Concept Note - Rights and Resources Initiative

does not recognize local people’s rights to the land, violates the human rights, fails to take the consent
of the community is not based on thorough social, environment and economic assessment win, win
situations which take into account the risks involved. When the process of this transaction of land
between one party and another is opaque, is not clear, people don’t understand what the contractual
obligations are and the binding commitments are not made and there is absence of an independent
effective and timely oversight of this process and of the conflict resolution mechanism as to where the
aggrieved parties can go to. If these conditions are not met we talk about it as a land grab. Now in the
next three slides I would try to make an assessment what is the environment and economic assessment
What is it that is driving this phenomenon of Land Grab. Now the chart which is in front of you is
developed by Jeremy Grantham and essentially shows the GMO Commodity Index. This is based on the
33 commodities prices and it is from almost 1900 to year 2010-2012. Now what this graph shows, we
need to just get into it little more deep in it. What it shows is that from the 1900s till about year 2000 on
an average the commodity prices had
been falling at the rate of 1.2% per
year, except for 3 different occasions
which were big cataclysmic events in
the world. So like there was a hike in
the price of the commodities during
the World War I, there was a hike in
the price of commodities during the
World War II, there was a hike the
price of commodities during the oil
shock of the 70s. But what we are
witnessing since year 2000 without
any global major event the
commodity prices have begun to rise
and they are staying there. Now this is a new norm, so this is reversing the trend which the world had
witnessed for the last 90 years, in fact almost last 100 years; and now the commodity prices are on the
rise. The secular trend shows that there might be fluctuations seasonally or one year to another, but if
you look at the overall trend the commodity prices are increasing and they are going to continue to
increase in the coming years this is the part under the circle in which I am trying to say that the demand
for commodities far exceeds the supply of commodities and therefore the prices will remain high there
is no choice. Now let’s look at the second set of slides. This is, you might call it a speculation on my part
but let me try to wade through this. Firstly, now it is very clear that the money is not with the
governments. Governments are bankrupt everywhere, whether they are developed country
governments or developing country governments they don’t have the money. Money is with the
investors, money is with the private sector, money is with completely different entities than the
governments. Now the developing world is tired of being poor and left behind and they have now given
up hope on this Washington consensus, if you behave properly, if you do things as under certain
conditions then you get money from the world bank and from the developed countries and you would
be able to move on the growth path very quickly. Now that the world has given this up, the developing
country governments now looking to modernize their economies through an old inequitable and
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