Wageningen, The Netherlands
April 2, 2013
By Wageningen UR, Wageningen University, Water Resources Management
Millions of hectares of land have been acquired in the past few years across Africa by investors who are moving into large-scale agriculture to take advantage of potential windfall gains. In popular seech these deals have become known as ‘land grabbing’, but they could just as well have been framed as ‘water grabs’. This statement was made on the CNN website by Gert Jan Veldwisch of the Water Resources Management Group of Wageningen University. Gert Jan is one of the editors of a special issue of Water Alternatives on water grabbing.
The current global rush for agricultural land grew partly in response to increased global food prices since 2007. Global capital is finding its way to agricultural investments on the basis of expectations of high returns, either through increased production or through speculation on further rising land prices. Optimistic promises that such investment would also reinvigorate depressed rural economies, by virtue of employment creation and improved livelihoods, have proven to be vastly overstated, if not unfounded in many cases. But one of the untold stories of the global land grab is the quest to capture one of the most vital resources: water.
As land is grabbed and earmarked for development, this often has implications for the water nearby, for local people's land and water rights and environmental sustainability. All around the world powerful actors (transnational as well as national) are pointing out that the lands in which they invest are ‘marginal’ and ‘unproductive’ lands. This has been shown to be untrue for many cases; either the land is already used by small-scale food producers, or is of prime quality and associated with good (potential) access to water.
In a special issue of Water Alternatives Gert Jan Veldwisch and colleagues show water to be one of the prime drivers of the global rush to acquire land.
See the full article on the CNN website by Jennifer Franco, Lyla Mehta and Gert Jan Veldwisch.
Topics
Species
