Environmental justice and harm to humans - Environmental Harm: An Eco-justice Perspective - page 59

flee and be criminalised for seeking asylum; others will stay, to fight
for dwindling resources in their part of the world. Communities will
be pitted against each other, and industries against communities. Law
and order will be increasingly more difficult to maintain, much less
enforce in other than repressive ways. Border control, in this case, is
about restricting the movement of the vulnerable into the domain of
those who 'have'.
On the other hand, there is considerable transborder movement, of
a particular kind, by those who have the power and resources to do so.
Indeed, a key area of conflict is around land use and ownership involving
international forces and parties. Here we can already see a series of
developments that put into sharp focus the vested interests of specific
industries, companies and nation-states - over and above the interests
and needs of local communities. The contemporary food and financial
crises have worked in tandem to trigger substantial changes in global
land ownership (Share The World's Resources, 2009; Grain Briefing,
2008). Much of this is being driven by both the direct impacts of
climate change (that is, the search for new sources of food production)
and policy responses to climate change (for example, carbon emission
trading schemes). Systematic forms of injustice are being perpetrated
under the guise of 'free market' opportunities, purported conservation-
oriented agendas and strategic development.
Land grab for food
There has been a rush to control land outside of one's own national
borders insofar as it is needed to supply food and energy to sustain
one's own population and society into the future. For example, it has
been observed that the world food price crisis of 2007-8 shocked some
national governments of countries that cannot produce sufficient food
of their own, and the response of Middle East and northern African
countries, South Korea and India was to secure their own national
food security by finding other lands that would support them (Borras
and Franco, 2010). Large-scale agricultural investment is of benefit
to transnational agribusiness (as opposed to small and medium sized
farmers and pastoralists) and to governments such as China which
import the food for its own population. Foreign countries become
the directly controlled source of food for the country of origin. The
result is a commodification of food production, for export, involving
industrial farming and mono-cropping. The 'winners' are big companies
and foreign governments. The 'losers' are local communities, small
farmers and consumers in the host country.