Rapport: Sådan rammer “jordtyveri”

“The best land is often being targeted for acquisition. It is often irrigable, with proximity (nærhed) to infrastructure, making conflict with existing land users more likely,” says a 14 December 2011 report (link til hele rapporten neden for).

Africa accounts for 134 million hectares of reported land deals. Worldwide, between 2000 and 2010, deals under consideration or negotiation amounted to 203 million hectares, the Coalition says.

The rush for farmland was triggered primarily by the 2007-08 world food price crisis.

While agricultural production was the main aim, the Coalition says, mineral extraction, industry, tourism and forest conversion were “significant contributors” to the rush. The so-called Sojourner Project suggests newly-independent Southern Sudan is the latest addition to the land acquisition list.

In West Africa such acquisitions, which critics describe as land grabbing (jordtyveri), are having a telling impact on the River Niger, the subregion’s largest river and the continent’s third largest after the Nile and the Congo.

From the Fouta Djallon Massif in Guinea (West Africa’s water tower), the 4.200 km river snakes its way through Mali, Niger, Benin and empties into the Nigerian sector of the Guinea Current (havstrøm) Large Marine Ecosystem in the Atlantic Ocean.

Millions of people along its route and tributaries (bifloder) depend on the river for their farms, cattle, fishing and other needs. Yet the River Niger is already overfished, is becoming polluted and is affected by dam construction and oil production.

Mali worst affected