Land Grabs ... A Poverty and Environmental Issue

How would you feel if a foreign company claimed your home, your land and your livelihood as theirs and then sold it off? You would not be able to do anything about it or have any say. Your rights count for nothing, you are not even seen to have rights. No home, no money, no source of food and likely to have a large family depending on you, what would you do? This happens to thousands of people everyday, in third world countries, it needs to be stopped.

Oxfam are campaigning against Land Grabbing and I have been involved in this campaign with my local Falmouth Oxfam group. Oxfam have been claiming land and well known landmarks across the UK to raise awareness and encourage everyone to help their battle against land grabbing.

Our 'Sand Grab' at Gyllyngvase Beach in Falmouth

Governments, food exporters, tourism providers, Wall Street speculators and many more have seized land of all kinds and sizes for various resources in many poor countries including Honduras, Indonesia, Liberia and Sudan. Most of the investors are using this stolen land to export food back to rich countries. Others have used it to reach biofuel targets in the developed world. These companies are making the hunger and poverty issues we are already struggling to deal with much worse.

Land grabbing could also be a huge environmental problem. These large companies, as well as some of them using the land for mining and likely deforestation, are using the land to grow crops to export. But this is in a very unsustainable way, using large areas to grow just one crop with the use of pesticides and fertilisers. As a result in these harsh delicate environments, within a few years the land is ruined and no longer usable. Then these companies, no doubt, will seek to steal more farm land that is yet to be ruined, therefore, continuing the land grab process. It has been suggested that farming in this way is contributing to climate change and that the farming on small areas of land done by local people is sustainable and actually able to work against climate change. Vandana Shiva, Indian environmentalist and writer, discusses this in the video below. Definitely worth a watch and I agree with Shiva's suggestions. This video is actually focusing on geo-engineering, however, it considers similar issues to that of land grabbing and unsustainable farming by large foreign companies, especially in India.

 

The World Bank has begun to listen to Oxfam, however, we still need more support to bring it to an end.

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