OUR LAND OUR BUSINESS
OAKLAND, CA (April 10) – As the spring meetings of the
World Bank get underway in Washington, DC, 180
organizations, including NGOs,
unions, and farmer and consumer groups from over 80 countries, demand that the
World Bank end its Doing Business rankings and its support of the rampant theft
of land and resources from some of the world’s poorest people -- farmers,
pastoralists, and indigenous communities, many of whom are essential food
producers for the entire planet.
“Smallholder farmers are the first
investors and employers in the agricultural sector in developing countries. Instead
of supporting them, the World Bank encourages the looting of their resources
for the benefit of foreign companies and local businessmen,” said Alnoor
Ladha, Executive Director of /The Rules.
The Bank’s “Doing Business” rankings, which score countries according to how Washington
officials perceive the “ease of doing business” there, have caused many
developing-country leaders to deregulate their economies in hopes of attracting
foreign investment. But what the Bank considers beneficial for foreign business
is very often the exact opposite for the local communities.
“The Doing Business ranking and
the new Benchmarking the Business of Agriculture that the Bank is currently
developing is pushing governments to give away their country to private
interests. They should instead support family farms and secure their durable
access to land, which is the key to the economic, social and environmental
future of our countries,” said Ibrahim Coulibaly, President of the Coordination
Nationale des Organisations Paysannes du Mali (CNOP) and Vice President of the
network of Peasant organizations and Producers in West Africa (ROPPA).
In the agricultural sector, the rankings
encourage governments to commoditize their land -- and to sell or lease it to
foreign investors, regardless of environmental or social impact. Smallholder
farmers, pastoralists, and the indigenous peoples are casualties of this
approach, as governments and foreign corporations work hand-in-hand to
dispossess them of their land -- and gain World Bank’s approval in the process.
The results have been devastating. Thanks
to reforms and policies guided by the Bank, 20 percent of the arable land
in Sierra Leone taken from rural populations has been
leased to foreign sugar cane and palm oil producers. In Liberia, British, Malaysian, and Indonesian palm-oil giants
have secured long-term leases for over 1.5 million acres of land formerly held
by local communities. In the Philippines, world’s third most popular
destination for foreign investment in land, 5.2 million hectares have been
acquired by corporations since 2006.
"Doing Business ranking is a
sword of Damocles over the heads of our leaders who wait for their next score
in the ranking to gain legitimacy before the international financial
institutions, those who prescribe development schemes for our countries,
instead of the citizens. We want our autonomy to decide the future of our land,
agricultural and food policies,“ said Amadou Kanoute, Director of CICODEV
Africa.
The land-grab problem is about to get
worse. Under pressure from the G8 and with funding from the Gates Foundation,
the Bank is doubling down on its fetish for rankings by introducing a new
program called “Benchmarking the Business of Agriculture” (BBA). The BBA’s
explicit goal is to promote “the emergence of a stronger commercial agriculture
sector.”
“The BBA will limit governments' capacity
to pursue their own food policy objectives, further enable the corporate
takeover of land and other resources and reduce labor protection for
agricultural workers who already suffer from serious decent work deficits, ”
said Ron Oswald, general secretary of the global food and agricultural workers
union, IUF.
“We’re
standing up with farmers, herders, and indigenous peoples of the developing
world who are
being steamrolled by the World Bank’s pro-corporate agenda,” added Anuradha
Mittal. “Initiatives like the World Bank’s ‘Doing Business’ rankings encourage
governments to steal from the poor in order to give to the rich. That must
end.”
MEDIA
CONTACT:
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For more information or to
schedule an interview spokespeople of the campaign please contact Kristen
Thomaselli at (202) 471-4228 ext. 101 or kristen@keybridge.biz.
To read the report, Willful
Blindness: How the World Bank’s Doing Business (DB) Rankings Impoverish
Smallholder Farmers, as well as country fact sheets about the World Bank’s bad
business in the developing world, please visit: www.ourlandourbusiness.org
