Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
couraging financiers from the North (where emission targets and caps are in force)
to invest in green projects in the global South, where emission caps are non-existent.
An exemplary case of the later is the intention of the US transnational corporation
Arcadia Biosciences to finance the development of GM crops in China, starting with
rice, and following with wheat, maize, sugar cane and oleaginous plants - the pat-
ent for whih Arcadia has already sold to several companies, including Monsanto.
As Houtart (2010, p687) explains, this is planned 'through the compensations envis-
aged by the carbon trading market. The reasoning is that, with the GM seeds sup-
plied by Arcadia, peasants will use muh less fertilizer that emits nitric oxide. As this
is 300 times more harmful than C0 2 the peasants could inance the purhase of the
GM seeds'. Houtart (2010, pp69-70) notes that infrastructure and rationale for suh
agro-industrialization is provided by the Global Leadership for Climate Action group
(Club of Madrid), dedicated to public-private initiatives to reinforce democracy and
address global hallenges, while 'socializing the risks and privatizing the proits'.
The global land-grab is promoted by, among other organizations, the World
Bank; its International Finance Corporation (IFC); 20 the International Rice Researh
Institute (IRRI) of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Researh
(CGIAR); the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD); and oth-
ers, with particular focus on sub-Saharan Africa. The IFC, for example, formed an
alliance in early 2009 'with Altima Partners to invest in farming operations and ag-
ricultural land in “emerging market countries'”. The new $625 million Altima One
World Agricultural Development Fund is IFC's largest equity investment in its ex-
panding agribusiness portfolio' (Daniel 2009, p6). The IFC's partner, The Foreign
Investment Advisory Service (FIAS), targets 'investment climates' in foreign mar-
kets, creating land registries and easing the process of land titling, leasing and for-
eign investment - made easier where, as the International Institute for Environment
and Development (IIED) found, 'many countries do not have suicient mehanisms
to protect local rights and take account of local interests, livelihoods, and welfare'
(Houtart 2010, p17).
In 2009, a new FIAS initiative - Investing Across Borders (IAB) - conducted
project surveys in 87 countries, targeting information regarding tehnical regulatory
and licensing only. However, it discounts human impact: 'nothing about the IAB in-
dicators seeks to consider the extent to whih local populations in these countries
will be affected - whether local populations already occupy the land, whether the
land provides water supply or grazing lands for local populations, etc' (Daniel, 2010,
Search WWH ::




Custom Search