Global land grabbing & political reactions from below : Some reflections Saturnino ( Jun ) M. Borras Jr., International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), The Hague & Fellow, Transnational Institute (,TNI) Amsterdam CESA, Lisbon, 10 April 2014
key assumptions: (1) Land itself is a very important economic factor of (agricultural) production to produce food and other primary goods: fiber, timber, and so on.
Land holds other resources: minerals, water, forest; making it a key natural resource.
In some instances, land is key to capturing (cheap) labour (e.g. through contract farming, and so on).
Unlike other natural resources, land functions in multidimensional ways for different people. It is a territory for various communities of people.
To reduce land to just one of the features/dimensions cited above is problematical, and can lead to disastrous policy outcomes and/or political conflicts. It is critical to understand land from the interlinked features/dimensions and how these shape (trans)national agrarian & environmental social movement politics
Changed global/regional context Re-valued land: Global capital dynamics: (1) Food security concerns (the 2007-08 food price spike)
(2) Energy crisis/biofuels
(3) Climate change mitigation strategies
(4) Financial crisis
(5) Industrial demands from newer hubs of global capital (BRICS & MICs)
= the rise of flex crops & commodities
Hence: massive infusion of capital into land investments worldwide during the past decade
The key assumption is simple: There is a solution to the multiple crises. The solution lies in the existence of empty, un-used marginal lands that can be converted to intensive (industrial) production to solve the crises. Estimated by the WB to be: In the minimum: 445 million ha In the maximum: 1.7 billion ha But are these really empty, un-used, marginal lands? Most lands are occupied, and are defined by different peoples differently! Cannot be reduced to a Western concept of standardized definition of what is marginal often reducing land to simply just one of the factors of economic production. Relatively significant share of SEA in this estimate.
But flawed earlier assumptions (1) Too transnational/inter-regional capital focused (with special reference to China); Foreignization narrative in many places (at the expense of domestic/regional capital): e,g, China in Africa, South Korea in Madagascar, Gulf states in Africa, Brazil in Bolivia/Paraguay. Leading to analytical framework/studies along nationalist /ethnic tensions. Important but can lead to the neglect of dimensions of political economy. Foreign land grabbers are NOT Ok, but domestic grabbers are just fine? ** majority: domestic capital. **The rise of intra-regional capital, as in Latin America (TransLatina Companies) and in Southeast Asia (Malaysian, Vietnamese, Thai capital, among others)
(2) Too Africa-centric ** land grabs occur in various regions, including in North America and Europe ** FAO 2011 report shows how it operates in LAC. This problematical focus has been largely influenced by the foreignization narrative: land grabbers are Chinese, South Koreans, Indians, Arabs, Brazilians. So, locate land deals that involve these groups = land grabs.
(3) Too land-centred, leading to obsession about quantification **dynamics and character of capital is equally crucial (Does the largely Thai capital funded Dawei Special Economic Zone in Burma not qualify as a land grab because it directly involves not more than 500 ha of land?) **problems with databases such as the Land Matrix = the Philippines as one of the most land grabbed country in the world (the 5 th?), with more or less 5.5 million ha (= half of the country s arable land) grabbed by foreigners (!)
(4) flawed assumptions about outcomes (= expulsion = resistance) Not all land deals result in expulsion of people from the land; not all expulsions lead to people struggling against land deals <<To be discussed later>>
Methodological issues (1)What to count (defining land grabs) (2)How to count. Earlier efforts in counting relied mainly on land deals reported in newspapers. E.g. Philippine case
But despite all the flaws there is a real reconfiguration of the agrarian world/southeast Asia with profound implications in changing encounters among old/new state-nonstate/foreignnonforeign actors in multiple sites/spaces within and between communities in the region.
Towards a work-in-progress definition? Contemporary land grabbing is the capturing of control of relatively vast tracts of land and other natural resources through a variety of contexts and forms that involve large scale capital that often shifts resource use orientation into extractive character, whether for international or domestic purposes, as capital s response to the convergence of food, energy and financial crises, climate change mitigation imperatives, and demands for resources from newer hubs of global capital. (Borras, Franco, Gomez, Kay & Spoor, 2012)
Two (2) broad trajectories of agrarian change brought by land deals
(1) When the land is needed but the labour is not (Li 2011) = expulsion from the land
Expulsion from the land Expelled people absorbed in other productive sectors of the economy? Expelled people not absorbed (not absorbable) in any other productive sectors of the economy (e.g. from urban, peri-urban to rural land expulsions in Cambodia?) ******** Expulsion with or without compensation * China is perhaps the largest land grabbed country, with some studies reporting that about 44 million households having experienced some kind of expropriation of their land during the past 2 or 3 decades. Most common land struggles there are struggles for compensation for their expulsion.
(2) But: when the land is needed + cheap labour = not in expulsion, but in incorporation as workers and/or contracted small farms Notion of adverse incorporation (it is a matter of terms, and so a matter of degree? Not either/or?) or = relocation = many cases in land abundant countries Africa. Can be small-to-medium scale affecting hundreds or a few thousand people in a case, e.g. in some places in Mozambique or, large-scale, as in the case of Ethiopia, potentially affecting a million people. = some cases in SEA -- but not at a scale as in settings in land abundant countries in Africa
(i) The role of the state in land deals: in the context of state-capital alliance invention/justification of the need for large-scale land investments, (ii) definition, reclassification and quantification of what is marginal, under-utilized and empty lands; (iii) identification of these particular types of land; assertion of the state s absolute authority over these lands, (iv) acquisition/appropriation of these lands, and (v) re-allocation/disposition State s contradictory tasks = (1) capital accumulation + (2) political legitimacy Hence = state: part of the problem, part of the solution Limits and possibilities in dealing with States on this issue.
Differentiated impacts, differentiated political reactions from below
Broad types of political conflicts and terrain/axis of political contestations: (i) poor people versus corporations/landed classes (ii) poor people versus the state (iii) poor people versus poor people
But while land grabbing is an urgent issue, it is not the only urgent land issue (1) Land grabbing (2) (the more generic) land concentration Capitalist capture of land through extra economic coercion and through the regular operations of market (dispossession through social differentiation). The latter includes: other equally pervasive and profound processes involving a wide range of old/new actors, including migrant households accumulating lands in the countryside of their home countries? And the links between these sets of conditions
Three key types of people s struggles in current land deals context (1) Struggles against expulsion (2) Struggles against exploitation/adverse incorporation (3) Struggles for redistribution & recognition
Complicated even more by/at the broader political front Three broad political tendencies around global governance/regulation of land grabbing: (i) Regulate to facilitate land deals (neoclassical/nie mainstream economists) = land deals are good (strategic view on capitalist development) for capitalism
(ii) Regulate to mitigate negative impact/maximize opportunities (winwin) conservative-progressive alliance (based on key assumptions of inevitability of land grabs and impossibility of redistributive reforms for capitalism and/or agnostic on issues of capitalism Very tactical, but good sense of urgency (the here and now). Good sense of use of governance instruments (transparency etc). But likely to lose sight of strategic issues. May win multiple tactical battles (actual cases and some policy issues), but still lose the strategic battle over nature & character of development Likely to result in some improvements in the manner land grabbing is carried out. From non-transparent & non-consultative land grabbing to transparent and consultative land grabbing but land grabbing nevertheless!
(iii) Regulate to block and rollback land grabs (progressive-radical alliance) clearly anti-capitalit/anti-imperialist + plus some agnostics Very (too?) strategic without much tactical struggles. Less interest in potential powerful governance instruments that can be used for tactical strategic struggles. Less interest in tactical issues: labour standards, etc. Dilemma: base building and mass mobilization almost always require engagement in tactical, the here and now issues, and not just motherhood master frames.
If tendencies 1 & 2 continue to dominate, we should expect more of the same in land grabbing, but probably some changes in the manner it is being carried out. If we want to make some significant reforms or change in the system, an (objective) alliance between forces in tendencies # 2 and # 3 will be necessary. It will be conflict-ridden alliance, but a necessary one.
Pro-poor land policy thinking: dilemmas, challenges & opportunities
Type B: Distribution Type A: Redistribution Type C: Non-redistributive Type D: Reconcentration
Global trends in land policy making: *** away from Types A & B *** popularity of Types C & D Any truly redistributive land policies in today? Proliferation of Types C & D ( pro-poor land policies ) land policies
Trajectories of Change and Reform in Land Policies Type of Dynamics of change & reform; Remarks Reform flow of wealth & power transfers (1) Redistribution land-based wealth & power transfers from reform can occur in private landed classes or state or community to or public lands, can involve landless or near-landless working poor transfer of full ownership or not, can be received individually or by group (2) Distribution land-based wealth & power received reform usually occur in public by landless or near-landless working lands, can involve transfer of poor without any landed classes losing right to alienate or not, can be in the process; state transfers received individually or by group (3) Non-(Re) land-based wealth & power remain no land policy is a policy ; also Distribution in the hands of the few landed classes or included are land policies that the state or community, i.e. status quo that is exclusionary. formalize the exclusionary land claims/rights of landed classes or non-poor elites, including the state or community groups. (4) (Re)concentration land-based wealth & power transfers from change dynamics can occur in the state, community or small family private or public lands, can involve farm holders to landed classes, full transfer of full ownership or corporate entities, state or community not, can be received individually, groups by group or by corporate entity
Further explanation re non-redistribution/(re)concentration Non(re)redistribution: (i) Formalization of inequality (formalize land rights in places marked by inequality) (ii) Restitution without redistribution (iii) Counter-reform (avoiding redistributing private lands and instead sends people to the land frontier)
(re)concentration: (i) Reverse redistribution (reversal of earlier redistribution, everyday type and more systematic political maneuver) (ii) Perverse redistribution (from the working poor people to the elite or state) many land grabs today, especially involving public lands previously settled, informally, by poor people (iii) Lopsided distribution (from the state or community to the elite); many forestry lands in Burma today captured by recently rising Burmese companies?
Key point: The power of those subordinated classes who work and live on the land to exercise effective control over the land as a resource, territory and derive benefit from it. In settings where the social relations around land property are unequally distributed, the policy processes that can recast such relations in favour of the subordinated classes.
In societies marked by land concentration in the hands of few landed classes; land reform remains key. But land situations are far more diverse = and so necessity for more diverse pro-poor land policies
Ultimately, the point is to (re)interpret and change the (agrarian) world Ebb and flow in agrarian/labour/environmental activism across space and time; recent, changing hotspots, strategic battle grounds, and key actors (i) Within and between countries. (ii) Overlapping/competing fields: agrarian, environmental, labour tension & synergy (iii) Ideological positionings (iv) ethnic/nationalist tensions (iv) Scale (local national regional/international, & the links between these)
Towards a people s (counter-)enclosure? by working peoples who are confronted by all sorts of land question : rural, urban; farmers, rural labourers, Indigenous peoples, ethnic groups; rural youth, rural women = land, for its multiple meanings