often think of that. It makes me sad to see them so clear and yet so far. British imperialist Cecil John Rhodes, 1891. Rhodesia was named after him, from which the states of Zambia and Zimbabwe emerged.
Since 2008, the South African mining company de Beers, founded in the 19th century by Cecil John Rhodes and today part of the international mining group AngloAmerican, has mined 600,000 carats of the world’s second-best quality diamonds in its Victor mine. This is on land that the Canadian state stole from Attawapiskat in 1930.
The 2000 Native Canadians declared a state of emergency in April 2017 following 30 suicide attempts in the previous month. There were 100 attempts within 8 months. Poverty, abuse and inequality are the causes of this epidemic.
48/The only really valuable asset today in Syria is land, and these investors want to grab it. Jihad Yazigi, Syrian exiled journalist, 2018
From an estimated pre-war population of 22 million 7 million are internally displaced within Syria, and around 6.3 million refugees outside of the country in 2018. Law 10 issued by the government in 2018 stipulates that the claim can only be lodged by refugees from within their Syrian localities, in areas in which they are still in danger. This strategic land grab increases the risk of permanent exile. The land is liable to be taken by Gulf ‘investors’ and crony capitalists´ like President Assad’s brother-in-law Rami Makhlouf.
49/God stopped manufacturing land. The available land is at a premium. V Srinivasan, CEO of Siva Ventures, which owns 756,000 ha of farmland, 670,000 ha of it in Africa
50/“The 2007–08 boom in food prices …together with the reduced attractiveness of other assets due to the financial crisis, led to a “rediscovery” of the agricultural sector by different types of investors and a wave of interest in land acquisitions in developing countries.” World Bank “Rising Global Interest in Farmland.” 2011
Between 2008-9 56.6 million hectares of farmland were ‘grabbed‘ worldwide, approxunately the size of Ukraine. Between 2001 and 2010 an approximate 277 millions which is Five Ukraines.
51/ will guarantee you that farmland, over a hundred years, is going to be gold … . For 100 years it’ll produce things for you and you still have 100 acres of farmland at the end of 100 years. … With land you can get somebody else to do all the work, give them a percentage of the crop, and you can sit back there for 100 years. Star investor Warren Buffett in an interview on CNBC, 2012
Getting “somebody else to do all the work” is even more profitable when it is in slave labour conditions as in the grabbed land in the Cross River area of Nigeria where the world’s largest palm oil producer Wilmar has workers confined and earning under half of the national minimum wage.
52/We have been guided by one simple premise. If you invest in those pockets of opportunity where the capital shortage is at its most severe, and therefore at deep, deep discounts, then not everything needs to go right, even most of the time, in order to make money. NCH Capital New York company video. NCH has accumulated 1.7 million acres across more than 80 farms in Russia and the Ukraine by 2015.
53/ Many of the most ambitious ‘first wave’ of land grabs were financial failures … but over the last ten years farmland has started to gain traction as a staple in an institutional real asset portfolio. Brent Burnett, Real Asset Portfolio Management, 2015
54/Palm oil’s very attractive. The earnings are very high and we’ve got hybrid material now. You harvest in the 24th month, and the repayment period is about seven years at the most. For the next 20 years you’ll be laughing yourself all the way to the bank. Suriya Moorthy, agricultural investment consultant, 2015
The land grabbing by the Malaysian-based IOI corporation in both Ketapang and Sarawak in Indonesia was so gross that in 2016 it was suspended from the self-appointed Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil of which it was a founder member. It is the 4th largest palm oil producer and is most heavily backed by the British Banks HSBC and Standard Chartered and financial institutions like Old Mutual and the Prudential.
55/ Monoculture has been widely accepted as the most efficient type of large-scale agriculture. … growing one crop, such as biofuels, over a large area for several years has a number of negative environmental impacts. Studies in Indonesia have shown that 80%-100% of fauna species in tropical rainforests cannot survive in oil-palm monocultures due to increased pressures from various crop diseases and pests, often requiring large-scale use of chemical pesticides, fungicides and herbicides. In addition, increased fertiliser use to safeguard crop yield may increase pollutant levels in downstream waters and nitrous oxide emissions. Unep’s global environmental alert service,
56/The men fled to the mountains, the women had to find a way to live. People lost everything; they became nothing but cheap labour. Maria Josefa Macz, Guatemala Campesino Unity Committee, describing the impacts of a palm oil land grab in the Polochic Valley, 2012
57/ Food is a weapon in this world. Hong Jong-wan, Daewoo Corporation, 2008
In 2008 The Daewoo Corporation of Korea made a deal in secret for a 99 year lease on 700,000 hectares of land in Madagascar with the then President. Most of the corn and then palm oil produced was to strengthen the food security of Korea. In Madagascar itself 70% of the population live below the poverty line and child malnutrition is widespread. When the deal became public a popular movement brought down the government and the deal rescinded.
58/ No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark. Warsan Shire, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth, 2011
We need everything, from food to housing. The natural way we lived in our country, we know we cannot live that way here. DuduMia, Rohingya refugee from Myanmar, Bangladesh, 2017
In 2012 Myanmar created a new Foreign Investment Law and abolished ‘the tiller’s right to the land’; the minority Rohingya people were stripped of citizenship and there was an increase of their land being allocated to corporate and state capital and ethnic paranoias were turned into systematic violence against them, which killed many and displaced 150,000. In 2017 when the country’s record-breaking economic growth slowed down, a new pogrom was unleashed: villages were burned to the ground, civilians murdered, 700,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh, and thousands of others held in prison camps. Recently the state allocated over 1 million hectares of land in the Rohingyas area of the country for corporate rural development.
59/ Now we … will increase the ploughing area, meanwhile many people here have formed the life style of living in the forest. They go to the woods, they keep bees. When we arrive here with an active production cycle, to some extent we disrupt their social rhythm. Now they cannot already wander in the fields and ride as they please, because the fields are ours. Perm region investors, Russia, 2010
After the collapse of the USSR land reform did not lead to clearly defined land rights and tenure security: peasants had almost impossible bureaucratic and financial hurdles to overcome. Since a land law change in 2002 several large domestic agro-holdings are quoted on Western stock exchanges and Russia has made 1 million ha of arable land available to foreign investors.
60/Independent studies have demonstrated that the Madagascan littoral forests are rapidly deteriorating due to pressure from local people. It is generally accepted that they will be essentially destroyed within the next 2 or 3 decades unless an effective protection strategy is defined and the resources of the [Rio Tinto] mining company properly harnessed to promote biodiversity conservation. The Royal Botanic Gardens website, Kew, 2010
While the Rio Tinto company one of the largest mining multinationals in the world creates a scarcity of biodiversity with its exploitation of 6000ha for ilmenite strip mining, it claims to be saving it with 620 ha of protected areas for ecotourism and the planting of eucalyptus. It is in alliance with London´s Kew Gardens, the centre of imperial bio-piracy for 350 years, who will get materials for its Millenium Seed Bank, which has the purpose of providing an “insurance policy” against the extinction of plants in the wild by storing seeds for future use, in return for ‘green-washing’ of the mining company.
A gold reserve … a place where this reserve currency, in this case life itself, is stored. Prince of Wales at the opening of the Millennium Seed Bank, 2000
61/ The Ivory Coast Rural Landholdings Project is an example of World Bank meddling with indigenous land rights systems where there is no local demand for its intervention
In the case of the Rural Landholdings Project, mapmakers are busy drawing the boundaries of parcels cultivated y agriculturalists, while simultaneously omitting the rights of pastoralists, woodcutters, hunters, gatherers, and other land users of the very same parcel. Once the map is made and stamped as official, then it has a power of its own to affect a variety of outcomes. The map’s authoritative power is derived from the scientific aura and official status that accompanies its construction. As authoritative documents, these maps have a momentum of their own in changing indigenous land rights systems.
62/ Africa’s land must be enclosed, and traditional rights of use, access and grazing extinguished, because it is private property of land that has made capital work. The Economist, 1986
The more the demand for land increases, the more strict the constraints on women’s access to it. Silvia Federici, philosopher, 2005
The shifting of land tenure from the community to the state via the plantation company and the practice of the ‘household head’ system of smallholder plot registration has narrowed women’s tenure access. Women are largely absent from community discussions and negotiations with the oil palm corporations. But having the roles of production and reproduction they still have to ensure food security even in situations of land uncertainty.
63/If you take away land from women in the rural areas, you take away their livelihoods; you take away the very thing that they identify with. Then we fight. Because we have nothing else to lose. Melania Chiponda, Zimbabwe, 2017
64/ In Guatemala sexual violence was an institutionalized crime that was far more complex than the act of rape. Sexual slavery was part of a systematic practice and women’s bodies were caught up in the fight for land. Mayra Alarcón, a regional Guatemalan representative, 2016
Many of the people killed defending land from grabs were women and many of those in Latin America. Even if you win fame in the West for winning the Goldman Environment Prize you can be killed with impunity like Berta Cáceres in Honduras or be beaten up like Maxima Acuña after winning a case against the Newmont mining subsidiary in Peru.
65/ Maps are not the territory, Gregory Bateson, anthropologist
The use of maps which omit the rights of pastoralists, woodcutters, hunters, gatherers, and other land users of defined areas claim objectivity and create facts on the ground. The World Bank uses them to change indigenous land rights systems where there is no local demand for it as in the Ivory Coast Rural Landholdings Project.
66/We cannot solve the problems created by the mismanagement in the past. But now we have a great opportunity for building a city from scratch. In the forest, trees are the centre of interaction, at this level monkeys, squirrels and other animals move. In our city, we will make connections between buildings, so residents don’t have to go to the streets and use vehicles. Sibarani Sofyan, architect of New Capital City, Ibu Kota Baru, Indonesia, 2019
We will protect the forest, but which forest, we will look at the map.
Regent of Penajam Paser Utara, Abdul Gafur Mas’ud, 2020
There are at least four villages of the Dayak Paser Indigenous community in the area designated by former President Joko Widodo to be the centre of the new government
67/We should transform the Bedouins into an urban proletariat … Indeed, this will be a radical move which means that the Bedouin would not live on his land with his herds, but would become an urban person … Without coercion but with governmental direction … this phenomenon of the Bedouins will disappear. Moshe Dayan, Israel Agriculture Minister, 1963
68/We live in such a remote and tiny place, I can’t believe that something like this would happen here, I used to believe this society was good, but now every time I hear the term ‘the nation’ I feel afraid. Witness of the attack on Chinese Fuyou village by private ‘security’ forces used by regional authorities to take farmland to make way for the gigantic “Pan-Asia Auto Parts Trade and Commerce Hub”, 2017
3 peasant defenders and 4 security men were killed and the village remains under a police lockdown. There is little or no compensation for land taken from a peasant class which, in living memory, made a revolution in 1948.
69/ The Basarwa and San should not be allowed to continue living like animals in game parks. They deserve a decent life; they need to go to schools. Have better health care.
They cannot be allowed to live a primitive life while other Batswana are enjoying the fruits of modernity. President Festus Mogae, Botswana, 2007
The Basarwa and San (bushmen) were forced out of the Kalahari desert by the Mogae government with their bore-hole wells sealed off. This was at a time when the hoodia plant used by them has been recognized as a successful hunger suppressant and is now much advertised by the alternative health product market.
`70/If we don’t stop this intrusion, we will live in exile in our own land.’ Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1980
Under laws introduced by the Argentinian President Menem in the 1990s, the vast lands of Patagonia has become monopolized by foreign capital including ‘United Colours’ Benetton whose 800,000 hectares for sheep has seen it using the police to force out Indigenous Mapuche people. This is the modern ‘humane’ version of what happened in 1879, when more than 1,300 Mapuche were killed and their lands confiscated for British settlers.
On the other side of the border with Chile, drawn by the colonial powers, the Mapuche burned down monocultural and easily combustible eucalyptus plantations the cultivation of which had been promoted under Pinochet.
In order to defend their survival, Portuguese farmers tore up the water-consuming eucalyptus seedlings on many hectares in 1974. A new wave of plantations – eucalyptus is now the most common tree species in the country’s profitable pulp industry – caused fires that killed 63 people in 2017.
71/While striving for growth is our priority, I have also given particular emphasis on the protection of the environment. I balance the pro-growth strategy with the pro-environment strategy. This is the essence of sustainable development. H.E. Dr. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, ex-President of the Republic of Indonesia, in 2020.
Palm oil has become a major part of national income run by and to the benefit of the Indonesian elite and global food corporations. Its plantation size will increase with plans to develop it as a bio-fuel. For this, the people of ancestral forests and small farmers have been attacked to make way. Concessions of dubious legality are excluded from the 2018 Forest Moratorium on land grab, which has been revealed to be a paper tiger.
72/“I think natural resources are limited and I need to take them before they’re gone” CEO of HAGL 2017
Our vision is to become an agricultural corporation with the large land bank, sustainable development, and diversity in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. HAGL Company statement 2024
HAGL, a Vietnam-based rubber conglomerate took advantage of weak government in Laos to take land. It acquired 10,000 hectares in return for financing the 2009 SE Asian Games hosted by Laos. The displaced Hmong people of Attapeu province had little choice but to work long, heavily supervised underpaid hours on the resultant sugar plantation.
73/ Today, we are working with more than 15,000 soy farmers and collaborating with governments, NGOs and partners to implement the Brazilian forest code and advance forest protection. Cargill Corporation, 2018
700,000 hectares of tropical forest in Brazil and Bolivia has been destroyed by farmers burning to grow soy as animal feed for giant agricultural trading corporations like Cargill which supplies Burger King. A moratorium on soy claimed by the company applies only to the Amazon region. Meanwhile 2 million hectares was deforested in other parts of Brazil in 2017 alone.
74/We promote the unlocking of crucial projects that will show a ‘before and after’ in our economy. Peruvian president Dina Boularte, 2024
Together with the Peruvian elite stronghold of the Congress, Law 31973 was passed, which is an amendment to an earlier Forestry and Wildlife Law. The modifications pardon all illegal deforestation on areas cleared for agriculture prior to 2024, and dismantles future legal constraints.
75/ COVID-19 pandemic was the right time to pass regulatory legal land reforms …, to go on letting the herd of cattle pass through, changing all the rules … . Brazilian Environment Minister Ricardo Salles until June 2021, having to resign for having allowed illegal wood exports.
Brazil’s Lower House of Congress passed a bill in August 2021, facilitating the legalization of illegally occupied government land, and even granting titles on the strength of “self-declarations”. Deforestation has increased in every month in 2020 in relation to the rate for the same month in 2019, as in January by 109%.
Viral prevalence rises to 9.3% among bats near deforested sites compared to 3.7% in pristine woodland.
76/” We put limits on grazing for the health of the environment, to control overgrazing
Tanzania Conservation Ltd part of Thomson Safaris which charges $535 a night ‘eco-tourist’ lodges on land that has always been that of Maasai people but on whom prohibitions enforced by armed company “security” guards are now placed by the American owned company in a deal with the Tanzania state.
77/“Better to have those peasants serving tourists than to have then slashing and burning the park, don’t you think?”, Official of The National Natural Parks’s System Administration Unit (UAESPNN), Colombia on the Tayvona National Park, 2009
“What I really regret is that the park is no longer for public use, only for rich people’s use, “ another UAESPNN employee, 2009
In the decade 1998-2008 some 4 million people were forced out of over 5 million hectares of land in Colombia. This
included that for eco-tourism at the Tayvona National Park from which fishermen and farmers were forcibly removed. The rationalisation here as in Chile is that indigenous people ‘destroy the environment’. As when the government’s Kenya Forest Service (KFS) forcibly evicted the 15,000 strong Sengwer indigenous people from their ancestral homes in the Embobut forest and the Cherangany Hills with the pretext that they are responsible for the accelerating degradation of the forest.
78/ Canada Park, a proud tribute to Canada and to the Canadian Jewish community, whose vision and foresight helped transform a barren stretch of land into a major national recreational area for the people of Israel. Brochure of the Jewish National Fund, which owns 13% of the land in Israel. For them it is prohibited to sell or lease its land to non-Jews, who happen to make up 25% of Israel´s citizenry.
The park stretching over 700 hectares is built over the ruins of the Palestinian villages of Imwas, Yalyu and Beit Nuba from whom 10,000 people were forcibly moved by the Israeli army in 1967.
79/ Our company produces sustainable and ethical biofuels – categorically yes. We would welcome higher sustainability standards, but you do have to balance this with economic development. If you are a local in Tanzania or Mozambique and need a job, you probably aren’t worried about whether the orangutans sleep at night. Richard Morgans, Sun Biofuels, 2011
80/ Our rural development is catapulting the local population from the Stone Age into the modern age.
Flora Eco Power, the celebrated first German investor in agrofuels, who owns 56,000 hectares in Ethiopia, 2006
Land licenses for 50 years are granted to Ethiopians, Indians, Chinese and Saudi Arabians: tens of thousands of hectares for rice, soy, cotton and biofuel. Often for just a dollar per hectare per year, of which the first installments are deferred.
81/ The 10,000-ha sugar-cane project operated by Addax Bioenergy, an ethanol company is … a good way to bring back agriculture in Africa. Half of the company’s project costs are met by development banks. That’s why I don’t feel guilty of doing anything immoral. Jean Claud Gandur, billionaire owner of the company, 2010
82/The carbon markets, when up and running, need to support the forest stewardship of the people who live there, and not provide national governments with yet another tool to dispossess their citizens from the natural resources they have cared for and depended on for generations. Tony La Viña, chair of the intergovernmental REDD negotiations at the climate conferences in Copenhagen and Durban, 2009
The REDD scheme that emerged in 2005 has made a carbon credit market whereby forest land either bought or monoculturally developed on grabbed land can be an abstract credit as a carbon ‘sink’ to companies exceeding emissions regulations. In reality there are instances like the Norwegian Green Resources carbon offset projects in Uganda where villagers are deprived of vital resources and experiencing threats and violence, and a lack of clarity regarding ownership.
83/I don’t plant trees, I mean, are we the science people, or are we the idiots? billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates, 2023, says that planting trees to deal with the climate crisis was complete nonsense
In 2024, tech giant Microsoft bought 8 million carbon credits from the Timberland Investment Group (TIG). TIG is raising US$1 billion to buy and convert pasture lands to large-scale eucalyptus plantations across the Southern Cone of Latin America. The contested claim is that as these these trees grow, they draw carbon from the atmosphere and store it in their roots, trunks and branches. TIG will estimate the amount of carbon removed and then sell it as carbon credits to Microsoft and other corporations. Microsoft’s deal with TIG is the largest “carbon dioxide removal credit transaction” in history. Eucalyptus trees notorious water guzzlers plantation-style.
Many projects implemented on small farms, farmers are asked to sign contracts in which they commit to plant and maintain a number of trees on a portion of their land. and in the soil to the project proponents effectively ceding control over a portion of their lands for decades. .
84/ We used to have land grabs. Now we are having carbon grabs.
Akinwumo Adesiun, President of the African Development Bank 2025
The pace and scale of land-based investment for marketable carbon removal has increased as investors negotiated with African and Asian governments to take control of large tracts of land a 20th of the price they would pay elsewhere. Communal lands the combined size of Portugal have been taken by corporate interests for this purpose since 2016
85/ When they take the gold from our lands, it costs us a lot — a lot of suffering. I don’t think they will see their gold as precious when they know that, for us, it’s our tears. It’s our blood. It’s hunger and suffering. All to get the gold. Máxima Acuña-Atalaya de Chaupe
Máxima has waged a years-long battle against one of the world’s largest gold-mining corporations, Canadian Newmont Mining, in Peru to retain her farm — and stop a new $5 billion gold-and-copper open pit mine. She like many is suffering from the Spanish “sickness of the heart that only gold can cure” as noted by the original Conquistador Hernán Cortés.
86/ The county’s unmined gold could be wealth that could transform El Salvador, President Nayib. Bukele November 2024
In 2017 El Salvador became the first country to ban metals mining in its territory. This followed a sustained and popular campaign for non-toxic drinking water to be available to the population at large. The government regime of President Bukele reversed the decision at the end of 2024 to open up the country to a host of transnational mining companies eager for the country’s gold deposits in the name of Progress. The government of Bukele who calls himself “the world’s coolest dictator” is dictatorial in the name of eliminating “gang” violence. It got rid of the country’s Supreme Court judges to pursue a war not against “gangs” but the people. This allowed for the softening up process in advance of the mining decision that started with the arrest of 5 of the environmental activists who had worked for the 2017 ban.
87/“My people didn’t tell anybody that we want to become white, that we want mining, that we want money. Money also passes away like rain, and it is like the wind … it comes and goes. I have never seen a rich Indigenous person in our country.” Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, an leader from Brazil’s Yanomami people and president of their association, Hutukara. Yanomami land is rich in minerals. Artisanal miners who dredge rivers for gold, polluting them with the mercury they use in extraction, began entering in the 1970s. Bolsonaro has said the reserve, which at 9.6m hectares is twice the size of Switzerland, was too big for its Indigenous population.
88/We are a Canadian company, and Canadians are kinda freaky with the environment. There is a lot of gold there. A lot of money at stake. The central government doesn’t care what every little local official says. Terrence Kirk Filbert, Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer at Baru Gold Corp., also President, CEO, CFO, Secretary & Treasurer at Borneo Resource Investments Ltd.
The leading local official of the affected Sangihe region Helmud Hontong died on a plane in 2021 less than two months after he sent a personal objection letter to the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources for the mining permit for a proposed gold mine. Located between the Pacific and Eurasian plates and flanked by underwater volcanoes the area is prone to earthquakes.
89/ The purchases weren’t about land, but water. For with the land comes the right to withdraw the water linked to it, in most countries essentially a freebie that increasingly could be the most valuable part of the deal. Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, the chairman of Nestlé, calls it “the great water grab”, 2008
When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Alan Watts, writer, 1964
As well as needing large areas of land, gold mining – even though it pays only 1% or 2% of its output to the hosting country in royalties – is a major user of water and of its contamination.
99/ They tried to bury us, but they forgot that we are seeds. We are water protectors, and if we are to live as a people, we must have water, without water we die. We stand up. We will not let them pass. We stand. LaDonna BraveBull Allard of the Standing Rock Sioux Peoples, North Dakota, United States, 2016
Fracking is the process of drilling down into the earth before high-pressure water, sand and chemicals mixture is directed at the rock to release the gas inside. It causes earth tremors and uses huge amounts of water at significant environmental cost. Potentially carcinogenic chemicals may escape during drilling and contaminate groundwater.
91/ “Infrastructure development […] often requires acquisition of land […] Such acquisition can adversely affect the socioeconomic well-being of the people whose assets are acquired, as well as the communities they live in. […] Well-designed and well-implemented resettlement can, however, turn involuntary resettlement into a development opportunity.” (World Bank 2004) “
Prime land is being sold to vested interests including the ultra-wealthy Adani family on the cheap. It is happening under the guise of rehabilitating residents displaced by redevelopment. Elsewhere, as in Jakarta People are forcibly removed from what are designated “slums” to make way for an expressway to the international airport.
92/There are clear signs that the Mozambican enclosures could produce the same results as their predecessors in Europe – a dispossessed rural majority and migration to towns. Yet unlike Europe this will be a country that is not about to embark on a labour intensive Industrial Revolution generating thousands of new jobs for the dispossessed and their families.” Christopher Tanner, UN Food and Agriculture organisation, 2004
Well aware of this local communities and the Mozambican Peasant Union (UNAC) has been successful in resisting projected land grabs like the Brazilian- ProSavannah project backed by the government for 35 million hectare soyabean plantation in the fertile Nacala Corridor. Similarly a Chinese rice in XaiXai has been cut back in the face of local opposition.
93/ Kigali has been the focus of an over-ambitious multi-billion-dollar infrastructure blitz in recent years, with futuristic convention centres, hotels and modern flats altering the skyline. Kampala Post, 2019
People living in a slum next to a wealthy area of Rwanda’s capital city have been barred from leaving or entering their homes by police, while drones fly overhead announcing on loudspeakers that they should move immediately to a new purpose-built estate some 20km away. The officials assert that the residents have to relocate ´for common interest and proper city planning´. BBC News, 2025
94/The vision of social housing estates has largely ended in crime and deprivation, as the fate of London’s Heygate estate shows … the subways -frequented by meths-drinking weirdos. http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/property/new_homes/article7067417.ece, 2014
The Amerindians are like the filthy peasants of Europe who grow fat in their own filth. The Spanish missionary Gilij, Colombia, 1770
The estate that belonged to the Southwark municipality had 1200 social rent flats and over 3000 long-term tenants and leaseholders, was subject to disinvestment and run-down over its 50 year lifetime. In 2014 a regeneration project was announced, tenants forced out, and given over to property developers. Of the 2350 flats to be built only 74 will be ‘social’. In the same year sales began in Singapore for such properties in a “vibrant established neighbourhood”.
95/ WE FINALLY CLEANED UP PUBLIC HOUSING IN NEW ORLEANS. WE COULDN‘T DO IT, BUT GOD DID. Richard H. Baker, a 10-term Republican from Baton Rouge, 2005
This place is going to look like Little Somalia. We’re going to go out and take this city back. Brigadier General Gary Jones, commander, Louisiana National Guard’s Task Force
Our vision is to make New Orleans a premier national and international health-care destination. If adversity is the mother of invention, then Katrina was the biggest mother of all. Michael Hecht, president of Greater New Orleans Inc. promoting economic development
At least 1,836 people died in the Hurricane Katrina and subsequent floods, more than 270,000 were forced into shelters, and a 90,000 square mile area devastated. This was ruthlessly used by the George W. Bush administration as an opportunity to evict its black working class residents, hand land over to big business and drive down wages. For the Wall Street Journal, “preventing some of New Orleans’s poorest residents from ever returning to their neighbourhoods”.
96/ Shenshan is my favourite golf course in Asia because it’s like you’re not even in China. German Martin Kaymer, former world No1 golfer and Ryder Cup winner, 2011
China experienced a golf boom even while the building of more courses was banned, more created than anywhere else in the world in the eight years after 2004 when the ban was introduced. These often involving land grab by compulsory purchase with low rates of compensation, often disguised as leisure or eco-tourism developments. The Communist party leadership’s position veers between encouragement for making money–the joining fee of the Shenshan Club is $450,000–and fear of popular anger at conspicuous consumption. As a gesture it closed down 110 courses in 2017 while the party’s disciplinary committee declared: “Playing golf itself is not a wrongdoing”.
97/ India will create the ´Best Commonwealth Games Ever´, building state-of-the-art sporting and city infrastructure; project Delhi as a global destination and India as an economic power; and leave behind a lasting legacy. Indian government PR, 2010
The Games, and the urgency of ‘land acquisition’ were one more stage in the eviction of poor people from the city’s Yamuna River area in the interests of building a “world class city”. The process began in 2004 with the Great Green Tourist Complex.
Since then, with the backing of the courts, the houses of 300,000 people were demolished. Many had originally come to the city to build the structures for the 1992 Asian Games.
98/ “Sustainability has always been at the forefront of Hamilo Coast’s vision of providing premier beach-resort living in the country. Shirley C. Ong, executive vice president for the Hamilo Coast company in 2018.
When the company took over the coast in the Philippines it evicted 10,000 peasants and 1,000 fisher people in the process. The coastal ‘project’ will involve building four golf courses and two marinas as well as the exclusive resort. The company is owned by the country’s richest man Henry Sy and had the backing of the Philippines Agrarian and National Reclamation Plans, as well as the use of the police to counter any resistance.
99/ We have to challenge the expropriation decree. It is not legal. It will change our lives, but for whose sake? The Olympics is spitting in our face. Vila Autódromo resident Inalva Mendes Brito, 69, Rio de Janeiro, 2015
More than 90 percent of the Vila Autódromo´s population were moved after pressure from local government. They suspect the land will be used to build luxury apartments after the games are finished. A large number of Rio’s 900-odd favelas sit cheek by jowl with some of the fanciest real estate in Brazil.
100/I visited a quilombo and the least heavy afro-descendant weighed 120 kg. They do nothing! They are not even good for procreation. Jair Bolsonaro, 2017
More than 15% of national territory is demarcated as Indigenous land and quilombos. Less than a million people live in these places, isolated from true Brazil, exploited and manipulated by NGOs. Together we will integrate these citizens. Jair Bolsonaro, Twitter, 2018
In Brazil, where slavery was not abolished until 1888 – by then around four million people had been deported from Africa – there are 2962 quilombos (rural settlements where the descendants of former slaves live) with a population of 16 million people. Only 9% of them have land titles.