Tom Gardner

Giant dam and irrigated sugar plantations mean people in lower Omo valley face starvation and conflict, says US thinktank

A giant dam and irrigated sugar plantations are “wreaking havoc” in southern Ethiopia and threaten to wipe out tens of thousands of indigenous peoples, a US-based thinktank has claimed.

The Oakland Institute says that while the Ethiopian government has made considerable progress on human rights under prime minister Abiy Ahmed, it has yet to address the impact of state development plans on indigenous populations in the lower Omo valley, where people face loss of livelihoods, starvation, and violent conflict .

Acute hunger is now widespread, the organisation said in a report, due to blockage of the Omo River by Gibe III, Africa’s tallest dam. Since late 2015, the dam has stopped the river’s annual flood, a natural event that the valley’s inhabitants have relied upon for centuries for farming. As a result, entire communities have been tipped into destitution.

Responding to the report, Seleshi Bekele, Ethiopia’s minister of water, irrigation and electricity , said that while the government accepts there are problems, “the points raised in the paper are not properly documented or balanced”.

Seleshi said solutions had been put in place to mitigate the impact of the dam, including small-scale irrigation and outgrower schemes.

According to the report, however, such promises have not materialised. Moreover, said the study, communities claim they were tricked into leaving their ancestral land in order to make way for sugar plantations built by the Ethiopian Sugar Corporation as part of its mammoth Omo-Kuraz sugar development project (OKSDP). The project, a 100,000 hectare (247,000 acre) irrigated agricultural scheme, is fed by the waters of the Omo.

Indigenous populations were told the sugar plantations would bring hundreds of thousands of new jobs to the region. They were pressed to give up nomadic livestock-herding and adopt sedentary lifestyles, as part of the Ethiopian government’s controversial “villagisation” programme, which has since been halted. Some were threatened with having their cattle seized or killed by police.

The report alleges that resettlement sites are not big enough to feed families, and that promised services—schooling, healthcare, grinding mills, food aid, and electricity—either remain undelivered or have been woefully inadequate. Only a small percentage of new jobs have materialised, with a large majority given to migrant workers from other regions of Ethiopia.

Seleshi countered that the Sugar Corporation had spent 79m Ethiopian birr (£2.1m) constructing infrastructure and social services in the valley, including schools and health centres.

An aerial view of the Omo River in the district of Nyangatom. Photograph: Charlie Rosser

In May, the Guardian visited a “villagisation” site—Napusmoria, in the South Omo district of Nyangatom—and spoke to villagers whose accounts echoed the report’s claims.

Nalia, an elderly inhabitant, said the government ordered her and her family to move to the new village in 2011.

“They promised us services, like water, a health clinic and a plot of irrigated land,” she said. “But apart from some food at the start there was nothing.”

This is Oakland’s fourth report on South Omo. In 2013 it accused the Ethiopian government of using killings, beatings and rapes in order to force indigenous communities to accept the sugar cane projects. It also accused western aid agencies of covering up evidence of the abuses.

“First the white colonizer ruled over our forests. But with independence, only the skin color of those colonizing our forests has changed,” says Nivada Rana, as she shows the injury sustained in 2012 at the hands of Uttar Pradesh (UP) state authorities while collecting firewood in her ancestral forests. Nivada’s observation summarizes well the long history of forestry governance in India—where both the British Raj and the postcolonial Indian state have controlled forests at the expense of the millions of traditional forest dwelling Adivasi and Dalit communities.

Nivada is the leader of the Tharu Adivasi Mahila Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan—a women’s group of forest and farm workers from the indigenous Tharu Adivasi community in the Indo-Nepal Terai region. Her insightfulness stems from her decade-long activism to protect the forest rights of her community. Since the inauguration of the Dudhwa National Park in 1977, UP state forest department has attempted to evict and relocate residents of 37 villages in the area (including Nivada’s), primarily members of India’s marginalized Dalit and Adivasi forest dwelling communities, thereby retaining control of the forests using the excuse of wild life conservation.

In the face of such threats, the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, better known as the Forest Rights Act 2006, was meant to address the “historic injustices” perpetuated against the traditional forest dwelling communities. The Forest Rights Act (FRA) has provided legal teeth to Nivada’s struggle and that of million such forest dwelling communities across the country, protecting them against evictions and exploitation by corporations and a rapacious forest bureaucracy.

An Exemplary Law to Protect and Defend the Rights of Indigenous and Marginalized Women

As explored in our previous blog, the FRA has a tremendous, though often untapped potential, in empowering Adivasi and other forest dwelling people on multiple fronts. First of all, it financially empowers forest dwelling communities by recognizing individual land rights and granting community rights over the forest commons. This reorganization of the management of vast revenue generated by (non timber) minor forest produce—previously under the purview of state forest departments—along with community ownership of these resources has helped generate income and prevented the rightful inhabitants of the forests from being fined for encroachments.

Second, the FRA’s strong emphasis on the need for consent of Gram Sabhas—a village council that includes all adult members of the community—has been an important departure from Joint Forest Management (JFM) programs. Preferred by the World Bank in the early 1990s, JFM programs were re-invented by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MOEFCC) in the form of forest department appointed Village Forest Committees, where the emphasis is on consultation instead of consent.

Third, the FRA’s radical reparative potential of addressing historic injustice is particularly suited to redress gender injustice with regard to land ownership in India. Unlike other patrilineal rules of land ownership in India, the FRA is singular in its recognition of women as having equal rights to forestland and community forest resources as their male counterparts. Ashok Chowdhury, the general secretary of the All India Union of Forest Working People, points out that this has significantly empowered married women, as well as widows, single women, and women deprived of economic security as a result of polygyny.

Finally, it is important to remember the ecological foresight of the FRA in explicitly acknowledging the vital importance of indigenous communities in conservation efforts, which was also recognized in 2018 by the United Nations Inter-Government Panel on Climate Change.

The FRA under Attack Again: Wildlife Trust & Others vs. the Union of India

Given FRA’s recognition of the important relationship women have with their land and ecological habitat, it is not surprising that they are leading the struggle to protect and implement this progressive legislation. The year 2018 saw Adivasi women farmers lead impressive marches to New Delhi and Mumbai, demanding the proper implementation of the FRA.

Despite the compounded risk of gendered harassment in addition to state intimidation, Nivada and Sukalo Gond of Sonbhadra are the two Adivasi women who have taken up the mantle of defending the FRA through legal channels. Along with 17 other academics, activists and environmentalists, these two persistent women have filed an application for intervention in a malicious case (Wildlife Trust & Others Versus the Union of India), lodged by an elite section of conservation groups and retired forest bureaucrats, challenging the constitutional validity of the FRA in 2008.

The petition against the FRA has undergone several contortions since 2008. After initially challenging the constitutional validity of the FRA, the petitioners demand the eviction of those whose claims for individual and community forest rights have been denied under the FRA. On February 13, 2019, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court headed by Justice Arun Mishra issued an order in favor of the petitioners, demanding the evictions of almost 25 million Adivasis and other traditional forest dwellers (OTFDs). While a stay order till July 2019 was issued on the eviction notices, pending a re-evaluation of rejected claims by the state governments.

Meanwhile the MoEFCC and the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, which are the main respondents in the case, kept silent in the four hearings leading up to the eviction order. This lack of action tends to demonstrate the Union government’s disregard for the FRA and the vulnerable populations it is supposed to protect. After pressure from civil society groups (and ahead of the country’s general elections) the Solicitor General of India offered a feeble defense against the eviction orders, which inadequately recognized the inherently problematic nature of the petition.

The fundamental claim of the petition—representing Adivasis and other forest dwelling communities as being harmful to the environment—is completely misleading in the face of mounting evidence of their success as conservationists. Furthermore, if successful, an undoing of the FRA, and its model of community-consent based democratic forest governance could pave the way for “green grabbing” of forests by corporations. Most recently, this is being done by the Compensatory Afforestation Fund (CAF) Act (2016), which allows for the diversion of forestland for non-forestry purposes such as mining and construction, as long as those undertaking the project bear the cost of compensatory afforestation. This actively undermines the FRA because the funds for compensatory afforestation lie in the hands of the forest bureaucracy, and not the Gram Sabhas. Furthermore, unlike the FRA, the CAF act recognizes only individual land deeds, thus allowing for compensatory afforestation activities in the community forestland of vulnerable indigenous communities. Not only does the CAF act refuse to acknowledge community forest rights assured by the FRA and undermine the need of consent for gram sabhas, it adopts an unsound ecological outlook, by allowing monocultural plantations to be counted as forests. The draft National Forest Policy (2018) too had exhibited similar leanings towards financializing forests, by allowing for a public-private model of forest management in the name of “increasing forest productivity”, that disregards the role of its rightful owners—indigenous and traditional forest dwellers.

Most recently, barely two weeks after the SC issued eviction order, the MoEFCC sent a draft proposing alarming amendments to the Indian Forest Act (1927). These would grant the state forest departments untrammeled power in numerous ways. The rights of indigenous forest dwellers can be taken away if the department finds them to be in violation of its conservation aims. The amendment also allows immunity to the forest officials if they use arms against whomsoever they regard as encroachers. Making quite explicit its aim to financialize forests, the amendments also seek to set up a new legal category of “commercial forests” and promote production forests via involvement of private firms. These are all in contravention to the ecological and reparative justice that the FRA has sought to guarantee.

However, the FRA, which is a superseding act—it cannot be trumped by other legislation- has been a significant thorn in the implementation of such anti-poor laws. It is thus telling that the eviction order favoring an eleven year old petition undermining the FRA, a petition whose legal validity is extremely contentious, came barely a fortnight after a Supreme Court order (also co-issued by the same judge, Arun Mishra) released Rs. 540 billion ( US$ 7.75 billion) to the National Compensatory Afforestation Fund Authority for dubious purposes of compensatory afforestation . Also, by equating rejected claims with immediate eviction orders, the Supreme Court order disregards the numerous steps involved in the review and repeal process allowed for by the FRA. Already 8 state governments in India have submitted affidavits acknowledging that the rejection of claims made under the FRA has been flawed and inaccurate. The haste in seeking to evict some of the most precarious people in the country from their ancestral homelands, by the Supreme Court of India, without any regard to due process, calls for the mobilization and solidarity of human rights and environmental defenders in India and globally.

Jung Jaari—The Struggle Will Continue

Following a National level consultation on Land and Forest Rights in early July that saw participation from almost 200 forest movement leaders from across the country, ahead of the hearing of the anti FRA petition, a protest action against the Supreme Court eviction order was organized on July 22, 2019 in almost every state in India. The hearing, which had been scheduled for July 24, has been deferred continuously for a fortnight and is now scheduled for hearing on August 6, 2019. While Sokalo and Nivada, the two Adivasi petitioners in the case had travelled vast distances to appear for the hearing in Delhi, the burden of the incessant delay has necessitated their return home.

However, as Roma Malik, the deputy general secretary of the AIUFWP tells me at the Delhi protest meeting, the struggle for forest rights extends beyond the outcome of the present hearing. It must address the hurdles in the Act’s implementation that Adivasi and forest dwelling communities must contend with everyday. This may result in a nationwide march to the Indian parliament in Delhi in November, which could see participation from hundreds of thousands of marginalized forest dwelling communities.

In the meantime, it must be remembered that the struggle of the Adivasi and forest dwelling communities is not a domestic matter for India alone. While emphasizing the troubling global pattern of treating “indigenous peoples and local communities… as squatters when in fact the land is theirs,” the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, has strongly emphasized that the basic premise of the eviction order is wrong.

Furthermore, the Indian Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change must be urged to refrain from making the recently proposed amendments to the Indian Forest Act that further the colonial legacy of diminishing the rights of traditional forest dwellers, while excusing forest departments from any accountability. Lastly, India’s National Forest Policy and progressive conservation groups in the country must also recognize the vast benefits of genuine decentralized community-led forest governance for the environment, as well as democracy at large.

International civil society must continue to demand that the government of India not only defend the FRA, a progressive legislation that protects traditional forest dwelling communities, but also ensure its careful and widespread implementation.

Last week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest report on the climate crisis. Focused on climate change and land, the report makes it clear that fixing our food system is imperative to addressing the crisis. And with many experts warning that we have less than two years before changes to our planet become irreversible, there is an urgency to act quickly.

The past sixty years have seen massive changes in the ways that we grow food: rising industrial food production has led to surging greenhouse gas emissions; a handful of mega-corporations have seized control of everything from seeds to chemical inputs; the use of nitrogen fertilizers has risen by 800 percent; monoculture production has soared while seed diversity has plummeted; and more. This has made our agricultural system both a major driver of climate change—and majorly vulnerable to its effects.

The IPCC’s report makes it clear that transformative change is needed now. Crucially, the report highlights the need for seed sovereignty and the abandonment of monoculture, the importance of Indigenous knowledge in “enhancing food systems resilience,” and the vital need to expand agroecological and agroforestry practices, with “robust evidence and high agreement” on the fact that “increasing resilience of the food system through agroecology and diversification is an effective way to achieve climate change adaptation.”

Riddled throughout the chapter on food security are stories of smallholder farmers using traditional knowledge and agroecological principles to increase their resilience—from small-scale paddy rice farmers dredging irrigation canals and using organic fertilizers in Iran to the adoption of inter-cropping and agroforestry to build resilience in India.

Perhaps most telling is the story of Indigenous food systems in the Hindu-Kush region of the Himalayas. The 1960s “Green Revolution” drastically reduced the diversity of food production in the region, contributing to malnutrition and increased instances of diabetes, obesity, and heart disease today, while also making the region vulnerable to climate change. Now, sixty years on, attention is now being put on the need to scale-up the production of “neglected and underutilized species,” in essence, to rebuild the very agricultural and nutritional diversity that was lost. These Indigenous crops that were once wiped out in favor of a few commercial crops grown with heavy agrochemical inputs are finally being praised as offering “tremendous opportunities” for addressing poverty and malnutrition and mitigating the effects of climate change.

This example lays bare a key facet to the change that is so badly needed: we must move past the false solutions—and the actors—that got us into this mess in the first place. This means prying the power out of the hands of mega-corporations like Bayer-Monsanto, who have spent years suing small farmers for tens of millions of dollars to protect their seed patents while promoting destructive agricultural products that have poisoned people and the planet and giving it back to farmers on the frontlines. It also means calling out institutions like the World Bank, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, USAID, and DFID for their relentless efforts to push pro-corporate false climate “solutions” on developing country governments around the world.

For years, the Oakland Institute has done just that. We have worked tirelessly to expose land grabs that threaten smallholder farmers and Indigenous groups while making way for plantation agriculture projects; we have revealed the role of western institutions in pushing a pro-corporate agriculture agenda in the developing world; and we have promoted blueprints for agroecological solutions that are economically viable, environmentally responsible, and socially fair, shining the light on a resilient path forward.

With the clock ticking and the window for change narrowing each day that goes by, it is clear that we need a bold and ambitious campaign to invest in agroecological solutions that build robust, diverse, and resilient food systems in communities across the planet. The good news is, just as is evident in the Himalayas, such bold action won’t just help us address climate change—it also has the potential to address systemic issues like poverty and malnutrition.

This will be no easy feat, but the fate of our food system, and indeed our world, rests upon it.

With the Oakland Institute Research Team

India’s 73rd Independence Day merits introspection on the deep crisis faced by the world’s largest democracy. Two recent attempts at perpetuating unprecedented land grabs, mark the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government’s proclivity for legalizing dispossession and marginalization of the most vulnerable.

Evictions of rightful inhabitants from their ancestral land have been recurring features of successive postcolonial Indian governments.  However, under the current regime, these dispossessions have been increasingly organized through amendments to the Indian Constitution. 2019 is marked by two such glaring instances.  

The February 14, 2019 attack on India’s security forces in the internationally disputed region of Kashmir by an armed insurgency, diverted public attention from India’s Supreme Court order—issued the previous day—to evict 1.9 million Adivasis and traditional forest dwellers from their ancestral forests. This ruling by the country’s highest court, favoring petitioners seeking to contravene the Forest Rights Act (FRA)—a progressive law that recognizes the rights of the country’s most vulnerable people—is as previously argued, both concerning and legally dubious.

This infringement of the FRA to facilitate forest grabs is supplemented by a slew of legislative measures that seek to militarize India’s forests. For instance, the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act (2016) dilutes the consent and autonomy of the rightful inhabitants of the land, while the new amendments sought by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change to the FRA will grant immunity to an armed forest bureaucracy for any acts of violence against those whom it deems as “encroachers.” This dispossession of the Indigenous communities, who actively struggled against British colonization, has not only been rhetorically justified, but sought to be legalized by the Indian government using the façade of conservation and the alibi of development.

On August 5, 2019, just as the Supreme Court resumed hearings on the stay order issued against the evictions, the Indian state once again demonstrated its shallow understanding of land as mere territory and utter disregard for those who inhabit it. This came in the form of a presidential order that “read down” and amended the provisions of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution that had allowed the state legislature of Jammu & Kashmir a separate constitution to govern its citizens. 

Revoking this special status of Jammu & Kashmir brings its citizens entirely within the ambit of the Indian Constitution. This was followed by the passage of the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Bill by the Indian parliament that further diluted the political autonomy of the state by dividing it into two union territories—Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. Most notably, this included the revocation of Article 35A, that was added to the Indian Constitution under Article 370 in 1954. Article 35A permitted the state assembly of Jammu & Kashmir to define “permanent residents” of the state, thus ascertaining who could retain the right to own property and land. Ironically, the Kashmiri Pandits, the Hindu minority in the valley, ventriloquized by the Indian state to justify its actions, had historically raised the notion of “Kashmir for Kashmiris,” in preference for an ethnic Kashmiri rather than communalized identity. 

There are numerous aspects of this move that deserve the condemnation of the international community. First, this unilateral move in a disputed territory shows the BJP government’s utter disregard for preserving peace in South Asia. Second, as numerous legal scholars have observed, this decision to amend the Constitution through presidential orders, violates the prime conditionality of Article 370—the absence of  consultation with the Jammu Kashmir constituent assembly that hasn’t existed since 1956. The state legislative assembly was dissolved in November 2018. Furthermore, in a massive crackdown the night before the Central government read down Article 370 and Article 35, the leaders of the state’s mainstream political parties were rounded up and preemptively detained. Worse still, this supposedly democratic decision was passed under the shadow of a gun—the residents of the state suffered a continuous curfewed shutdown, additional army deployments, and a complete communications blackout in the valley of Kashmir—a situation that persists ten days after the decision. 

Amidst a complete clamp down of the press in Kashmir, international media and a fact finding committee report (comprised of Indian civil society activists recently returned from the region) indicates mass incarcerations of thousands in the valley, including not just political activists, academics, and social workers, but even children as young as eleven years old.

It is important to parse the rhetoric of “specialness” that has been used to violate the political and human rights of Kashmiris. While the specific political history of the region—particularly the terms of its conditional accession with India—had shaped the supposedly special powers afforded to the residents of the state, any true autonomy afforded by Article 370 has been steadily eroded.  While Kashmiris have been confined to a narrative of exceptionalism—it is not one that has afforded them privileges. They have been denied the most basic human and political rights. 

A permanent state of emergency has eclipsed the state since the 1990s, particularly through the Armed Forces Special Powers Act that allows the military to function in the region with complete impunity. Between June 2018 and July 2019, the United Nations Human Rights Commission released two reports, criticizing the increase in human rights violations in the region. The most recent report details a significant spike in violations that include “physical intimidation and assault, invasion of privacy, arbitrary and unlawful detention, collective punishment and destruction of private property.” The Indian government refused to address any of these concerns, instead, belligerently denying the findings and casting unfound aspersions about the underlying motives of these reports.

Finally, the new characteristics of BJP’s move must be addressed in its specificity. The most recent constitutional amendments are primarily justified through an insidious rationale of economic development with complete disregard for the population’s human rights.  Economist Jean Dreze, at a recent protest in solidarity with the people of Kashmir, emphasized that the state of Jammu and Kashmir fares much better on human development indicators such as female schooling, infant mortality, child malnutrition, wages of rural laborers, and rural inhabitants of the state below poverty line than Indian Prime Minister’s home state of Gujarat (see picture).

Much of this development is attributed primarily to the implementation of the “land to the tiller reforms” of the 1950s that redistributed surplus land amongst an impoverished landless peasantry by capping the maximum amount of land that could be held by an individual. These land redistribution policies sought to redress the injustice meted out to the Muslim majority Kashmiri population under the communally discriminatory Dogra rulers, who abolished individual landholdings and prevented an impoverished peasantry from migrating elsewhere. Indicating the importance of land rights and their link to wide ranging social equity, as Dreze argues, has made a “big contribution to poverty reduction,” by helping “avoid the existence of a huge reserve army of labor as found in other Indian states.”

Given the environment of military impunity and sanctioned state violence, land grabs are not an uncommon occurrence in the region. National security or national development through corporate driven public works projects has been the cover for forceful land acquisition in Kashmir in violation of the protections of Article 370 and Article 35A. However, given the specific political and military conditions of the area and the absence of large financial capital, land grabbing in Kashmir, did not completely mirror the neoliberal model of dispossession prevalent throughout the country today. The recent amendment to Article 370 may change that significantly. 

On August 13, Mukesh Ambani, the Chairman of Reliance India Ltd.—one of the biggest industrial conglomerates in India with a long record of coercive land grabs– announced the creation of a “special task force” to explore private investment in the newly formed, bifurcated union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. 

The imposition of large-scale “investment” in a politically and ecologically fragile zone, without consultations or the consent of the people whose lives are most profoundly impacted, is condemnable. More important, many fear that the so-called investment may be a Trojan horse for forcing the demographic composition of Kashmir—a move to mirror the illegal Israeli settlements in Palestine’s West Bank. 

Today on its 73rd Independence Day, India celebrates freeing itself from the yoke of British colonialism, as 8 million Kashmiris are shorn of their political autonomy and basic civil liberties, and 1.9 million Indigenous forest dwellers are on the brink of eviction. The internationalist anti colonial legacy of the Indian freedom struggle is in tatters. The fig leaf of development and the underhand tactics to violate the Indian Constitution, do not hide the BJP’s attempts to devastate the most vulnerable of those it claims as its subjects. The international community must unequivocally condemn these moves by the Indian government to legalize dispossession, and work together with the Indian, Kashmiri, and Indigenous activists, to challenge these resounding blows delved to world’s largest democracy.  

---FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE---

August 29, 2019

Media Contact:
Frédéric Mousseau
fmousseau@oaklandinstitute.org
+1 510-512-5458

OAKLAND, CA—A new briefing paper by The Oakland Institute, 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 the company, its financiers, nor the Ugandan government.

Green Resources has been the subject of two reports published by the Institute in 2014 and 2017. The exposés documented the plantation’s destructive impact on the local population as well as the misleading audit commissioned in 2017 by the Swedish Energy Agency—Green Resources only carbon credit buyer. Company documents released with the briefing paper—including letters threatening the local villagers, corroborate the Institute’s previous findings.

Evicted for Carbon Credits implicates Green Resources’ new majority shareholders, the public development institutions of Norway and Finland—Norfund and Finnfund—which rescued it from bankruptcy in July 2018. These institutions are aware of the land grab, yet continue to finance the project despite Green Resources’ abuse against the communities at Kachung.

The report also exposes the complicity of three prominent international certification bodies—the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), The United Nations’ Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), and the Climate, Community, and Biodiversity Alliance (CCBA)—that are supposed to verify the company’s compliance with environmental and social standards. Evicted for Carbon Credits analyzes how several of their monitoring and assessment reports omitted or downplayed the impacts of the land grab.

“Based on flawed audits, the accreditation Green Resources received from the certification agencies calls into question their commitment to social and environmental standards. In the name of fighting climate change, they claim that a large-scale plantation of non-native pine trees, which are to be cut and sold as timber, is preferable to subsistence activities of African farmers,” said Frédéric Mousseau, Policy Director of the Oakland Institute. “As thousands of Ugandan villagers struggle to survive after the loss of their land and natural resources to the plantation, the institutions and government agencies that enable Green Resources to operate must be held accountable for their wrongdoings and their complicity in this land grab.”

“Beyond the need for accountability, that such a flawed project could run with the backing of three European governments, several international bodies, and specialized private auditing firms, raises serious questions around the true motives of these institutions as well as the purpose and the functioning of the whole carbon economy,” Mousseau concluded.

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We, members of the civil society organizations from 12 countries express our deep concern at the growing humanitarian crisis in Narmada valley, in Central India, where thousands of families are evicted without rehabilitation for the Sardar Sarovar (Narmada dam). We are also concerned about the deteriorating health of Medha Patkar, the senior activist, who is into her 7th day of indefinite fast.

The dam, initially financed by the World Bank, has been in the center of controversy for a number of things, including its poor track record of rehabilitation of the affected communities. We learn that flouting all policies and guidelines, nearly 32,000 families are yet to be rehabilitated while the dam construction has been completed and the reservoir is getting filled rapidly.

The Narmada struggle has been an inspiration to a number of organizations world over. Its relentless fight made the World Bank withdraw its financing to the project in the early '90s, compelled the Bank to institute the Inspection Panel - the first accountability mechanism in any multilateral bank - and continues to inspire struggles world-over with its nonviolent struggle.

We stand in solidarity with the Narmada struggle. We demand the Government of India, and concerned state governments to address the demands of the struggle and avoid a humanitarian crisis.

Signed:

Alliance to Stop Mining, Philippines

Arab Watch Coalition, Egypt

Bank Information Center, USA

Bank Information Centre Europe, The Netherlands

Barbara Bramble, USA

Brent Blackwelder, USA

Centre for Human Rights and Development, Mongolia

Corner House, United Kingdom

David Hunter, American University Washington College of Law, USA

Focus on the Global South, Thailand

Foundation Earth, USA

Gender Action, USA

Inclusive Development International, Cambodia

International Accountability Project, USA

Lumiere Synergie pour le Developpement, Senegal

Rivers without Boundaries International Coalition, Russia

The Oakland Institute, USA

Ulu Foundation, Indonesia

Urgewald, Germany

Ann Danaiya Usher

A planned disbursement of SEK 10 million by the Swedish Energy Agency (SEA) for emissions reductions produced by the Kachung plantation in Uganda, owned by the Norwegian company Green Resources, has been delayed due to on-going concerns about the project. Development Today has learned that the Swedes were about to give a green light last week but put on the brakes.

The delay coincides with the publication of the Berkley-based Oakland Institute’s third critical report on the Kachung plantation. Entitled “Evicted for Carbon Trading,” the report was released last Thursday (August 29), and presents evidence that farmers have over the years been evicted by Green Resources and its Ugandan subsidiaries to make room for the plantation. It also raises questions about the validity of certification received by the project from three international bodies, including the Forest Stewardship Council and CDM.

Ola Westberg at the Swedish Energy Agency tells Development Today that the payment delay is not related to Oakland’s report, which the agency rejects out of hand.

“As far as we can see the report contains no new information and the conclusions arrived at by Oakland do not match those of the independent audit that we have implemented,” the agency writes in a statement released one day after the Oakland report was published.

Rather, the delay is related to the Swedish Energy Agency’s own assessment of the project, Westberg says.

The Swedish agency had planned for a transfer last week of certified emissions credits produced by the Kachung plantation in Uganda and approved by the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism – equivalent to 192,000 tonnes of CO2.

“The plan was to go through with the transfer last week,” says Ola Westberg at the Swedish Energy Agency to Development Today. Once the credits are transferred, the agency has 30 days to pay SEK 10 million to Green Resources, which owns the plantation. Westberg says the agency is “still reviewing the progress report from Green Resources. [The transfer] could happen any day, but probably not this week ... There will be no transfer of certified emissions credits until the agency is satisfied.”

PAYMENT SCHEDULE

The plantation, located in Northern Uganda, is surrounded by 17 villages. Though the land being used by Green Resources to plant pine trees is formally owned by the government, thousands of people have used the area for farming and cattle grazing. While the company plans to earn SEK 35 million by selling carbon credits to the Swedish state, the treatment of people in the area has been at the heart of the controversy that has dogged this project for almost a decade.

Back in 2011, the Swedish Energy Agency signed a SEK 35 million agreement with Green Resources for the purchase of 365,000 tonnes of carbon emissions reductions from the company’s pine plantation in Kachung, Northern Uganda. The payments would be made over a 20-year period, with the first disbursement of SEK 1.2 million taking place in 2013.

According to the agreement’s payment schedule, a second disbursement for emissions reductions achieved during the five-year period (2013-2017) was to be made last year.

But the cooperation was frozen in 2015 when media reports and the energy agency’s own site visits revealed that the situation of affected people was worse than Green Resources had led the agency to believe. The agency stated in a press release at the time that “villagers were deprived of vital resources and experienced threats and violence, and there is a lack of clarity regarding ownership in the reserve.”

Following the freeze in 2016, Green Resources presented a road map detailing how it would improve its dealings with communities affected by the plantation. This included a ten-point action plan on areas like food security, water availability, cattle grazing and roads. The Swedish agency welcomed the move, but warned that future carbon payments were “conditional on the implementation of concrete actions to improve the situation.”

The agency stated: “We believe we can do more for local people by taking responsibility and making demands on Green Resources … than by pulling out of the project.”

An Interview with Roma Malik and Ashok Chowdhury of the All India Union of Forest Working People

The Supreme Court of India is set to rule on a case, Wildlife Trust Vs the Union of India, which could result in the eviction of 1.9 million forest dwellers from the country’s Indigenous and traditionally marginalized communities. At the crux of the case is a petition filed with the Supreme Court by elitist conservation organizations and retired forest bureaucrats to contravene the Forest Rights Act, a progressive forestry law that has attempted to rectify the “historic injustice” meted out to these communities. By recognizing them as the rightful inhabitants of the land and guardians of its ecology, instead of treating them as encroachers, the FRA’s reparative approach recognizes the pre-existing individual and community forest rights.

“The struggle of the Indigenous for control over their own forests and resources is as long as their history of oppression—first by the forest department of the British Raj, and now by our own countrymen.”

Roma Malik

While the Solicitor General of the country has made a belated feeble attempt to defend this law, Indigenous activists and civil society actors have filed applications for amendments to make them party to the case, next due for hearing on September 12, 2019. On July 31, at the offices of the Delhi Forum, Oakland Institute’s Research Associate, Janhavi Mittal, spoke to Ashok Chowdhury and Roma Malik, office bearers of the All India Union of Forest Working People (AIUFWP). AIUFWP—the first national union of Adivasi& Dalit communities representing the traditional workforce in India –has spearheaded this legal struggle. Along with Roma, the AIUFWP’s leaders—Sokalo Gond and Nivada Rana, are the only two Adivasi women who have taken on the legal mantle of this fight. Here, Roma and Ashok explain how the struggle for forest rights extends beyond this legal struggle, and why women from marginalized forest dwelling communities are at the forefront of this fight.

Q: The AIUFWP has been involved in the struggle for forest rights, even before undertaking the legal battle in the Wildlife Trust Vs the Union of India case. Before we discuss the case, can you please share more about the forest people’s movement that led to the inception of the AIUFWP?

Roma: The All India Union of Forest Working people was founded in Puri in 2013, and today has a membership of over 25,000 people from forest dwelling communities across 11 states. Forest people’s movements, however, have long predated the AIUFWP. The struggle of the Indigenous for control over their own forests and resources is as long as their history of oppression—first by the forest department of the British Raj, and now by our own countrymen. Of course, international capital too plays a role. But it is since the 1990s that localized struggles started gaining a nation-wide character. As progressive legislations, beginning with the 1996 PESA (Panchayats Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act and then later, the Forest Rights Act (2006), and the Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act (2008) were introduced that would empower and recognize the rights of forest communities, a need for a collective union was recognized. It was felt that as a union, the AIUFWP will be able to enhance the collective bargaining power of forest workers, while pushing for a better implementation of progressive legislations, which were continuously being undercut by state-led anti-people policies.

Ashok: The defining moment was the formation of the National Forum for Forest People and Forest Workers in 1998. As the structural adjustment policies of the 1990s set the stage for accelerated exploitation of our natural resources, it was also important to articulate the rights of forest dwelling communities using the language of labor rights. By recognizing forest dependent communities as forest workers, the scope of forest rights included individual and community land, resource, and livelihood rights, as well as access to labor protections and social security programs—including the right to employment, guaranteed minimum wages, and employment guarantees. Furthermore, a new form of political consciousness developed when forest workers associated with the struggles of other trade unions under the New Trade Union Initiative in 2001. The participation of forest workers at the World Social Forum in Mumbai in 2004, led to the forging of international solidarity in the struggle for environmental justice and the collective rights of the Indigenous and traditional forest dwelling people. This realization of the importance and strength of a union for asserting individual and collective forest rights, coupled with the need for establishing national and international solidarity, led to the formation of the AIUFWP.

Q: The membership and leadership of the AIUFWP is mainly comprised of Adivasi and Dalit women. How did this come about?

Roma: While the AIUFWP actively strives to inculcate female leadership, it is however an organic development that many of the courageous struggles for forest rights have been led by Adivasi and Dalit women. One main reason for this is the division of labor within forest communities. A vast majority of the work, particularly that involves the assertion of community forest rights - the collection of firewood for example—is done by women. Although the women also do farm work, majority of the men not economically displaced into becoming migrant labor in urban areas, are primarily engaged in agricultural tasks. As a result, it is the women forest workers who first encounter the Forest Department’s brute power. Also, Adivasi and Dalit women who have historically never been strangers to state violence, better understand the importance of collective bargaining power and community rights, making them relentless defenders of the rights of their communities over the forestry commons.

At the AIUFWP, we recognize that when women take on the mantle of any struggle, it no longer is undefeatable. We hold special workshops every year led by Adivasi and Dalit women that train our members in dealing with the forest bureaucracy and the process for claiming their forest rights.

Our workshops also collectively work towards developing a vocabulary to challenge state violence. We do collaborate with other women’s organizations, but very often the conversation on feminist issues does not explicitly focus on the question of land rights. By highlighting the issue of women’s collective rights, our workshops attempt to be a corrective to the middle class feminist understanding of land rights, understood within the framework of private property. For forest dwelling Dalit and Adivasi women, the relationship with land is material as well as cultural and ecological. For them land is life and livelihood, and this nuanced understanding of land cannot be reduced to a discourse on private property.

Ashok: From their frequent encounters with the Forest Department, our members have realized that the deeply ingrained patriarchy of these officials has been a significant hurdle in the proper implementation of the FRA—a feminist legislation, which considers women as equal rights holder as the men and recognizes them as heads of households, thus empowering abandoned, widowed, and single women. While the Forest Department first encounters women and does not spare them the atrocities of state violence, it refuses to negotiate with them. Many are asked to send their husbands when they make their claims under the FRA. We are training our female members in contesting this patronizing attitude of the state.

Roma (laughs): The Forest Department also doesn’t like women to be the direct negotiators because, unlike men, they cannot be easily manipulated or intimidated.

Q: You both stressed on the Forest Department’s attitude as a hurdle in the implementation of the FRA. Can you please elaborate on other such reasons for its poor implementation?

Roma: The lack of political will to implement an act that recognizes traditional forest dwelling communities as conservationists and the rightful owners of the forestry commons, when the predominant attitude has been to treat them as encroachers, has been a major hurdle.

Ashok: In addition to the lack of political will of governments and forest bureaucracies, associated vested interests are also behind the poor implementation of the FRA. In India, the Forest Department has historically functioned with complete impunity—acting like the new zamindars after the British left. Their officials cannot digest the idea of forest dwellers actually having sovereign control over their own homelands. Neither can they imagine women from marginalized communities being their interlocutors or comprehend the idea of community forest rights and collective, democratic control over forest produce.

The FRA, which was under the purview of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, rather than the Ministry of Environment (Forests and Climate Change), has always made forest bureaucrats uncomfortable. We have often observed that government officials are only involved in implementing schemes where large revenue is created for them to control. The FRA mostly focuses on community rights—10 out of 13 rights guaranteed under the FRA pertain to community rights, so it does not end up creating beneficiaries to the disappointment of the Forest Department, but instead recognizes rightful owners. Actually, the recognition of communities’ rights to forest resources and the collective ownership of income generated from these forest resources would mean a multi-crore rupee [several million US dollars] loss of revenue for the Forest Department. By marginalizing the communities claiming rights over forests and focusing the discussion of forest rights on individual pattas (land titles), the Forest Department seeks to retain overall control over the forests.

Roma: While this is often done in the name of forest protection and conservation, the only thing protected by non-implementation of the FRA is the personal interest of corrupt officials, politicians, and corporations. There have been numerous cases where Adivasi women have protected their forest against poachers and looters who were in cahoots with the state. Much of the animosity regarding the power of gram sabhas enshrined by the FRA comes from their capacity for genuinely democratic forest governance. Unlike gram panchayats that are rarely representative of the interests of the marginalized communities or the Joint Forest Management committees that are often nominated proxies for the forest department, the gram sabhas by virtue of including every village adult are a challenge to this nexus of power.

Another hurdle in the implementation of the FRA has been the way the data around forest land has been fudged. While there are bureaucratic lapses, there is no national level data regarding the land claims and land use of other traditional forest dwelling communities. There is also deliberate misrepresentation of non-forestry, agricultural land as forestland. By doing this, non-forestry land was brought under the purview of the Forest Department and therefore not subjected to land reform. This is also why the AIUFWP deliberately grounds its conversation on forest rights in the language of land rights, ownership, access and use.

Q: The Compensatory Afforestation Fund (CAF) Act 2016 is enabling land grabs through the setting up of land banks and plantations in the name of forests, and appears to be in direct opposition to the FRA. What bearing do you think this has on the implementation of the FRA?

The Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act… is only a “win-win” for corporations and forest officials.

Ashok Chowdhury and Roma Malik

Ashok and Roma: The Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act goes against the very spirit of the FRA, but in theory has no constitutional power to undercut the FRA. It is only a “win-win” for corporations and forest officials. However, because of the massive revenue it generates in the form of a compensatory afforestation fund—to be controlled entirely by the Forest Department at the expense of the forest communities—it has been used to undercut the provisions of the FRA. It is no coincidence that the petition against the FRA has been gaining traction so closely on the heels of the pressure to disburse the compensatory Afforestation Fund. Merely a fortnight before the Supreme Court order evicting millions of Adivasis and other marginalized forest dwellers from their ancestral homes, the same judge presiding this current case (Wildlife Trust vs Union of India), ordered the release of crores of rupees (US$7.75 billion) worth of Compensatory Afforestation Funds. However, the CAF Act is only the most recent, though perhaps the least disguised attempt at wresting power away from communities, and giving their forests indirectly or even directly under the public-private partnership (PPP) schemes, to corporations for “management” and exploitation. World Bank forestry schemes of the 1990’s were among the first to exploit the rhetoric of community governance, but only further empowered the Forest Department. The World Bank has now distanced itself from this program, but is now using the logic of carbon credits to in its reckless push for monetizing forests, a principle that also drives the CAF Act. These sham Joint Forestry Management committees are still being championed by other international development agencies and corporations, thus giving the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change legitimacy to undermine the truly democratic power of gram sabhas guaranteed by the FRA.

Q: Finally, as activists in the struggle for forest rights and rights of forest working people, and also as an intervening party in the Wildlife Trust Vs Union of India Case, how do you think this case is going to impact forest people’s movements in the country?

Ashok: The case has no legal ground to stand on. That is why it has taken so many different forms since it was first filed in 2008. The most recent eviction order by the Supreme Court is a travesty but it has further galvanized our struggle. Of course, we are hearing reports of contempt of the stay order issued by the Supreme Court regarding evictions. This is a sign of their impunity to trample on the rights of the marginalized. The new amendments to the Indian Forest Act, further seeks to legitimize this impunity. They were always armed, now they have the legal sanction to use it against the rightful owners of the forest commons by listing them as poor conservationists and encroachers.

Roma: Recently, eight states in India have indicated the rejected claims have not been reviewed properly, so jumping to conclusions about evictions without examining the review process of claim making is just absurd. Civil society groups have pointed out repeatedly the flawed way of data collection about forest areas. Till that becomes available the case is bound to drag on. While organizations like the Citizens for Justice and Peace have been providing us vigorous legal support, two of our Adivasi members - Sokalo Gond and Nivada have been travelling to Delhi from Sonbhadra and Lakhimpur Kheri for these hearings, while battling the brute violence of the state in their villages.

Even a dismissal of this malicious petition is only the tip of the iceberg. As was decided at the National Consultation on Forest Rights Movements organized this July by Bhumi Adhikar Andolan, a platform working for the land rights of communities, winning this case is not the only task at hand. There needs to be a mainstreaming of the FRA and an inculcation of the political will to ensure its proper implementation. To this end, a long nationwide march to Delhi demanding the full implementation of the FRA, as well as the recognition of forest rights and the rights of all traditional forest dwellers as forest workers will be organized on November 28, 2019. In our long-standing attempts at forging bonds of international solidarity, we have realized that even as the struggles of forest dwelling people are localized, the nature of the oppressor is fairly uniform. We hope for the continued solidarity and support of international civil society in our collective struggles.

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September 17, 2019

Media Contact:
Frédéric Mousseau
fmousseau@oaklandinstitute.org
+1 510-512-5458

Oakland, CA—One week after the release of the Oakland Institute’s report, Evicted for Carbon Credits: Norway, Sweden, and Finland Displace Ugandan Farmers for Carbon Trading, Swedish Energy Agency (SEA) has reportedly delayed payments for carbon credits produced by the Norwegian company, Green Resources, at its plantation in Kachung, Uganda. Norway and Finland’s development institutions—Norfund and Finnfund—are the majority shareholders of the plantation which has been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), the United Nations Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), and the Climate, Community, and Biodiversity Alliance (CCBA).

The Institute also released official documents that provide hard evidence that Ugandan subsistence farmers were forcibly evicted to make way for the non-native pine-tree plantation in Kachung. The loss of land and livelihoods caused a hunger crisis amongst the communities. 

On September 5, 2019, Development Today reported that the SEA has delayed disbursement of SEK10 million (US$1.03 million)—a payment initially planned for that week—given concerns from their November 2018 audit of the project. The audit confirmed many of the issues raised by the Oakland Institute, including the food security crisis and “complaints from communities associated with corruption, land-rights issues, as well as community access to forest resources.” 

SEA has claimed that the Institute’s report was not a factor in their decision. “Despite their denial, it is noteworthy that the announcement to delay payments came ten months after their audit and just days after being publicly exposed and pressured,” said Frédéric Mousseau, Policy Director of the Oakland Institute. SEA initially claimed that the project was established on “unused bushland,” despite having full knowledge of the forced evictions of local villagers as early as 2011. Following the Institute’s 2014 report and media exposure, SEA announced their decision to suspend payments to Green Resources but last week, the agency was getting ready to resume payments to the project despite the lack of improvement on most of the pressing issues faced by the local communities.

“Multiple reports and audits of Kachung plantation over the last decade have consistently identified the problems that persist to this day. With its latest postponement of payments to Green Resources, SEA cannot subject the people of Kachung to yet another audit or half-baked food security program,” said Frédéric Mousseau. “It is time for SEA, as for the financers and certifiers of the Green Resources project in Uganda, to also be held responsible. The protracted misery inflicted on Kachung’s communities can only be rightfully addressed with the immediate end of this devastating project,” he continued.

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October 10, 2019

Media Contact:
Anuradha Mittal
amittal@oaklandinstitute.org
+1(510)469-5228

Proposal for Dividing the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Must Be Stopped

Oakland, CA—In a shocking move, the Tanzanian government, at the behest of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and international conservation organizations, has announced a plan to divide the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) into four distinctive zones—further marginalizing land rights of the Indigenous communities. The Management and Resettlement plan, scheduled to unfold over the next seven years, is the latest chapter in the country’s history stained with forced evictions of the Maasai from their ancestral lands—crucial to their very survival. The new plan threatens approximately 90,000 livelihoods with the creation of new restricted areas within the NCA, where the Maasai are denied access for housing, livestock grazing, and crop cultivation.

In March 2019, a joint monitoring mission report from the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) called on the Tanzanian government to “complete the Multiple Land Use Model review exercise and share the results with World Heritage Centre and Advisory Bodies to advise on the most appropriate land use model, including in the matter of settling local communities in protected areas.” In response, the Tanzanian government produced the Four Zone Management and Resettlement Plan.

If carried through, this latest plan will further entrench decades of injustice perpetrated against the Maasai. Over the past century, Maasai’s rights to their ancestral lands have been continuously eroded—first by colonial forces and then by the Tanzanian land laws, under pressure from the international conservation groups and foreign safari companies—all in the name of conservation and failed promises of tourism.

In light of this impending calamity, the Oakland Institute calls on the Tanzanian government to stop further displacement and evictions of the Maasai villagers from their homes and land at the directive of UNESCO and conservation groups. Additionally, given its stated mandate to build peace through international cooperation in Education, the Sciences, and Culture, this stance against the Indigenous Peoples violates UNESCO’s purpose.

“UNESCO and the government of Tanzania’s plan is detrimental not only to the Maasai but also for the conservation of wildlife. Dividing the ecosystem doesn’t provide a long-term solution. It is a repeat of the myopic actions of the British colonial government, and our challenges have continued.”

A Maasai leader, name witheld for security reasons, October 9, 2019.

Proposed Four Zone Management and Resettlement Plan

The new Management and Resettlement Plan is supposedly an effort by the Tanzanian government to “balance natural and cultural resources conservation, community development, and tourism development.” The proposed plan will create four zones—conservation core zone, conservation sub-zone, settlement and development zone, and finally the transition zone.

The plan first expands the size of the NCA from 8,100km² to 12,083km² by including areas from Loliondo Game Controlled Area (GCA), already contested in the East African Court of Justice, and Lake Natron GCA. With its expansion, the new NCA reduces significantly the land available to the Maasai for pastoralism, settlements, and farming crucial to their livelihoods. This is particularly devastating given the severe food insecurity that the Maasai already face as a result of existing restrictions.

The new plan restricts all human settlement and development to 2,140 km²—just 18 percent of the total area. Human activity is strictly prohibited within the “core conservation zone, while the second “conservation sub-zone” permits hunting related tourism. Transition zones allow for some livelihood activities, however, building of homes is denied in response to UNESCO findings that cite the “visual impact” of houses and settlements within the NCA as a “huge concern.”

“The land cited for development despite its size, does not have a single water stream and is not suitable for pastoralism. If this plan is to prevail, cows will perish in the NCA before 2038 and it will mark the end of the Maasai community in the famous world heritage site.”

A Maasai elder, name withheld for security reasons, October 9, 2019.

In a recent newspaper article, Dr. Freddy Manongi, the Chief Conservator of Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (NCAA), provided the logic behind this devastating scheme. “There is a need to redistribute land as part of a strategy to overcome these challenges, and even if these communities are to be evacuated for a small compensation, our country is still large. There is enough land outside the reserve,” he explained. Turning a blind eye to decades of injustice perpetrated against the Maasai, Dr. Manongi rationalized government’s brutal action by saying, “I know it will not be an easy task, the noise will be great, but we will educate the public and especially the Indigenous communities of this Ngorongoro Valley region to know the benefits and that benefits of conservation are for all Tanzanians.”

Disguised as a strategy to balance competing land use issues, the plan is visibly influenced by the financial incentives. The government report itself notes, “maintaining the status quo or leaving the NCA to Indigenous pastoralists the government would lose 50 percent of expected revenue by 2038.”

What cannot be ignored is the egregious role of UNESCO in the new plan. In the stakeholder consultation for the MLUM review report, the UNESCO Commission called for the total abandonment of the multiple land use model, and advocated for the removal of all people to create a Nature Reserve—while keeping the Bomas intact for “cultural tourism.” Additionally, UNESCO notes that “relocation of Maasai will not be a new event in Tanzania.” This position from a UN agency whose mandate is “building peace in the minds of men and women,” demonstrates not only its blatant disregard for the historical wrongs inflicted upon the Maasai, but also for the internationally recognized rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Continued Marginalization of the Indigenous

“If we can break the ground to lower a body, why can’t we break it for cultivation?”

Nainokanoka village resident, September 27th, 2018.

The Tanzanian government’s proposed plan builds on the history of continued dispossession of the Maasai in the country. Over the past century, numerous land laws—passed first by the British colonial government and then by the Tanzanian government, often with the support and backing of international conservation groups—have forced the Maasai onto smaller and smaller plots of land, stifling their livelihoods and threatening their very existence.

In the late 1950s, the Maasai agreed to relocate from Serengeti National Park to the newly created NCA in exchange for development of better water resources, participation in the governing of the conservation area, and more. Despite promises, the Maasai representation on the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (NCAA) did not last long. Instead, a series of laws passed over the years have stripped the Maasai of their rights to cultivate crops and graze livestock, denied their right to their cultural heritage—their very means to subsistence and survival.

In recent years, the Tanzanian government has carried out violent evictions of the Maasai—burning Bomas, destroying food, seizing cattle, and forcibly displacing tens of thousands from their village lands, all in the name of “preserving the ecosystems for tourism.”

Restrictions on livelihood activities like home gardens have had a devastating impact on the Maasai. As documented in the 2018 report, Losing the Serengeti, food insecurity, malnutrition, and dependence on inadequate food aid ravage the Maasai communities. The Indigenous communities consulted during the MLUM review voiced their desire to be allowed to grow food and build decent housing, while leaving the rest of the land for conservation and tourism, which yet once again has fallen on the deaf ears of the Tanzanian government.

Time and time again the Maasai have been forcibly evicted and relocated. Through the hardship they have remained strong and committed to defend their rights. The international community must support their struggle in resisting further displacement at the hands of UNESCO and the Tanzanian government. The colonization of Indigenous land in the name of conservation must end.

---FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE---

October 30, 2019

Media Contact:
Anuradha Mittal
amittal@oaklandinstitute.org
+1(510)469-5228

Oakland, CA—In the past few weeks, we have received information that Ethiopian security forces have undertaken major operations to disarm two local tribes in Lower Omo Valley—the Mursi and the Bodi—because of incidents related to the sugarcane plantations. The disarmament operation has led to indiscriminate killings of civilians, mass detentions as well as horrific abuses including rapes, beatings, and various forms of humiliation by security forces.

Alleged destruction of granaries and theft of cattle by soldiers has been carried out, which are expected to result in distress and starvation for a population whose livelihoods have been already severely impacted by the establishment of the Gibe III dam and sugarcane plantations. This is compounded by the confiscation of guns that agro-pastoralists use to protect their communities and livestock from both wild animals and armed thieves from the neighboring Sudan while no alternative protection is offered to the population.

Our June 2019 report, How They Tricked Us: Living with the Gibe III Dam and Sugarcane Plantations in Southwest Ethiopia, revealed the dire situation faced by the Indigenous in Ethiopia's Lower Omo Valley following the construction of the Gibe III Dam and the establishment of sugarcane plantations.

The construction on the dam began in 2006 with the intended use of increasing energy potential and irrigating large-scale plantations downstream, in the hopes of making the country a leading global sugar producer. In 2011, during the dam’s continued construction, the Kuraz Sugar Development Project (KSDP) was announced, and included a plan for sugarcane plantations spanning 245,000 ha and supported by five factories. The military-run Metals and Engineering Corporation (MetEC) was contracted to build the first sugar factory, Omo Kuraz I, while military forces also participated in the establishment of plantations. Over the past year, several MetEC officials, including the former Director General, were arrested on corruption charges and MetEC was removed from several projects. Over the past year, the government has announced plans to privatize different sectors of the economy, including sugar factories, and the future role of MetEC in such projects remains unclear.

These projects, as reported by the Oakland Institute, have had a devastating impact on local communities by interrupting centuries-old agricultural and pastoral traditions reliant on seasonal flooding. Eight Indigenous groups rely heavily on the movement of the river, practicing flood-retreat cultivation on the rich lands left behind after the floods. The loss of essential farmland and grazing land and the loss of water from the Omo river, now blocked by the dam, have severely undermined the livelihoods of the local population, affecting key agricultural practices and sources of food for the locals.

In the Lower Omo, most of the promises made to the locals in terms of provision of basic services, use of irrigation infrastructures, and improvement of living conditions have never materialized. The promise of a controlled artificial flood of the Omo river as a mitigation measure to compensate for the loss of the natural flood (the basis of the traditional retreat agriculture) was similarly never implemented. As a result, many communities today live with loss of autonomy and livelihoods and increased rates of hunger and disease.

Beyond the direct effects on livelihoods, the project also resulted in a large influx of migrant workers from other parts of the country, with associated rise in conflicts, communicable diseases, and alcohol use. Another consequence has been the high number of local people hit and killed by the plantation vehicles in recent years, for which no action seems to have ever been taken by the authorities. Shootings by local tribesmen have been reported in retaliation for such incidents, with fatalities among factory and plantation workers.

Our June 2019 report expressed the hope that “change might now be possible” with a new Prime Minister committed to peace and respect for human rights. However, the repression and extreme violence showed by the Ethioptean military indicate a choice to silence and weaken the local tribes rather than to fulfill the broken promises of the previous administration.

Information released on October 25 by a group of international and Ethiopian scholars and researchers on Ethiopia confirms the seriousness of the situation, the high number of casualties, and the severity of the atrocities perpetrated against the local communities.

Voices of Those Impacted

Below we provide testimonies from the impacted communities, received on October 21-22, 2019.

“The komorena [spiritual leaders] were taken by the police, Biotangia, Turko, Duli many of them, 15, they were hidden from us and taken at night. Whether they went to Jinka or to Hana, we don’t know. Now, people from all the provinces, both men and women, have been taken by force and put in the prison.”

White-Patched Bull, a Mursi man from Dirikoro village, 10/21/2019

“There are a lot of people imprisoned. You can’t count them all. They got so many people. The police told the Mursi to come so the Mursi did and then the police took all those Mursi away.”

Red Cow, a Mursi Woman from Goroburai village, 10/21/2019

“Women and children who were going to the doctor were captured, as well as anyone visiting the town around the factory. The security forces laid out thick black plastic tarps in the burning sun, then they made the Mursi sit on them, naked, while they beat them.”

Leopard Woman, a Mursi woman of Haile Wuha village, 10/21/2019

“In Chirim [a division of the Bodi], the crocodiles are still eating corpses, because the security forces chased the Chirim into the rivers. The security forces have threatened that if the Mursi didn’t come into the camp to be imprisoned then forces would go to the villages and start shooting or beating people.”

Leopard Woman, a Mursi woman of Haile Wuha village, 10/21/2019

“Many more security forces came today, some have guns mounted on the back of their trucks. They have given the Mursi two days to deliver their guns and people charged with crimes before they start opening fire on villages.”

Striped Bull, a Mursi man from Haile Wuha village, 10/22/2019

“We are imprisoned in a building and we have to go to the bathroom on the floor. They don’t give us food and make us drink urine like its water. The security forces are beating people so badly. They spear people with the bayonet of the gun and they beat them with the gun butt. There are many people that are severely hurt. Our spiritual leaders have been severely beaten and speared with bayonets. They cannot even walk. They have to crawl. There are a lot of people imprisoned.”

Striped Bull, a Mursi man of Haile Wuha village, 10/22/2019

Rather than own up to the previous government's gross unfulfilled promises to, and mistreatment of, the Indigenous tribes via the dam and sugarcane plantations, the operation led by the Ethiopian military not only covers up the past but does so with intimidation and extreme violence.

Given the dire situation on the ground, it is essential that Ethiopians and the international community who mobilized to end repression in Ethiopia urge the Peace Nobel Prize Laureate, PM Abiy Ahmed, to take urgent action to remove military personnel from the Lower Omo area and ensure immediate measures to protect and provide assistance and redress to the local population.

By Frederic Mousseau and Elena Teare

The withholding of US$391 million in military aid to force the Ukrainian government to investigate the business dealings of political rival Joe Biden’s son has triggered an impeachment inquiry against President Trump.

But if we are concerned about foreign aid being used to undermine our democracy, we should also be wary of other quid pro quos taking place in the Eastern European country, which have so far drawn little attention and concern in the West.

In spring 2014, after signing an Association Agreement with the European Union (EU), Ukraine had to commit to a set of austerity measures in return for a US$17 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). These measures included slashing public pensions and wages, reforming the public provision of water and energy—involving an increase in energy costs for users—privatization of banks, changing the country’s VAT system, and more.

The World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) have been aggressively laying the groundwork for the large-scale privatization of land and the expansion of industrial agriculture in Ukraine for the past five years.

One of the most critical measures asked of Ukraine, however, was to end the 18-year old moratorium on the sale of land. Much is at stake for a country known for its rich black soil, with 32 million hectares of fertile land – equivalent to one-third of all arable land in the European Union—and is the world’s leading exporter of sunflower oil and sixth-largest exporter of wheat.

The World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) have been aggressively laying the groundwork for the large-scale privatization of land and the expansion of industrial agriculture in Ukraine for the past five years. The EBRD, Ukraine’s largest international investor, has poured millions into supporting the country’s leading agribusinesses while pressuring the government for land reform to increase private investment. In August 2019, the World Bank approved a US$200 million loan for the restructuring of the agricultural market and the auctioning of state lands. The announcement of the loan was accompanied by President Zelensky’s pledge to move fast on lifting the moratorium.

Adding to the pressure was an unexpected actor. In August 2018, the European Court for Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that the moratorium violated the right to the protection of property under the  European Convention on Human Rights. The ruling acknowledged that while Ukrainians can lease their land, being able to sell and “dispose of property [is] an essential element of ownership.” The court further recognized that while the conceived basis for the moratorium was in the public interest, ultimately, the balance between those interests and individual property rights is not met through the policy. Although the ECHR can only issue rulings and recommendations to countries and has no real enforcement mechanism, it enjoys real power in Ukraine where the national legislation requires the state to implement its rulings.

Now the creation of a ‘land market’ appears to be moving swiftly: On September 2, President Zelensky ordered his government to draft a bill for the privatization of the agricultural land market, end the moratorium, and be open for business by October 1, 2020.

A draft of the bill was released on October 1, 2019. However, the bill’s language does little to assuage concerns over privatization, namely land concentration by powerful interests. Total land ownership is capped at 15 percent of an oblast (region) and 0.5 percent of the national territory. Although the draft stated that only Ukrainian citizens and companies could own land, there are no safeguards against foreign companies controlling shares of Ukrainian companies or concentrating land through multiple firms. Furthermore, as it stands, the bill allows direct ownership for foreign-owned companies operating in the country for more than three years.

In response, there have been a series of protestsagainst the bill, and public opinion towards land reform is overwhelmingly negative. A recent survey showed that 73 percent of respondents opposed the lifting of the moratorium, and 81 percent against land sales to foreigners. In response to civil unrest, the government delayed the finalization of the bill and announced consultations with relevant stakeholders. But outside pressure continues to mount as the country negotiates a new, three-year US$5billion loan from the IMF, which appears to be again conditioned to the country moving forward on the land reform agenda.

Public fears of Ukraine’s most productive agricultural lands being handed over to global agribusinesses are well-founded. As previously reported by the Oakland Institute, portions of these lands are already concentrated in the hands of powerful oligarchs and Western agribusinesses. Who precisely controls Ukrainian land has long eluded researchers, as off-shore tax havens and land tenure practices make it difficult to discern. In 2015, the Oakland Institute estimated that foreign companies could command as much as 2.2 million hectares, and in 2018, the top 10 foreign and domestic agro-holdings controlled approximately 2.8 million hectares.

The trend has continued as Cargill, Bayer, and DuPont have all made hefty investments over the past few years. In July 2019, Ukraine announced that it “attracted” two loans from Cargill Financial Services International for €100 million (US$112 million). In August 2019, Bayer (the group that now owns Monsanto), won an anti-monopoly suit in Ukraine’s Antimonopoly Committee – an antitrust body that already approved consolidation in the agribusiness sector, prompting questions regarding its consistency in applying antitrust laws. 

Under President Zelensky, Ukraine seems to be catering to the Western interest in the take-over of its agricultural sector. A five-year national plan to “mobilize private investment in the agriculture and agribusiness sectors” was launched in 2019 with a budget of US$1.2 billion,  partly funded by the World Bank loan. Under the Bank’s program, Ukraine will also endeavor to deregulate fertilizers by adopting the EU’s fertilizer list and exempting it from mandatory state registration. The claim is that the “full harmonization” of Ukraine to EU standards would increase crop output and profits. In August 2019, The Ministry of Economic Development and Trade and the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food were put under one cabinet position—The Minister of Economic Development, Trade, and Agriculture. This move was allegedly meant to counter the notorious corruption of the agricultural ministry and “accelerate the implementation of key reforms.”

Although conditionalities accompanying Western foreign assistance is a common practice, the way Ukraine is forced to privatize its land and create a land market has no precedent in modern history. It remains unclear how Ukrainians, including the seven million local farmers, will benefit from such privatization. The experience of structural adjustment programs around the world forebode that the reform programs will increase foreign corporate control of the Ukrainian economy while increasing poverty and inequality in the country.

Conditioning US$391 million of foreign aid to his political gain, president Trump’s Ukraine scandal has rightly prompted outrage in the US and around the world. But if we are to take the matter of quid pro quos seriously, we should take the measure of over US$20 billion of aid forcing Ukraine to privatize its land and its economy for the profit of a few Western interests.