Biofuels and Land Grabbing in Africa - Mokoro

The African Biodiversity Network has produced a number of critical reports on land
grabbing, agrofuels and ‘the myth of marginal lands’, and has severely criticised the UK for
setting targets for biofuels that will sacrifice Africa’s land, forests and food to satisfy the UK’s
vast energy requirements.
The African Development Bank has issued a code of conduct for land acquisition which
includes ‘respect existing land rights and land tenure arrangements, both formal and
customary.’
Brussels Development Briefing 9 comprises a set of presentations by NRI, French
Development Cooperation, UNECA, IIED, FAO and EAFF at a conference on land access
and rural development in February 2009. There is also a useful 40-page resources reader
compiled by CTA.
The Centre for Human Rights & Global Justice New York University has produced a good
study of land deals and biofuel investment in Tanzania, Southern Sudan, Mali and Pakistan.
CIFOR has published useful papers on large-scale farmland acquisitions and on biofuels.
The reconstituted Committee on World Food Security looks set to play an important role in
the ‘policy convergence process’ on voluntary guidelines etc.
CRBM discloses some European financial company ‘vultures of land grabbing’.
CREPE has produced an extremely informative report on agrofuel crops which contradicts
the assumptions of the EU biofuels policy.
Development Policy Review Network, like the Brussels Development Briefing, contains a
series of papers and presentations from a conference on commercial pressures on land,
held in Utrecht in July 2009.
The Earth Security Initiative’s Land Security Agenda argues the need to move from a land
grabs debate to land stewardship solutions, and for an improved understanding by investors
and political leaders of three main priorities: managing soil erosion, protecting human rights,
and keeping within ecological – especially water – limits.
FIAN has very detailed thorough studies of Europe’s responsibility to counter climate change
without provoking land grabbing, and the impact of EU policies on land grabbing in Africa, a
human rights analysis of land grabbing in Kenya and Mozambique, and an explanation of
why it opposes RAI.
The well publicised Foresight report on failings in the world food system and how best to
respond is remarkably silent on land grabbing.
Forum for Social Studies, Addis Ababa has a fine policy debate paper by Dessalegn
Rahmato.
Friends of the Earth has produced reports on how European banks profit from food
speculation, on Europe’s land import dependency, on the scale and impact of land grabbing
for agrofuels and two very critical studies of the ‘miracle crop’ of jatropha in Mozambique
(May 2010) and in Swaziland (May 2009).
Future Agricultures Consortium has an outstanding policy brief by Ruth Hall.
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