Download Land acquisitions and development: two competing narratives

Land acquisitions and development:
two competing narratives
Ton Dietz
African Studies Centre Leiden and
Chair CoCooN steering committee
The optimists
• Foreign large-scale land acquisitions in Africa for
purposes of producing food and biofuels for
export will have many positive effects on the
economy and society of areas and countries where
they take place.
• These are mainly underutilised lands, that could
become much more productive and Africa is the
major remaining frontier for the acquisition of
those types of land.
• And they use underutilised labour
+1: Impact on the national budget
• Land leases will bring land taxes to the (national)
government, while before these lands did not give any
direct tax benefits to the government
• The investment will result in export products, which will
be taxed as well (export levies)
• The investment will attract management and some labour
from abroad, who will contribute to the economy via
indirect taxes
• The investment will expand local jobs, and labourers start
paying higher (in)direct taxes than they ever did before.
+2: Impact on economic growth
• The investment will increase the economic value
production in areas where that was very limited
before
• It will expand agricultural land use to areas that
had mainly non-agricultural or low-intensity
agricultural production before
• It will create a lot of extra direct employment
• It will enable value chain development that creates
a lot of indirect employment
+3 Impact on the land market
• Land acquisitions will increase the value of land in
the country as a whole as a result of increasing
land pressure; this will improve the commercial
land markets,
• It will give land owners more economic security,
and banks an incentive to use land as mortgage
(and hence increase farmers’ access to credit and
banking services)
• It will be an incentive for more productive farmers
to buy land from less productive farmers
+4 Impact on access to food and
energy
• The area and labour involved in production of food and
biofuels for export will be more productive than before,
and will enable labourers/farmers to buy more food (if
necessary imported) with their income than they could
have produced themselves with the same labour time and
on the same land.
• In case of national food and energy shortages the
government can decide to ban export of food/biofuels and
make that available for support operations within the
national territory.
+5 Impact on networks and
capabilities
• The exposure to foreign investors from ‘new
backgrounds’ will create possibilities for new
networks of contacts (trade, migration, knowledge
exchange) and will diminish one-sided cultural
orientations
• The increased exposure to multi-focal global
influences will create incentives for increased
learning, and higher levels of information
exchange, with more language and cultural skills.
The pessimists
• Foreign large-scale land acquisitions for food and
biofuel production for export will have devastating
effects on the land and the people of the receiving
areas
• The suggestion that land and labour are
underutilised is wrong, and the suggestion that the
land/labour use by these foreign companies will
improve their economic position is in illusion.
-1: the impact on the land and the
hydro-ecology
• Foreign-owned plantations on hitherto non-agricultural
land are detrimental to biodiversity, and to the natural roles
these areas play for a much larger area (e.g. water storage;
gene pool)
• the export of natural resources will not be compensated;
and particularly the upstream use of (ground)water will
harm water access of downstream areas in a much larger
region; without compensation
• The option value of ‘natural’ land (e.g. for future tourist
and heritage functions, but also for receiving nature
preservation awards) will be lost
-2 Impact on the local economy
• Although most of the captured areas were indeed thinly populated
before, they provided economic security for many relatively marginal
people, and in particular pastoralists, and inland-fishermen
• The introduction of land rent and physical access barriers may
endanger existing arrangements of land acquisition and sharing
• The access to common property and lands with unclear property
arrangements provided important fallback options to the poorest
segments of society, and often provided safe havens for people who
wanted to maintain a culturally deviant form of society and live a
different lifestyle.
• For these people the new opportunities are often not available: labour
recruitment follows established patterns; what is left are starvation;
deep poverty and migration to urban slums.
-3 Impact on the political economy
• A small national elite will capture the rewards for alliances
with the foreign investors, invest those abroad or in ways
that are not assisting large numbers of nationals
• It will further feed a political mentality of quick resource
capture and ‘primitive accumulation’
• It will feed hostility to competing claimants and to
adversaries who contest the new developments (including
the people who feel themselves victims of the new
development); hence it creates a breeding ground for
conflicts; human rights abuses and dictatorial government
-4 Impact on land and labour
productivity
• Although in the early phases gains can be expected in
terms of land and labour productivity (in terms of volume
and in terms of value), these will not be sustainable, as
land will soon deteriorate, and large-scale immigration of
numerous job-seekers will depress actual wages and
rewards; while increasing the price of consumer goods
• The most rewarding labour and management positions will
be foreign and local elitist; and the local multipliers will be
very minimal.
-5 Impact on social cohesion
• The many overt and covert conflicts that will be a
result of these foreign land acquisitions will create
a politically very unstable environment,
undermining long-term stability,
• It will create ‘enclaves/nodes and spines of
securitised accumulation’ and ‘elite consumption
fortresses’ amidst vast areas of deep poverty,
neglect and insecurity
Challenge for CoCooN
• Both narratives are relevant
• The scientific challenge is: is it possible to know under
which conditions the ‘optimistic’ or the ‘pessimistic’
scenario is most relevant to understand what is happening?
• Or even: is it possible to get a balanced scientific view?
• Also: what methods will give the best and cheapest access
to the information that is needed?
• And what are the costs and benefits of both conflict and
cooperation in cases of contested positions?
And the policy challenges
• If we get a better scientific idea about the
tipping points that create cooperation,
growth and inclusive development and that
make conflict, and primitive accumulation
less rewarding, how then can ‘policies’ and
‘implementation institutions’ assist in
creating or stimulating those tipping points?