Jalees
Rehman is Associate Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology at
University of Illinois (Chicago). He authors the blog entitled
Fragments
of Truth.
A
man’s flesh is his own;
the water belongs to the tribe.
Frank Herbert(Dune)
Land
grabbing refers to the large-scale acquisition of comparatively
inexpensive agricultural land in foreign countries by foreign
governments or corporations. In most cases, the acquired land
is located in under-developed countries in Africa, Asia or South
America, while the grabbers are investment funds based in Europe,
North America and the Middle East. The acquisition can take
the form of an outright purchase or a long-term-lease, ranging
from 25 to 99 years, that gives the grabbing entity extensive
control over the acquired land. Proponents of such large-scale
acquisitions have criticized the term ‘land grabbing’
because it carries the stigma of illegitimacy and conjures up
images of colonialism or other forms of unethical land acquisitions
that were so common in the not so distant past. They point out
that land acquisitions by foreign investors are made in accordance
with the local laws and that the investments could create jobs
and development opportunities in impoverished countries. However,
recent reports suggest that these land acquisitions are indeed
land grabs. NGOs and not-for profit organizations such as GRAIN,
TNI and Oxfam have documented the disastrous consequences of
large-scale land acquisitions for the local communities. More
often than not, the promised jobs are not created and families
that were farming the land for generations are evicted from
their ancestral land and lose their livelihood. The money provided
to the government by the investors frequently disappears into
the coffers of corrupt officials while the evicted farmers receive
little or no compensation.
One
aspect of land grabbing that has received comparatively little
attention is the fact that land grabbing is invariably linked
to water grabbing. When the newly acquired land is used for
growing crops, it requires some combination of rainwater (referred
to as ‘green water’) and irrigation from freshwater
resources (referred to as ‘blue water’). The amount
of required blue water depends on the rainfall in the grabbed
land. For example, land that is grabbed in a country with heavy
rainfalls, such as Indonesia, may require very little irrigation
and tapping of its blue water resources. The link between land
grabbing and water grabbing is very obvious in the case of Saudi
Arabia, which used to be a major exporter of wheat in the 1990s,
when there were few concerns about the country’s water
resources. The kingdom provided water at minimal costs to its
heavily subsidized farmers, thus resulting in a very inefficient
usage of the water. Instead of the global average of using 1,000
tons of water per ton of wheat, Saudi farmers used 3,000 and
6,000 tons of water. Fred Pearce describes the depletion of
the Saudi water resources in his book The Land Grabbers:
Saudi
Arabia responded to this depletion of its water resources by
deciding to gradually phase out all wheat production. Instead
of growing wheat in Saudi Arabia, it would import wheat from
African farmlands that were leased and operated by Saudi investors.
This way, the kingdom could conserve its own water resources
while using African water resources for the production of the
wheat that would be consumed by Saudis.
The
recent study “Global land and water grabbing” published
in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
(2013) by Maria Rulli and colleagues examined how land grabbing
leads to water grabbing and can deplete the water resources
of a country. The basic idea is that when the grabbed land is
irrigated, the use of freshwater resources reduces the availability
of irrigation water for neighbouring farmland areas, i.e. the
areas that have not been grabbed. This in turn can cause widespread
water stress and affect the ability of other farmers to grow
crops, ultimately leading to poverty and social unrest. Land
grabbing is often shrouded in secrecy since local governments
do not want to be perceived as selling off valuable land to
foreigners, but some details regarding the size of the land
grab are eventually made public. The associated water needs
of the investors that grab the land are even less clear and
very little is publicly divulged about how the land grabbing
will affect the water availability for other farmers. In the
case of Sudan, for example, grabbed land is often located on
the fertile banks of the Blue Nile and while large-scale commercial
farmland is expanding as part of the foreign investments, local
farmers are losing access to land and water and gradually becoming
dependent on food aid, even though Sudan is a major exporter
of food produced by the large-scale farms.
Using
the global land grabbing database of GRAIN and the Land
Matrix Database, Rulli and colleagues analyzed the extent
of land-grabbing and identify the Democratic Republic of Congo
(8.05 million hectares), Indonesia (7.14 million hectares),
Philippines (5.17 million hectares), Sudan (4.69 million hectares)
and Australia (4.65 million hectares) as the five countries
in which the most area of land has been grabbed by foreign investors.
The total amount of grabbed land in these five countries is
29.7 million hectares, and accounts for nearly 63% of global
land grabbing. To put this in perspective, the size of the United
Kingdom is 24.4 million hectares.
The
researchers calculated the amount of rainfall (green water)
on the grabbed land, which is the minimum amount of water that
would be grabbed with the acquisition of the land. However,
since the grabbed land is also used for agriculture and many
crops require additional freshwater irrigation (blue water),
the researchers also determined a range of predicted blue water
grabbing for land irrigation. For the low end of the blue water
grabbing range, the researchers assumed that the land would
be irrigated in the same fashion as other agricultural land
in the country. On the higher end of the range, the researchers
also calculated how much blue water would be grabbed, if the
investors irrigated the land in a manner to maximize the agricultural
production of the land. This is not an unreasonable assumption,
since foreign investors probably do have the financial resources
to maximally irrigate the acquired land in a manner that maximizes
the return on their investment.
Rulli
and colleagues estimated that global land grabbing is associated
with the grabbing of 308 billion m3 of green water (i.e. rain
water) and an additional grabbing of blue water that can range
from 11 billion m3 (current irrigation practices) to 146 billion
m3 (maximal irrigation) per year. Again, to put these numbers
in perspective, the average daily household consumption of water
in the United Kingdom is 150 liters (0.15 m3) per person. This
results in a total annual household consumption of 3.5 billion
m3 (0.15 m3 X 365 days X 63,181,775 UK population) of water
in the UK. Therefore, the total household water consumption
in the UK is a fraction of what would be the predicted blue
water usage of the grabbed land, even if one were to use very
conservative estimates of required irrigation.
The
researchers then also list the top 25 countries in which the
investors are based that engage in land and water grabbing.
They find that about “60% of the total grabbed water is
appropriated, through land grabbing, by the United States, United
Arab Emirates, India, United Kingdom, Egypt, China, and Israel.”
The researchers gloss over the fact that in many cases, land
and associated water resources are grabbed by foreign investment
groups and not by foreign governments. Just because certain
investment funds are based in Singapore, UK or the United Arab
Emirates does not mean that these countries are appropriating
the land or water. In fact, many investment groups that are
involved in land grabbing may have multinational investors or
investors whose nationality is not disclosed. Nevertheless,
there are probably cases in which land and water grabbing are
not merely conducted as a form of private investment, but might
involve foreign governments. One such example is the above-mentioned
case of Saudi Arabia, in which the Saudi government actively
encouraged and helped Saudi investors to acquire agricultural
land in Africa. While perusing the list of the top 25 countries
in which land and water grabbing investors are based, one cannot
help but notice that the list contains a number of Middle Eastern
countries that are themselves experiencing severe water stress
and scarcity, such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates
or Israel. Transferring their water burden to Africa by acquiring
agricultural land would allow them to preserve their own water
resources and may indeed by of strategic value to these countries.
However, the precise degree of government involvement in these
investment decisions often remains unclear.
The
paper by Rulli and colleagues is an important reminder of how
land grabbing and water grabbing are entwined and that land
grabbing could potentially deplete valuable water resources
from under-developed countries, especially in Africa, which
accounts for more than half of the globally grabbed land. Even
villagers that continue to own and farm their own land adjacent
to the large-scale farms on grabbed lands could be affected
by new forms of water stress, especially if the foreign investors
decide to maximally irrigate the acquired land. There are some
key limitations to the study, such as the lack of distinction
between private foreign investors or foreign governments that
are engaged in land grabbing and the fact that all the calculations
of blue water grabbing are based on very broad estimates without
solid data on how much blue water is actually consumed by the
grabbed lands. These numbers may be very difficult to obtain,
but should be the focus of future studies in this area.
After
reading this study, I have become far more aware of ongoing
land and water grabbing. Excessive commodification of our lives
was already criticized by Karl Polanyi in 1944 and now that
water is also becoming a “fictitious commodity,”
we have to be extremely watchful of its consequences. The extent
of land grabbing that has already taken place is quite extensive.
An interactive map based on the GRAIN database allows us to
visualize the areas in the world that are most affected by land
grabbing since 2006 as well as where the foreign investors are
located. The map shows that in recent years, Pakistan has emerged
as one of the prime targets of land grabbing in Asia, while
Sudan, South Sudan, Tanzania and Ethiopia are major targets
of recent land grabbing in Africa. The world economic crisis
and the recent food price crisis will likely increase the degree
of land grabbing and associated water grabbing. The targets
of land grabbing are often countries with fragile economies,
widespread poverty and significant malnourishment.
As
a global society, we have to ensure that people living in these
countries do not suffer as a consequence of land grabbing deals.
The recent Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance
of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National
Food Security released by the FAO are an important step
in the right direction, because they attempt to provide food
security for all, even when large-scale land acquisitions occur.
However, they do not specify water access and they are, as the
title reveals -- voluntary. It is not clear who will abide by
them. Therefore, we also need a complementary approach in which
clients of land grabbing investment funds ask the fund managers
to abide by the FAO guidelines and that they maximally ensure
food security and water access for the general population in
grabbed lands. One specific example is that of the American
retirement fund TIAA-CREF (Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association
– College Retirement Equities Fund) which is one of the
leading retirement providers for people who work in education,
research and medicine. Investment in agriculture and land grabbing
appears to be a priority for TIAA-CREF, but American educators
or academics that use TIAA-CREF as their retirement fund could
use their leverage to ensure socially conscientious investments.
Even though land and water grabbing are becoming a major concern,
the growing awareness of the problem may also result in solutions
that limit the negative impact of land and water grabbing.
