Territorial defence, community struggles for the defence of their territories
Landgrabbing continues unabated worldwide.
When GRAIN started investigating the issue we highlighted the fact that at the same as certain governments were invoking their commitments to resolve food security they were also attempting to take control of increasing amounts of land across the world. Very quickly various financial groups (including various pension funds) jumped to the centre of the negotiations, exposing the speculative nature of many of these land agreements and the renewed urgency of transnational corporations to grab land.
We have always been conscious of the fact that landgrabbing is much more vast and ominous than we have shown until now. It is not only about the use of industrial agricultural means to engage in the monoculture of primary resources for exportation, or the delocalised production of foodstuffs for other countries. It implies extractivism: control of water, mining, oil industries, deforestation, drug trafficking, environmental services and REDD projects (land areas held in disregards or so called marginal lands), and the subsequent speculation on these, followed by real estate, tourism, urban development, military geopolitics and much more.
In this edition of the Nyéléni Newsletter we want to make an overview of this process and of the possibilities of resisting it from our communities.
GRAIN
