Drafts by Crystal Kotowski-Edmunds
Gold, diamonds, and coal are major commodities in Indonesia’s artisanal and small-scale (ASM) sec... more Gold, diamonds, and coal are major commodities in Indonesia’s artisanal and small-scale (ASM) sector and mineral reserves are located across much of the country. ASM in tin, largely driven by global demand for minerals used in electronics, is the most significant ASM sector in the country. Electronics companies are becoming increasingly scrutinized in the media for responsible sourcing of minerals treacherous tin mining conditions in Indonesia.
In addition to tin, this report focuses on a highly underreported armed conflict in West Papua, which has been prolonged by the conflicting rights over the world’s largest gold mine and second largest copper mine, Freeport McMoRan’s Grasberg mine. Volatility in West Papua directed towards the Grasberg mine from the Free Papua Movement, the separatist group in the region, in late 2017 in conjunction with the suspicion of artisanal mining activity in the area, presents an opportunity for an armed group, sympathized with by the local communities, to exploit or partner with artisanal miners
There is little evidentiary support connecting OPV and ASM in Indonesia, but socio-economic conditions exist that could foster the intersection. The only criminal currently identified with tin smuggling is the involvement of pirates, typically by hijacking tin off of ships travelling in the Malacca Strait between Indonesia and Malaysia. A lack of information surrounds these pirates, but they have been described as very organized and efficient with “international criminal links” and able to sustain “military coordination and meticulous planning” to capture large metal and petroleum products.
This first section of the report begins by providing statistical indicators on Indonesia’s economy, governance, and mineral resources. This is followed by an overview of the ASM structure, including the applicable regulations and guiding laws. Additionally, second section on case studies delineates the conflicts between LSM and ASM in Indonesia’s recent history. The report then analyzes the known active “criminal groups,” namely that of the Free Papua Movement in West Papua and Jemaah Islamiyah, the major terrorist organization. It further explains the history and recent knowledge on tin smuggling. Knowledge gaps and subsequent questions are then discussed. The third section of the report concludes with analysis of the initiatives to curb criminal activity in ASM, focusing on major initiatives in tin supply chains.
The Philippines contains one of the largest mineral reserves in the world, worth an estimated $1.... more The Philippines contains one of the largest mineral reserves in the world, worth an estimated $1.4 trillion. The government claims to hold the world’s second largest reserve of gold, and it is a leading producer of nickel, dominating the global market in 2014. The state has struggled to fight a protracted conflict against Muslim separatists and separately a communist insurgency. The New People’s Army (NPA) – the military wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) – emerged in the 1960s and is reportedly one of the first communist insurgencies in the world. The group has infiltrated various stages of the artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) sector to gain profits to continue its struggle against the state. Despite recent efforts to formalize standards and practices in the extractives sector, most artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) in the Philippines remain illegal or informal, reaching international markets though illicit channels.
Compostela Valley and Mt. Diwalwal in eastern Mindanao province have been the primary focus for much of the fieldwork concerning ASM, as the region holds the largest gold deposit in the country and is known for its volatility. Unlike many other countries, ASM in the Philippines evolved out of an era of large-scale mining (LSM) in the 1980s. The collapse of the LSM industry, in conjunction with debt and corruption of the Marcos regime, decreasing global commodity prices, mining operation failures, and increasing political conflict with the NPA spurred the unique creation of a highly capitalized and mechanistic form of ASM that continues to this day. Capitalization has developed complicated networks of mining co-ops, financiers, landowners, and criminal activity.
The New People’s Army (NPA), the armed branch of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), has exploited both LSM and ASM operations since the 1980s, collecting “revolutionary taxes” to help finance their armed effort against the national government. Between 1997-2010, the NPA generated over $22 million in funding from the extortion of miners, farmers, construction operations, telecommunications companies, transportation networks, and logging companies. As the NPA is still actively engaged in armed activity in mining regions, this report focuses on the NPA’s involvement in SSM. A compilation of media reports, conflict databases, academic literature, and other written sources has informed several key findings on the intersection between organized political violence (OPV), ASM, and illegal and illicit activities in the Philippines.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) has identified potentially significant mineral deposits in nearly... more The US Geological Survey (USGS) has identified potentially significant mineral deposits in nearly every province in Afghanistan, including larger deposits that span several provinces. Despite Afghanistan’s extensive mineral reserves, the majority of mining operations today are ASM and not under the control of the Afghan government. ASM is largely poverty-driven; with a per capita GDP of only $595, one-third of Afghanistan’s population lives below the poverty line and an additional 50 percent hover barely above it. According to representatives from Integrity Watch Afghanistan (IWA) and Global Witness, if the practice of unlicensed small-scale mining continues, there is a risk that it will cause Afghanistan’s security situation to further deteriorate, resulting in a minerals resource war. Prompted by insecurity and specifically in reference to circumstances in eastern Nangarhar Province, Mining and Petroleum Minister Daud Shah Saba warned Afghan lawmakers in 2015 that it was impossible to monitor the country’s mines and that the lack of a peace deal with the Taliban enabled unrestrained looting of mineral resources.
The networks and economic activities that became entrenched during decades of civil war remain intact today, with the supply routes that transported weapons and humanitarian aid during the anti-Soviet resistance laying the foundation for an informal and decentralized regionalized war economy that emerged in the 1990s. When the Taliban came into power in 1996, administrative proxies were established to govern each region, enabling local authorities to extract payments and engage in predatory economic activities. However, evidence suggests that while wars in Afghanistan have been fought over a variety of local, national, and international issues, resource acquisition was not a primary cause of these conflicts. However, it is a driver, as profits and control of mines strengthens and entrenches warlords, exacerbates government corruption, partly funds insurgent groups, and fuels local conflicts and the wider insurgency.
In April 2017, President Ashraf Ghani vowed to safeguard the country’s natural resources for the benefit of future generations, including the issue in his four-year security plan and promoting the minerals sector as a future revenue source to replace reductions in military and foreign aid spending that poured into the country post-2001. The Natural Resources Governance Institute’s (NRGI) 2017 Resource Governance Index (RGI) ranks Afghanistan 71st out of 89 assessments, with a visible gap between the quality of Afghanistan’s laws and regulations and their implementation evident in subnational revenue sharing, as transferred revenues are not being disclosed or audited despite being enshrined in law.
Foreign direct investment (FDI), military rule, authoritarian land governance, and Myanmar’s powe... more Foreign direct investment (FDI), military rule, authoritarian land governance, and Myanmar’s powerful neighbors have shaped its mining laws. To date, Myanmar’s natural resources have been predominately controlled by the central government. Conciliatory ceasefire agreements have allowed for high degrees of autonomy, which have fostered opium cultivation and illegal mining, exacerbating human insecurity that has led many to artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) of primarily jade, gold, gemstones, and tin, and with counterinsurgency operations facilitating the expansion and intensification of extractive industries. As a result, mining industries are often split between military-aligned companies with government mining licenses overseeing larger operations and crowds of illegal miners using artisanal methods to provide for daily livelihood. Dominance of the mining industry by elites has decreased economic opportunities for rural populations and threatened their security through violence, forced displacement, and denial of rights. Disputes over ownership of mines and mineral deposits pits EAGs against each other, the government, and the population itself.
The start of the political transition to civilian rule in 2010 has brought eight armed groups to participate in ongoing peace process negotiations with the military and government through the National Ceasefire Agreement (NCA), but the process has faced setbacks regarding disagreements over resource and revenue sharing, disarmament, and military reform. At the time of writing this report, the next round of the Union Peace Conferences (scheduled every six months) has been postponed until February 2018. Signatories and EAGs who have not signed the NCA are participating in national level political dialogues. Increased violence in some regions and disagreements about the approach to the peace process have led to some concern about the viability of February’s talks. In addition to recent political developments to restore civilian rule, the country is pursuing reforms to the mining, national land use, media, protest, labor, narcotics, and investment laws, as well as joining international conventions to promote transparency, accountability, and the rule of law. Despite reforms, the central government and its military, the Tatmadaw, maintain extensive control over natural resources and illicit activities that continue to disenfranchise populations, threatening civilian security and stability.
According to The Hill, "No element of the federal government’s energy program is more outdated, ... more According to The Hill, "No element of the federal government’s energy program is more outdated, more unfair to taxpayers, and more inconsistent with our nation’s energy and environmental goals than the Department of the Interior’s coal leasing policies." While the program brings in hundreds of millions of dollars of government revenue per year, it has been widely criticized for providing a poor return to the taxpayer and for not adequately addressing the environmental costs of extraction, processing, and combustion-- representing key environmental justice concerns and showcasing the power of the mining elite.
In January 2016, the Department of the Interior began the first programmatic review of the federal coal leasing program in 30 years to address a range of issues, including the return to the taxpayer and coal leasing impacts on the environment. The review will analyze the how, when, and where to lease; how to account for the environmental and public health impacts of federal coal production; and how to ensure American taxpayers are earning a fair return for the use of their public resources. The review is essential, as the U.S. has the largest coal reserves in the world and produces around 1 billion tons of coal annually. The federal government is the largest single holder of coal reserves, with 87 billion short tons, almost one-third of domestic reserves. Production of federal coal accounted for 40 percent of total U.S. production in 2013 and has hovered around this number over the last decade.
In 2012, the Forest Service adopted the Colorado Roadless Rule to protect 4 million acres of wild national forest in the state, but the rule included a loophole to permit bulldozing roads for coal mining on 20,000 acres of roadless national forest in the North Fork Valley of the Gunnison County; the North Fork Valley is often considered the organic agriculture heartland of Colorado. The exception allows Arch Coal to clear roads and install industrial pads on about 20,000 acres of national forest land. The proposal provides for 350 million tons of coal to be mined. The loophole was thrown out by the U.S. District Court of Colorado in 2015 after the High Country Conservation, Earthjustice, and Wild Earth Guardians sued the Forest Service for failing to consider the climate change impacts. The lawsuit was seminal; as a result, the Obama Administration released new draft guidance on how federal agencies and departments should consider climate change impacts in their National Environmental Policy Act reviews.
Oil and natural gas extraction has been deemed both a boom and a boon. Public, scientific, and po... more Oil and natural gas extraction has been deemed both a boom and a boon. Public, scientific, and political scrutiny of oil and gas development has risen in correlation with drilling in heavily populated locations, evidence of environmental and public health risks, understanding of uncomprehensive taxation, and concerns of climate change. The fatal house explosion in Firestone, Colorado caused by a severed oil and gas industry pipeline, the tanker explosion on I-25, and failed efforts by state lawmakers to better shield the public against the negative impacts of drilling as a whole have once again prompted environmental organizations to ask Hickenlooper to act, though Colorado and other energy-producing states have long histories of activism.
Although the Commerce Clause gives Congress the power to regulate the oil and gas industry, it is largely left to the states-- enabling differing management strategies. Most oil and gas producing states have established conservation commissions, consisting of trade associations and industry officials, to regulate nearly all aspects of oil and gas. Oil and gas companies have thus been able to forge close ties with state regulators.
The primary statute governing oil and gas development in Colorado is The Oil and Gas Conservation Act (1951), giving the Colorado Oil and Gas Commission (1930s) the dual authority to regulate and develop the industry. Further, the COGCC’s “additional powers” give it implied authority to regulate almost all aspects of oil and gas operations. As such, efforts by local government to challenge rules have found it nearly impossible to prevail in court if challenged on state preemption grounds.
The Public Distribution System in India is the most effective of its food security initiatives, t... more The Public Distribution System in India is the most effective of its food security initiatives, though it is only in response to the adverse effects of liberalization policies that the PDS is being seriously considered as a means for providing food security to the poor. Policies of structural adjustment and liberalization in the 1990s have had a critical impact on the policy of public provisioning of food. Driven by the goal of cutting food subsidies, there have been major changes in policy with respect to the PDS, most importantly the shift from a principle of universal coverage to a principle of targeting, accompanied by changes in entitlements and prices. Recently, there has been a change in the emphasis from revamping the PDS for the benefit of the poor to shifting the agricultural policy, including buffer stocking, so that it is in tune with the development in international trade. It has been suggested that instead of holding large stocks, the government should export a part, block the foreign exchange earned therefrom and use the same to import foodgrains in years of shortages. However, the world market cannot be realized upon to provide food at stable prices; developing countries must take account of the extra expenses involved in relying primarily on the world market for food in dealing with emergencies short of famine. Further, trade policies will not provide food security for those lacking purchasing power.
The strategy shift from self-sufficiency to self-reliance, or producing for the world market, broke down during the global food price crisis of 2007-08, when India and other rice exporters introduced export restrictions followed by an export ban. Releasing public stocks and providing consumer subsidies were among the most common measures applied to contain the problem of rising food prices-- a record purchase of rice and wheat by the Food Corporation of India in 2008 created an opportunity for the Indian government to release sufficient stock into the market to stabilize prices. This paper aims to defend the historical legacy of entitlements in India and thus the role of the Public Distribution System, as well as to refute those policies advocated by India's structural adjustment program.
Iraq is currently the world’s eighth largest producer of petroleum and holds the world’s fift... more Iraq is currently the world’s eighth largest producer of petroleum and holds the world’s fifth largest proven petroleum reserves. It's the second-largest exporter in OPEC, and growing. According to the International Energy Agency, close to 40 percent of global oil demand will be serviced by Iraqi oil. As oil provides about 95 percent of the Iraqi government's revenue, the development of its oil resources is integral to development and in unifying the country-- particularly the Sunni population, whose disenfranchisement has led to its forming of the Islamic State (IS). IS is, originally, an offshoot of Al-Qaeda in Iraq-- but while it shares a similar ideological outlook, IS has adopted a different strategy from its predecessor as it is occupying vast swaths of territory-- perhaps in order to secure it access to vital resources. Ending the insurgency, limiting the Shia/ Sunni divide, quelling Arab-Israeli tensions, ensuring democratic representation, and thus preventing military escalation in the region requires an inclusive oil law that includes the concerns of all Iraqis, limits the control of multinational oil companies, reconsiders the legality of oil contracts passed without parliamentary approval, and controls Kurdistan's oil reserves.
While Islamic fundamentalism was born first among Sunnis as a response to the decline of Mus... more While Islamic fundamentalism was born first among Sunnis as a response to the decline of Muslim power, its ideology, alliances and strategies have changed significantly with geopolitical shifts. Drawing upon, among others, the 13th century Sunni Islamic scholar and theologian Ibn Taymiyya and the 18th century puritan reformer, Muhamad ibn Abd al-Waha, the theoretical basis for the Islamist movement was devised in the early decades of the 20th century by the ideologists Abul Ala Mawdudi in Pakistan, Ruhollah Khomeini and Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī in Iran, and Hassan al Banna and Sayyid Qutb in Egypt. But it did not emerge as a potent political force until after the Israeli-Arab War of 1973 and has waxed and waned ever since. Currently, in may be in its most brutal (and perhaps devolved) incarnation to date in the form of ISIS.
As political Islam evolved, so with it has the question of who among the various powers in the region would control the potent new religious and political force. In Pakistan, Islamization served to associate devout bourgeoisie and Islamic intellectuals with a system that allowed the governing elites to remain-- in the form of military hierarchy. More significantly, it prevented the masses from rebelling in the name of Allah. The Iranian Revolution sought to use political Islam as a way to break its isolation and gain regional hegemony through "bridging the Arab-Persian divide" and were by far the most successful in mobilizing the poor, the merchants, and the secular middle class against injustice at the hand of the shah's governing elite and forced westernization through the White Revolution. Yet, the revolution was soon met with Saudi Arabia throwing its petrol-fuelled wealth behind a the most puritanical, conservative approach, funding the growth of any group or party that preached their Wahhabite creed anywhere in the world to reassert their own regional dominance. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the United States' win in the Persian Gulf War, the former sponsors of jihad in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the US and Gulf oil monarchies, lost concern for their proxies, and the Taliban and the evolving al-Qaeda turned against them-- garnering wide-reaching implications for the stability of the Muslim world.
Understanding the new prominence Iran had achieved through the defeat of Iraq and the Soviet Union, Israel seized the opportunity to rebuild its alliance with the US by focusing on their new shared enemy of radical Islam, in which Iran-- not Saudi Arabia-- was the most significant progenitor. The newfound prominence Iran experienced after the Persian Gulf War mirrors that which they were granted with the US occupation in Iraq, as it removed Saddam Hussein from power and both Coalition Provisional Authority proclamations and the Shia president installed pursued debilitating sectarian policies, cementing Shia dominance and metastasizing Sunni grievances.
This paper summarizes and analyzes the work of Trita Parsi's Treacherous Alliance, Gilles Kepel's Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, Vali Nasir's The Shia Revival, and Pinkaj Mishra's From the Ruin of Empire, as well as the development of Iraq's oil resources post-occupation to determine how major geopolitical shifts-- Mongol invasions, the formation of the Saudi Kingdom, colonialism, independence, the Arab-Israeli Wars of 1967 and 1973, The Iranian Revolution, the 1977 coup in Pakistan, the Iran-Iraq War, the Persian Gulf War, 9/11, the US occupation of Iraq, and oil-- have influenced the ideology and alliances of political Islam. The aim of the paper is not only to understand political Islam's evolution (or devolution?), but to determine how significantly Israel, US-Israeli relations, and US-Saudi relations have exacerbated radical Islam, to understand the foundation of ISIS, to analyze the implications of the Shia Revival, and to chart a course for possible regional balance in efforts to eliminate the political need for Islamic extremism. As Gilles Kepel notes, "to measure its (the Islamist upsurge of the 1970s') full impact, we need to identify its many dimensions and investigate the different periods of gestation, the networks, the lines of communication, the tendencies and ideas that composed it, within the context of the demographic, cultural, economic and social realities of the decade."
The toxicity, management, politics, economics and governance of pesticides are interrelated, wi... more The toxicity, management, politics, economics and governance of pesticides are interrelated, with compounding detrimental impacts that require thorough analysis. The analysis of literature reviews will delve into the political history of pesticides, as well as the regulatory, scientific and academic capture of the six major agrochemical companies, Monsanto, Dow, Bayer, Syngenta, Du Pont and BASF. Further, it will analyze how the regulatory trajectory of pesticides have differed in the United States, Argentina and Europe ("Pesticide Regulation amid the Influence of Industry," "Why The Toxic Substances Control Act Needs An Overhaul, And How to Strengthen Oversight Of Chemicals In The Interim"). Since the 1990s, the political dynamics of international environmental policy have shifted, with the EU emerging as a global environmental leader and the United States opposing multilateral environmental agreements. The proposal outlines analysis of the formation of EU pesticide regulation, as well as the subsequent health and economic impacts, so as to provide guidance on crafting more protective pesticide laws in the United States. ("Designing the emerging EU pesticide policy: A literature review," "Farming with fewer pesticides: EU pesticide review and resulting challenges for UK agriculture," "Health impact and damage cost assessment of pesticides in Europe," "Impact of European legislation on marketed pesticides — A view from the standpoint of health impact assessment studies").
Argentina is also assessed as its the third largest grower of soybeans in the world, behind Brazil and the United States, as well as the world’s third largest grower of genetically engineered crops-- thus using a massive amount of atrazine and glyphosate. According to Al Jazeera, "Argentina's leaders say it has turned the country's economy around, while others say the consequences are a dramatic surge in cancer rates, birth defects and land theft." ("Modifying Argentina: GM soy and socio-environmental change," "The “soy-ization” of Argentina: The dynamics of the “globalized” privatization regime in a peripheral context").
This proposal focuses on the pesticides atrazine and glysophate, as their study illuminates the controversies outlined-- corporate control of science, monopolization of the agrochemical market, perpetuation and legitimization of monocultures, weak chemical legislation, and weak EPA monitoring and regulation. Myriad conflicts surround atrazine, the second most commonly used herbicide in the U.S. Not only is atrazine heavily used, it is also the most common chemical contaminant of ground and surface water. Because atrazine is applied to crops used as livestock feed, its residues are found not only in crops, but also in milk and meat. While not considered acutely toxic to people, atrazine’s long-term human health concerns include reproductive, developmental, and possible carcinogenic effects. Atrazine gained notoriety for its potential hormonal effects when exposure was shown to feminize male frogs in studies conducted by a University of California Berkeley professor; further studies confirm chemical castration in mammals, though Syngenta has attempted to suppress the scientific findings. Atrazine was outlawed in Europe in 2003 after links to prostate and breast cancer and its accumulation in groundwater.
Additionally, myriad conflicts surround glyphosate, the most commonly used herbicide in the world. In 2015 WHO classified glyphosate as "probably carcinogenic in humans.” In November 2015, the European Food Safety Authority published an updated assessment report on glyphosate, concluding that "the substance is unlikely to be genotoxic (i.e. damaging to DNA) or to pose a carcinogenic threat to humans." Glysophate is soon to be banned in The Netherlands, and is banned in Brazil and Sri Lanka.
The literature reviews will analyze the conclusions of environmental and human health impacts of atrazine and glyphosate. The ultimate purpose of the proposal is to determine conclusive scientific and economic understandings and develop key environmental policy to better regulate the pesticide industry internationally. ("Hermaphroditic, demasculinized frogs after exposure to the herbicide at low ecologically relevant doses," "Atrazine inhibition of testosterone production in rat males following peripubertal exposure," “A Qualitative Meta-Analysis Reveals Consistent Effects of Atrazine on Freshwater Fish and Amphibians," "Ecological risk assessment of atrazine in North American surface water," "Influence of glyphosate-resistant cropping systems on weed species shifts and glyphosate-resistant weed populations, " "Developmental Effects of Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals in Wildlife and Humans," "Impacts of atrazine in aquatic ecosystems," "An assessment of the genetic toxicity of atrazine: Relevance to human health and environmental effects," "Atrazine Disrupts the Hypothalamic Control of Pituitary-Ovarian Function").
The High Country Citizen’s Alliance was formed in 1977 when Amax first tried to mine Red Lady. A ... more The High Country Citizen’s Alliance was formed in 1977 when Amax first tried to mine Red Lady. A year after Amax purchased the mine, the four tailings ponds at the mill collapsed and drained into Coal Creek, triggering the need to reclaim the tailings and build a water treatment plant to treat the acid mine drainage. In 2006 US Energy became solely responsible for the liability, dwarfing their ability to operate the water treatment plant without generating revenue. They announced their intention to define molybdenum mining, and in Jan. 2011, the Colorado Mined Land Reclamation Board agreed to allow prospecting activities for The Mount Emmons Project in Gunnison County. US Energy and Thompson Creek Metals Company want to store industrial wastes, “tailings”, in the headwaters of Carbon Creek, and Ohio Creek, by building two large dams.
For this plan, I utilize GIS to show the vast expanse of affected water resources and those projected to be affected—particularly in the Coal Creek River watershed, Ohio Creek Watershed, and the Carbon Creek Watershed. GIS will be used to compile relevant watershed information (past, present, and future) for analysis. GIS will serve as the backbone for the watershed and water quality analysis by gathering together key data and analytical components for review and analysis.
The OECD announced on Nov. 19, 2010 that global economic recovery is inhibited by a slowing US re... more The OECD announced on Nov. 19, 2010 that global economic recovery is inhibited by a slowing US rebound and tensions over currencies, and that a debt crisis in Europe could trigger more weakness next year. Short-term, stimulus measures are becoming increasingly ineffective, and through quantitative easing, the Federal Reserve has recently utilized the only short-term stimulus measure still available . The recession has left the United States with unprecedented long-term unemployment; in Oct. 2010 6.2 million people were listed as having been out of work for more than six months, and the average duration of unemployment now stands at 34 weeks. America’s unemployment-insurance system can no longer cope with a problem of this size . Much of the discussion today centers around the immediate handling of the financial crisis, for increasingly legitimate reasons, but this line of analysis tends to presume that what we are faced with is merely a financial crisis, not actually something much deeper— a crisis also of politics, representation, legitimacy and democracy, and of global governance itself .
Managed money has moved from equities, to real estate, and finally to commodities. The Bank of International Settlements has documented the scale and growth of outstanding amounts of OTC commodity-linked derivatives for commodities other than gold and precious metals increased from $5.85 trillion in June 2006 to $7.05 trillion in June 2007 to as much as $12.39 in June 2008 . In 2008, World Bank President Zoellick warned that warned that 33 countries were at risk of social upheaval as a result of rising food costs . In 2008 maize prices doubled, wheat prices increased by 50 percent, and rice increased as much at 70 percent. Food prices had risen by 75 percent since 2005, and world grain reserves were at their lowest, at 54 days . Analyzing the ideology, economics and regulations behind the financialization of commodities provides key insight into the causes of the financial crisis.
The crisis is illuminated through fundamental changes in the capitalist world economy and the public’s understanding of those changes. This paper will focus on three factors that contributed to the financial crisis as manifested in the financialization of commodity markets. First, generally, during financial booms the wider public has little interest in financial regulation or the exponential growth of the finance sector. The distributional consequences remain highly technical, and therefore unclear to the general public. Thus the issue has little political traction . It can be argued that the saliency financialization of commodities was misconstrued to the public by Goldman Sachs and other major financial institutions. Second, money manager capitalism-- the economic system that has come to dominate the global economy in recent decades-- is characterized by highly leveraged funds seeking maximum returns in an environment that systematically under-prices risk. Finally, regulatory failures, compounded by over-reliance on market self-regulation overall lack of transparency, financial integrity and irresponsible behavior, have led to excessive risk-taking, unsustainably high asset prices, irresponsible leveraging and high levels of consumption fueled by easy credit and inflated asset price. Concerning commodity speculation, the economic system and regulatory failures are integrally linked. As the global financial system became fragile with the continuing implosion of the US housing finance market commodity speculation increasingly emerged as an important area for such financial investment. The United States became a major arena for such speculation largely due to the deregulation that made it possible for more players to enter into commodity trading. The rise of investments in commodity indexes is the most important cause for the explosion of commodities prices in recent years. Further, commodities merely represented the latest asset class identified by money manager capitalism as ripe for financialization .
In 2009, South Korea's Daewoo Logistics attempted to lease half the island's arable land from the... more In 2009, South Korea's Daewoo Logistics attempted to lease half the island's arable land from the government to grow food and improve their food security. The arrangement did not require compensation for existing farmers, the land was rent-free, and all the food was to be exported-- and the arrangement was nearly secured without public participation or knowledge. When the news reached the citizens, a surge of opposition swept the government from power. The new president's first act was to annul the deal (Parker, 2009).
Crystal Edmunds
Winter Quarter 2010
Professor Napit
The third great wave of outsourcing, the new scramble for Africa's land, the global land grab, agro-colonialism-- land acquisition and immense agricultural investments grew out of the 2007-2008 food crisis. “It started back in ancient times, with the theft of Africa’s intellectual property,” Dr. Lewis said, adding, “Again African people are pawns in the scramble for their gold and diamonds. But, more important is the scramble for Africa’s hottest commodity today, Africa’s farmland," said Dr. Lewis, who serves as an African adviser and consultant to the Diaspora Union (Shabazz, 2009).
When commodity prices soared, arid nations in the Middle East and Asia with large populations and an abundance of capital began searching for cheaper imports. Between the start of 2007 and the middle of 2008, The Economist index of food prices rose 78 percent; soybeans and rice both soared more than 130 percent. Meanwhile, food stocks slumped. In the five largest grain exporters, the ratio of stocks to consumption-plus-exports fell to 11 percent in 2009, below its ten-year average of over 15 percent (Economist). “They lost faith in the international market’s ability to take care of food,” says Devlin Kuyek, a researcher with GRAIN, a non-profit that supports small-scale farmers. “They took a more aggressive approach by looking for ways to buy up farmland for their own food needs.” While land acquisitions by foreign private investors have taken place on a small scale for decades, a changed economic and political environment seems to have accelerated this process.
With the increases in investment and attention comes a subsequent turn away from trade, markets and efficiency (If words were food, nobody would go hungry, 2009). Instead of buying food on world markets, governments and politically influential companies buy or lease farmland abroad, often the most fertile regions of a given poor country, grow the crops there and ship them back (Cornering foreign fields, 2009). Huge investment funds have already poured hundreds of billions of dollars into booming financial markets for commodities like wheat, corn and soybeans; a few big private investors are acting on their predictions that the world’s need for food will greatly increase— by buying farmland, fertilizer, grain elevators and shipping equipment (Henriques, 2008). Worrisome predictions that over the next 20 years the world’s population will increase by a third, demand for food and energy will increase by half and demand for fresh water will increase by 30 percent, have catalyzed such controversial agreements (Parker, 2009) Support for agro-fuels is also fueling the search for cultivatable land.
“It’s going on big time,” said Brad Cole, president of Cole Partners Asset Management in Chicago, which runs a fund of hedge funds focused on natural resources. “There is considerable interest in what we call ‘owning structure’— like United States farmland, Argentine farmland, and English farmland— wherever the profit picture is improving” (Henriques, 2008) Through government-backed corporations and sovereign wealth funds, the World Bank estimates 50 million hectare, roughly equivalent to half of China’s farmland, have been bought for food production (Kielburger, 2010). Further, public investments and aid in agricultural development have been steadily decreasing, allowing sufficient space for the encroachment of private investment. US aid to agriculture in Africa has dropped 85 percent since the 1980s. It has spent 20 times as much on food aid as on helping Africans better feed themselves. Other donors and developing countries' governments themselves neglected agriculture (Bertini, 2009). FAO estimates that developing countries need an additional $30 billion per year investment to double food production by 2050, which is needed to feed growing populations and ensure basic right to food (Hallam).
Putting a conservative figure on the land’s value, IFPRI calculates that these deals are worth $20 billion- $30 billion-- at least ten times as much as an emergency package for agriculture recently announced by the World Bank and 15 times more than the American administration’s new fund for food security (Cornering foreign fields, 2009). Klaus Deininger, an economist specializing in land policy at the World Bank, estimates that 10 to 30 percent of available arable land could be up for grabs, although only a fraction of the potential number of lease and sale agreements have been signed. About 95 percent of the cropland in Asia has been utilized, thus it is in Latin America and Africa where most of the demand for increased arable land will concentrate. (De Schutter, 2009). And according to FAO, only about 14 percent of the suited land in Africa is presently cultivated. Given Africa's resource endowments, natural resources are at the heart of FDI flows to the continent. Increases in investment flows are directly linked to global demand for energy and commodities such as oil. gold, copper, aluminum, and nickel. (UNCTAD, 2008) The perceived availability of land in Africa has attracted the attention of governments eager to tap into global demand for food and fuel (Cotula, 2009).
The deals are private so details are difficult to identify. But, most acquisitions are long-term leases, concessions or outright purchases ranging in length from 30 to 99 years (Kielburger, 2010). China is the leading nation leasing African farm land. Critics say the Asian nation has grabbed huge amounts of Africa’s natural resources while at the same time dumping cheaply manufactured products and indulging in an unequal trade policy (Shabazz, 2009).
Further, despite the spate of media reports and some isolated examples of forerunner research, there is still very little empirical evidence about international land deals and their positive and negative impacts (Cotula, 2009). African ties to the land transcend economic and utilitarian considerations (Kugelman, 2009). Some argue that these investments could mark the beginning of a fundamental change in the geopolitics of international agriculture (Kugelman, 2009).
Niger faces a myriad of environmental challenges, which tend to only exacerbate its extreme... more Niger faces a myriad of environmental challenges, which tend to only exacerbate its extreme poverty and vulnerability. Erratic annual rainfall on degraded soil has provided an extremely unreliable foundation for the rural subsistence livelihoods on which over 80 percent of the population depends. From 1900-2010, Niger endured 22 drought years . The country’s population and food needs double every 20 years, and in the past three decades the amount of land with soil suitable for agriculture has been reduced by half, while the population has increased threefold. A century of mismanagement of forests and trees in Niger has reduced the country’s forest cover to just 1 percent-- exposing soils to the ravages of wind and rain, and surrendering the country to continued desertification . Though it is considered a Sub-Saharan country, 65 percent of Niger is actually covered by sand . Further, it is estimated that 98 percent of Nigerien families use wood to meet their energy needs for cooking .
Despite its history of degradation and extreme poverty, Niger is one of the world's foremost examples of a green economy . As new assessments by UNEP indicate that nature may represent between 50 percent and 90 percent of incomes in the developing world-- Niger has progressively reinstated trees, soil and water as capital . A farmer-managed, agro-environmental transformation has occurred over the past three decades in the West African Sahel-- the largest environmental transformation in the region, and perhaps even in Africa. At its cornerstone is community-based forest ecosystem management-- not UN-REDD or other multilateral initiatives. As Chris Reij from the Centre for International Cooperation has so eloquently stated, “The changes that have been observed (in Niger) suggest that farmers are not the helpless victims of environmental change, but rather agents who try to make the best use of productive and investment opportunities. ”
Water is, and will remain, the most contentious natural resource issue of the 21st century.... more Water is, and will remain, the most contentious natural resource issue of the 21st century. International watersheds account for about 60 percent of the world's freshwater supply and are home to approximately 40 percent of the world's population (Dehydrating Conflict). Some 261 of the world's rivers are shared by two or more countries. (Dehydrating Conflict). As early as the mid-1980s United States government intelligence services estimated that there were at least 10 places in the world where war could break out over shared water (Water Wars, Joyce R. Starr). Exacerbating scare resources is population growth; since 1950, the renewable supply per person has fallen 58 percent as world population has increased from 2.5 billion to 6 billion. By 2015, nearly 3 billion people—40 percent of the projected world population-- are expected to live in countries that find it difficult or impossible to mobilize enough water to satisfy the food, industrial, and domestic needs of their citizens. (Dehydrating Conflict) In order to ensure water security, cooperation among citizens, countries, regions and continents is vital. History shows substantial efforts of cooperation; from 805 to 1984, countries have signed more than 3,600 water-related treaties. (Dehydrating Conflict)
Further, the overarching lesson gathered from the basins of the Jordan, the Nile, and the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and other regions of water dispute is not that worsening scarcity will lead inevitably to water wars. It is rather that unilateral actions to engage in a water development initiatives in the absence of a treaty or institutional mechanism that safeguards the interests of other countries in the basin is the most destabilizing, often spurring hostility before cooperation is pursued. (World Summit on Sustainable Development, 2001). The way the Nile is managed in coming decades will have worldwide implications (Terje Tvedt, The River Nile In The Post-Colonial Age, 2010).
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In addition to tin, this report focuses on a highly underreported armed conflict in West Papua, which has been prolonged by the conflicting rights over the world’s largest gold mine and second largest copper mine, Freeport McMoRan’s Grasberg mine. Volatility in West Papua directed towards the Grasberg mine from the Free Papua Movement, the separatist group in the region, in late 2017 in conjunction with the suspicion of artisanal mining activity in the area, presents an opportunity for an armed group, sympathized with by the local communities, to exploit or partner with artisanal miners
There is little evidentiary support connecting OPV and ASM in Indonesia, but socio-economic conditions exist that could foster the intersection. The only criminal currently identified with tin smuggling is the involvement of pirates, typically by hijacking tin off of ships travelling in the Malacca Strait between Indonesia and Malaysia. A lack of information surrounds these pirates, but they have been described as very organized and efficient with “international criminal links” and able to sustain “military coordination and meticulous planning” to capture large metal and petroleum products.
This first section of the report begins by providing statistical indicators on Indonesia’s economy, governance, and mineral resources. This is followed by an overview of the ASM structure, including the applicable regulations and guiding laws. Additionally, second section on case studies delineates the conflicts between LSM and ASM in Indonesia’s recent history. The report then analyzes the known active “criminal groups,” namely that of the Free Papua Movement in West Papua and Jemaah Islamiyah, the major terrorist organization. It further explains the history and recent knowledge on tin smuggling. Knowledge gaps and subsequent questions are then discussed. The third section of the report concludes with analysis of the initiatives to curb criminal activity in ASM, focusing on major initiatives in tin supply chains.
Compostela Valley and Mt. Diwalwal in eastern Mindanao province have been the primary focus for much of the fieldwork concerning ASM, as the region holds the largest gold deposit in the country and is known for its volatility. Unlike many other countries, ASM in the Philippines evolved out of an era of large-scale mining (LSM) in the 1980s. The collapse of the LSM industry, in conjunction with debt and corruption of the Marcos regime, decreasing global commodity prices, mining operation failures, and increasing political conflict with the NPA spurred the unique creation of a highly capitalized and mechanistic form of ASM that continues to this day. Capitalization has developed complicated networks of mining co-ops, financiers, landowners, and criminal activity.
The New People’s Army (NPA), the armed branch of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), has exploited both LSM and ASM operations since the 1980s, collecting “revolutionary taxes” to help finance their armed effort against the national government. Between 1997-2010, the NPA generated over $22 million in funding from the extortion of miners, farmers, construction operations, telecommunications companies, transportation networks, and logging companies. As the NPA is still actively engaged in armed activity in mining regions, this report focuses on the NPA’s involvement in SSM. A compilation of media reports, conflict databases, academic literature, and other written sources has informed several key findings on the intersection between organized political violence (OPV), ASM, and illegal and illicit activities in the Philippines.
The networks and economic activities that became entrenched during decades of civil war remain intact today, with the supply routes that transported weapons and humanitarian aid during the anti-Soviet resistance laying the foundation for an informal and decentralized regionalized war economy that emerged in the 1990s. When the Taliban came into power in 1996, administrative proxies were established to govern each region, enabling local authorities to extract payments and engage in predatory economic activities. However, evidence suggests that while wars in Afghanistan have been fought over a variety of local, national, and international issues, resource acquisition was not a primary cause of these conflicts. However, it is a driver, as profits and control of mines strengthens and entrenches warlords, exacerbates government corruption, partly funds insurgent groups, and fuels local conflicts and the wider insurgency.
In April 2017, President Ashraf Ghani vowed to safeguard the country’s natural resources for the benefit of future generations, including the issue in his four-year security plan and promoting the minerals sector as a future revenue source to replace reductions in military and foreign aid spending that poured into the country post-2001. The Natural Resources Governance Institute’s (NRGI) 2017 Resource Governance Index (RGI) ranks Afghanistan 71st out of 89 assessments, with a visible gap between the quality of Afghanistan’s laws and regulations and their implementation evident in subnational revenue sharing, as transferred revenues are not being disclosed or audited despite being enshrined in law.
The start of the political transition to civilian rule in 2010 has brought eight armed groups to participate in ongoing peace process negotiations with the military and government through the National Ceasefire Agreement (NCA), but the process has faced setbacks regarding disagreements over resource and revenue sharing, disarmament, and military reform. At the time of writing this report, the next round of the Union Peace Conferences (scheduled every six months) has been postponed until February 2018. Signatories and EAGs who have not signed the NCA are participating in national level political dialogues. Increased violence in some regions and disagreements about the approach to the peace process have led to some concern about the viability of February’s talks. In addition to recent political developments to restore civilian rule, the country is pursuing reforms to the mining, national land use, media, protest, labor, narcotics, and investment laws, as well as joining international conventions to promote transparency, accountability, and the rule of law. Despite reforms, the central government and its military, the Tatmadaw, maintain extensive control over natural resources and illicit activities that continue to disenfranchise populations, threatening civilian security and stability.
In January 2016, the Department of the Interior began the first programmatic review of the federal coal leasing program in 30 years to address a range of issues, including the return to the taxpayer and coal leasing impacts on the environment. The review will analyze the how, when, and where to lease; how to account for the environmental and public health impacts of federal coal production; and how to ensure American taxpayers are earning a fair return for the use of their public resources. The review is essential, as the U.S. has the largest coal reserves in the world and produces around 1 billion tons of coal annually. The federal government is the largest single holder of coal reserves, with 87 billion short tons, almost one-third of domestic reserves. Production of federal coal accounted for 40 percent of total U.S. production in 2013 and has hovered around this number over the last decade.
In 2012, the Forest Service adopted the Colorado Roadless Rule to protect 4 million acres of wild national forest in the state, but the rule included a loophole to permit bulldozing roads for coal mining on 20,000 acres of roadless national forest in the North Fork Valley of the Gunnison County; the North Fork Valley is often considered the organic agriculture heartland of Colorado. The exception allows Arch Coal to clear roads and install industrial pads on about 20,000 acres of national forest land. The proposal provides for 350 million tons of coal to be mined. The loophole was thrown out by the U.S. District Court of Colorado in 2015 after the High Country Conservation, Earthjustice, and Wild Earth Guardians sued the Forest Service for failing to consider the climate change impacts. The lawsuit was seminal; as a result, the Obama Administration released new draft guidance on how federal agencies and departments should consider climate change impacts in their National Environmental Policy Act reviews.
Although the Commerce Clause gives Congress the power to regulate the oil and gas industry, it is largely left to the states-- enabling differing management strategies. Most oil and gas producing states have established conservation commissions, consisting of trade associations and industry officials, to regulate nearly all aspects of oil and gas. Oil and gas companies have thus been able to forge close ties with state regulators.
The primary statute governing oil and gas development in Colorado is The Oil and Gas Conservation Act (1951), giving the Colorado Oil and Gas Commission (1930s) the dual authority to regulate and develop the industry. Further, the COGCC’s “additional powers” give it implied authority to regulate almost all aspects of oil and gas operations. As such, efforts by local government to challenge rules have found it nearly impossible to prevail in court if challenged on state preemption grounds.
The strategy shift from self-sufficiency to self-reliance, or producing for the world market, broke down during the global food price crisis of 2007-08, when India and other rice exporters introduced export restrictions followed by an export ban. Releasing public stocks and providing consumer subsidies were among the most common measures applied to contain the problem of rising food prices-- a record purchase of rice and wheat by the Food Corporation of India in 2008 created an opportunity for the Indian government to release sufficient stock into the market to stabilize prices. This paper aims to defend the historical legacy of entitlements in India and thus the role of the Public Distribution System, as well as to refute those policies advocated by India's structural adjustment program.
As political Islam evolved, so with it has the question of who among the various powers in the region would control the potent new religious and political force. In Pakistan, Islamization served to associate devout bourgeoisie and Islamic intellectuals with a system that allowed the governing elites to remain-- in the form of military hierarchy. More significantly, it prevented the masses from rebelling in the name of Allah. The Iranian Revolution sought to use political Islam as a way to break its isolation and gain regional hegemony through "bridging the Arab-Persian divide" and were by far the most successful in mobilizing the poor, the merchants, and the secular middle class against injustice at the hand of the shah's governing elite and forced westernization through the White Revolution. Yet, the revolution was soon met with Saudi Arabia throwing its petrol-fuelled wealth behind a the most puritanical, conservative approach, funding the growth of any group or party that preached their Wahhabite creed anywhere in the world to reassert their own regional dominance. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the United States' win in the Persian Gulf War, the former sponsors of jihad in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the US and Gulf oil monarchies, lost concern for their proxies, and the Taliban and the evolving al-Qaeda turned against them-- garnering wide-reaching implications for the stability of the Muslim world.
Understanding the new prominence Iran had achieved through the defeat of Iraq and the Soviet Union, Israel seized the opportunity to rebuild its alliance with the US by focusing on their new shared enemy of radical Islam, in which Iran-- not Saudi Arabia-- was the most significant progenitor. The newfound prominence Iran experienced after the Persian Gulf War mirrors that which they were granted with the US occupation in Iraq, as it removed Saddam Hussein from power and both Coalition Provisional Authority proclamations and the Shia president installed pursued debilitating sectarian policies, cementing Shia dominance and metastasizing Sunni grievances.
This paper summarizes and analyzes the work of Trita Parsi's Treacherous Alliance, Gilles Kepel's Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, Vali Nasir's The Shia Revival, and Pinkaj Mishra's From the Ruin of Empire, as well as the development of Iraq's oil resources post-occupation to determine how major geopolitical shifts-- Mongol invasions, the formation of the Saudi Kingdom, colonialism, independence, the Arab-Israeli Wars of 1967 and 1973, The Iranian Revolution, the 1977 coup in Pakistan, the Iran-Iraq War, the Persian Gulf War, 9/11, the US occupation of Iraq, and oil-- have influenced the ideology and alliances of political Islam. The aim of the paper is not only to understand political Islam's evolution (or devolution?), but to determine how significantly Israel, US-Israeli relations, and US-Saudi relations have exacerbated radical Islam, to understand the foundation of ISIS, to analyze the implications of the Shia Revival, and to chart a course for possible regional balance in efforts to eliminate the political need for Islamic extremism. As Gilles Kepel notes, "to measure its (the Islamist upsurge of the 1970s') full impact, we need to identify its many dimensions and investigate the different periods of gestation, the networks, the lines of communication, the tendencies and ideas that composed it, within the context of the demographic, cultural, economic and social realities of the decade."
Argentina is also assessed as its the third largest grower of soybeans in the world, behind Brazil and the United States, as well as the world’s third largest grower of genetically engineered crops-- thus using a massive amount of atrazine and glyphosate. According to Al Jazeera, "Argentina's leaders say it has turned the country's economy around, while others say the consequences are a dramatic surge in cancer rates, birth defects and land theft." ("Modifying Argentina: GM soy and socio-environmental change," "The “soy-ization” of Argentina: The dynamics of the “globalized” privatization regime in a peripheral context").
This proposal focuses on the pesticides atrazine and glysophate, as their study illuminates the controversies outlined-- corporate control of science, monopolization of the agrochemical market, perpetuation and legitimization of monocultures, weak chemical legislation, and weak EPA monitoring and regulation. Myriad conflicts surround atrazine, the second most commonly used herbicide in the U.S. Not only is atrazine heavily used, it is also the most common chemical contaminant of ground and surface water. Because atrazine is applied to crops used as livestock feed, its residues are found not only in crops, but also in milk and meat. While not considered acutely toxic to people, atrazine’s long-term human health concerns include reproductive, developmental, and possible carcinogenic effects. Atrazine gained notoriety for its potential hormonal effects when exposure was shown to feminize male frogs in studies conducted by a University of California Berkeley professor; further studies confirm chemical castration in mammals, though Syngenta has attempted to suppress the scientific findings. Atrazine was outlawed in Europe in 2003 after links to prostate and breast cancer and its accumulation in groundwater.
Additionally, myriad conflicts surround glyphosate, the most commonly used herbicide in the world. In 2015 WHO classified glyphosate as "probably carcinogenic in humans.” In November 2015, the European Food Safety Authority published an updated assessment report on glyphosate, concluding that "the substance is unlikely to be genotoxic (i.e. damaging to DNA) or to pose a carcinogenic threat to humans." Glysophate is soon to be banned in The Netherlands, and is banned in Brazil and Sri Lanka.
The literature reviews will analyze the conclusions of environmental and human health impacts of atrazine and glyphosate. The ultimate purpose of the proposal is to determine conclusive scientific and economic understandings and develop key environmental policy to better regulate the pesticide industry internationally. ("Hermaphroditic, demasculinized frogs after exposure to the herbicide at low ecologically relevant doses," "Atrazine inhibition of testosterone production in rat males following peripubertal exposure," “A Qualitative Meta-Analysis Reveals Consistent Effects of Atrazine on Freshwater Fish and Amphibians," "Ecological risk assessment of atrazine in North American surface water," "Influence of glyphosate-resistant cropping systems on weed species shifts and glyphosate-resistant weed populations, " "Developmental Effects of Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals in Wildlife and Humans," "Impacts of atrazine in aquatic ecosystems," "An assessment of the genetic toxicity of atrazine: Relevance to human health and environmental effects," "Atrazine Disrupts the Hypothalamic Control of Pituitary-Ovarian Function").
For this plan, I utilize GIS to show the vast expanse of affected water resources and those projected to be affected—particularly in the Coal Creek River watershed, Ohio Creek Watershed, and the Carbon Creek Watershed. GIS will be used to compile relevant watershed information (past, present, and future) for analysis. GIS will serve as the backbone for the watershed and water quality analysis by gathering together key data and analytical components for review and analysis.
Managed money has moved from equities, to real estate, and finally to commodities. The Bank of International Settlements has documented the scale and growth of outstanding amounts of OTC commodity-linked derivatives for commodities other than gold and precious metals increased from $5.85 trillion in June 2006 to $7.05 trillion in June 2007 to as much as $12.39 in June 2008 . In 2008, World Bank President Zoellick warned that warned that 33 countries were at risk of social upheaval as a result of rising food costs . In 2008 maize prices doubled, wheat prices increased by 50 percent, and rice increased as much at 70 percent. Food prices had risen by 75 percent since 2005, and world grain reserves were at their lowest, at 54 days . Analyzing the ideology, economics and regulations behind the financialization of commodities provides key insight into the causes of the financial crisis.
The crisis is illuminated through fundamental changes in the capitalist world economy and the public’s understanding of those changes. This paper will focus on three factors that contributed to the financial crisis as manifested in the financialization of commodity markets. First, generally, during financial booms the wider public has little interest in financial regulation or the exponential growth of the finance sector. The distributional consequences remain highly technical, and therefore unclear to the general public. Thus the issue has little political traction . It can be argued that the saliency financialization of commodities was misconstrued to the public by Goldman Sachs and other major financial institutions. Second, money manager capitalism-- the economic system that has come to dominate the global economy in recent decades-- is characterized by highly leveraged funds seeking maximum returns in an environment that systematically under-prices risk. Finally, regulatory failures, compounded by over-reliance on market self-regulation overall lack of transparency, financial integrity and irresponsible behavior, have led to excessive risk-taking, unsustainably high asset prices, irresponsible leveraging and high levels of consumption fueled by easy credit and inflated asset price. Concerning commodity speculation, the economic system and regulatory failures are integrally linked. As the global financial system became fragile with the continuing implosion of the US housing finance market commodity speculation increasingly emerged as an important area for such financial investment. The United States became a major arena for such speculation largely due to the deregulation that made it possible for more players to enter into commodity trading. The rise of investments in commodity indexes is the most important cause for the explosion of commodities prices in recent years. Further, commodities merely represented the latest asset class identified by money manager capitalism as ripe for financialization .
Crystal Edmunds
Winter Quarter 2010
Professor Napit
The third great wave of outsourcing, the new scramble for Africa's land, the global land grab, agro-colonialism-- land acquisition and immense agricultural investments grew out of the 2007-2008 food crisis. “It started back in ancient times, with the theft of Africa’s intellectual property,” Dr. Lewis said, adding, “Again African people are pawns in the scramble for their gold and diamonds. But, more important is the scramble for Africa’s hottest commodity today, Africa’s farmland," said Dr. Lewis, who serves as an African adviser and consultant to the Diaspora Union (Shabazz, 2009).
When commodity prices soared, arid nations in the Middle East and Asia with large populations and an abundance of capital began searching for cheaper imports. Between the start of 2007 and the middle of 2008, The Economist index of food prices rose 78 percent; soybeans and rice both soared more than 130 percent. Meanwhile, food stocks slumped. In the five largest grain exporters, the ratio of stocks to consumption-plus-exports fell to 11 percent in 2009, below its ten-year average of over 15 percent (Economist). “They lost faith in the international market’s ability to take care of food,” says Devlin Kuyek, a researcher with GRAIN, a non-profit that supports small-scale farmers. “They took a more aggressive approach by looking for ways to buy up farmland for their own food needs.” While land acquisitions by foreign private investors have taken place on a small scale for decades, a changed economic and political environment seems to have accelerated this process.
With the increases in investment and attention comes a subsequent turn away from trade, markets and efficiency (If words were food, nobody would go hungry, 2009). Instead of buying food on world markets, governments and politically influential companies buy or lease farmland abroad, often the most fertile regions of a given poor country, grow the crops there and ship them back (Cornering foreign fields, 2009). Huge investment funds have already poured hundreds of billions of dollars into booming financial markets for commodities like wheat, corn and soybeans; a few big private investors are acting on their predictions that the world’s need for food will greatly increase— by buying farmland, fertilizer, grain elevators and shipping equipment (Henriques, 2008). Worrisome predictions that over the next 20 years the world’s population will increase by a third, demand for food and energy will increase by half and demand for fresh water will increase by 30 percent, have catalyzed such controversial agreements (Parker, 2009) Support for agro-fuels is also fueling the search for cultivatable land.
“It’s going on big time,” said Brad Cole, president of Cole Partners Asset Management in Chicago, which runs a fund of hedge funds focused on natural resources. “There is considerable interest in what we call ‘owning structure’— like United States farmland, Argentine farmland, and English farmland— wherever the profit picture is improving” (Henriques, 2008) Through government-backed corporations and sovereign wealth funds, the World Bank estimates 50 million hectare, roughly equivalent to half of China’s farmland, have been bought for food production (Kielburger, 2010). Further, public investments and aid in agricultural development have been steadily decreasing, allowing sufficient space for the encroachment of private investment. US aid to agriculture in Africa has dropped 85 percent since the 1980s. It has spent 20 times as much on food aid as on helping Africans better feed themselves. Other donors and developing countries' governments themselves neglected agriculture (Bertini, 2009). FAO estimates that developing countries need an additional $30 billion per year investment to double food production by 2050, which is needed to feed growing populations and ensure basic right to food (Hallam).
Putting a conservative figure on the land’s value, IFPRI calculates that these deals are worth $20 billion- $30 billion-- at least ten times as much as an emergency package for agriculture recently announced by the World Bank and 15 times more than the American administration’s new fund for food security (Cornering foreign fields, 2009). Klaus Deininger, an economist specializing in land policy at the World Bank, estimates that 10 to 30 percent of available arable land could be up for grabs, although only a fraction of the potential number of lease and sale agreements have been signed. About 95 percent of the cropland in Asia has been utilized, thus it is in Latin America and Africa where most of the demand for increased arable land will concentrate. (De Schutter, 2009). And according to FAO, only about 14 percent of the suited land in Africa is presently cultivated. Given Africa's resource endowments, natural resources are at the heart of FDI flows to the continent. Increases in investment flows are directly linked to global demand for energy and commodities such as oil. gold, copper, aluminum, and nickel. (UNCTAD, 2008) The perceived availability of land in Africa has attracted the attention of governments eager to tap into global demand for food and fuel (Cotula, 2009).
The deals are private so details are difficult to identify. But, most acquisitions are long-term leases, concessions or outright purchases ranging in length from 30 to 99 years (Kielburger, 2010). China is the leading nation leasing African farm land. Critics say the Asian nation has grabbed huge amounts of Africa’s natural resources while at the same time dumping cheaply manufactured products and indulging in an unequal trade policy (Shabazz, 2009).
Further, despite the spate of media reports and some isolated examples of forerunner research, there is still very little empirical evidence about international land deals and their positive and negative impacts (Cotula, 2009). African ties to the land transcend economic and utilitarian considerations (Kugelman, 2009). Some argue that these investments could mark the beginning of a fundamental change in the geopolitics of international agriculture (Kugelman, 2009).
Despite its history of degradation and extreme poverty, Niger is one of the world's foremost examples of a green economy . As new assessments by UNEP indicate that nature may represent between 50 percent and 90 percent of incomes in the developing world-- Niger has progressively reinstated trees, soil and water as capital . A farmer-managed, agro-environmental transformation has occurred over the past three decades in the West African Sahel-- the largest environmental transformation in the region, and perhaps even in Africa. At its cornerstone is community-based forest ecosystem management-- not UN-REDD or other multilateral initiatives. As Chris Reij from the Centre for International Cooperation has so eloquently stated, “The changes that have been observed (in Niger) suggest that farmers are not the helpless victims of environmental change, but rather agents who try to make the best use of productive and investment opportunities. ”
Further, the overarching lesson gathered from the basins of the Jordan, the Nile, and the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and other regions of water dispute is not that worsening scarcity will lead inevitably to water wars. It is rather that unilateral actions to engage in a water development initiatives in the absence of a treaty or institutional mechanism that safeguards the interests of other countries in the basin is the most destabilizing, often spurring hostility before cooperation is pursued. (World Summit on Sustainable Development, 2001). The way the Nile is managed in coming decades will have worldwide implications (Terje Tvedt, The River Nile In The Post-Colonial Age, 2010).
In addition to tin, this report focuses on a highly underreported armed conflict in West Papua, which has been prolonged by the conflicting rights over the world’s largest gold mine and second largest copper mine, Freeport McMoRan’s Grasberg mine. Volatility in West Papua directed towards the Grasberg mine from the Free Papua Movement, the separatist group in the region, in late 2017 in conjunction with the suspicion of artisanal mining activity in the area, presents an opportunity for an armed group, sympathized with by the local communities, to exploit or partner with artisanal miners
There is little evidentiary support connecting OPV and ASM in Indonesia, but socio-economic conditions exist that could foster the intersection. The only criminal currently identified with tin smuggling is the involvement of pirates, typically by hijacking tin off of ships travelling in the Malacca Strait between Indonesia and Malaysia. A lack of information surrounds these pirates, but they have been described as very organized and efficient with “international criminal links” and able to sustain “military coordination and meticulous planning” to capture large metal and petroleum products.
This first section of the report begins by providing statistical indicators on Indonesia’s economy, governance, and mineral resources. This is followed by an overview of the ASM structure, including the applicable regulations and guiding laws. Additionally, second section on case studies delineates the conflicts between LSM and ASM in Indonesia’s recent history. The report then analyzes the known active “criminal groups,” namely that of the Free Papua Movement in West Papua and Jemaah Islamiyah, the major terrorist organization. It further explains the history and recent knowledge on tin smuggling. Knowledge gaps and subsequent questions are then discussed. The third section of the report concludes with analysis of the initiatives to curb criminal activity in ASM, focusing on major initiatives in tin supply chains.
Compostela Valley and Mt. Diwalwal in eastern Mindanao province have been the primary focus for much of the fieldwork concerning ASM, as the region holds the largest gold deposit in the country and is known for its volatility. Unlike many other countries, ASM in the Philippines evolved out of an era of large-scale mining (LSM) in the 1980s. The collapse of the LSM industry, in conjunction with debt and corruption of the Marcos regime, decreasing global commodity prices, mining operation failures, and increasing political conflict with the NPA spurred the unique creation of a highly capitalized and mechanistic form of ASM that continues to this day. Capitalization has developed complicated networks of mining co-ops, financiers, landowners, and criminal activity.
The New People’s Army (NPA), the armed branch of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), has exploited both LSM and ASM operations since the 1980s, collecting “revolutionary taxes” to help finance their armed effort against the national government. Between 1997-2010, the NPA generated over $22 million in funding from the extortion of miners, farmers, construction operations, telecommunications companies, transportation networks, and logging companies. As the NPA is still actively engaged in armed activity in mining regions, this report focuses on the NPA’s involvement in SSM. A compilation of media reports, conflict databases, academic literature, and other written sources has informed several key findings on the intersection between organized political violence (OPV), ASM, and illegal and illicit activities in the Philippines.
The networks and economic activities that became entrenched during decades of civil war remain intact today, with the supply routes that transported weapons and humanitarian aid during the anti-Soviet resistance laying the foundation for an informal and decentralized regionalized war economy that emerged in the 1990s. When the Taliban came into power in 1996, administrative proxies were established to govern each region, enabling local authorities to extract payments and engage in predatory economic activities. However, evidence suggests that while wars in Afghanistan have been fought over a variety of local, national, and international issues, resource acquisition was not a primary cause of these conflicts. However, it is a driver, as profits and control of mines strengthens and entrenches warlords, exacerbates government corruption, partly funds insurgent groups, and fuels local conflicts and the wider insurgency.
In April 2017, President Ashraf Ghani vowed to safeguard the country’s natural resources for the benefit of future generations, including the issue in his four-year security plan and promoting the minerals sector as a future revenue source to replace reductions in military and foreign aid spending that poured into the country post-2001. The Natural Resources Governance Institute’s (NRGI) 2017 Resource Governance Index (RGI) ranks Afghanistan 71st out of 89 assessments, with a visible gap between the quality of Afghanistan’s laws and regulations and their implementation evident in subnational revenue sharing, as transferred revenues are not being disclosed or audited despite being enshrined in law.
The start of the political transition to civilian rule in 2010 has brought eight armed groups to participate in ongoing peace process negotiations with the military and government through the National Ceasefire Agreement (NCA), but the process has faced setbacks regarding disagreements over resource and revenue sharing, disarmament, and military reform. At the time of writing this report, the next round of the Union Peace Conferences (scheduled every six months) has been postponed until February 2018. Signatories and EAGs who have not signed the NCA are participating in national level political dialogues. Increased violence in some regions and disagreements about the approach to the peace process have led to some concern about the viability of February’s talks. In addition to recent political developments to restore civilian rule, the country is pursuing reforms to the mining, national land use, media, protest, labor, narcotics, and investment laws, as well as joining international conventions to promote transparency, accountability, and the rule of law. Despite reforms, the central government and its military, the Tatmadaw, maintain extensive control over natural resources and illicit activities that continue to disenfranchise populations, threatening civilian security and stability.
In January 2016, the Department of the Interior began the first programmatic review of the federal coal leasing program in 30 years to address a range of issues, including the return to the taxpayer and coal leasing impacts on the environment. The review will analyze the how, when, and where to lease; how to account for the environmental and public health impacts of federal coal production; and how to ensure American taxpayers are earning a fair return for the use of their public resources. The review is essential, as the U.S. has the largest coal reserves in the world and produces around 1 billion tons of coal annually. The federal government is the largest single holder of coal reserves, with 87 billion short tons, almost one-third of domestic reserves. Production of federal coal accounted for 40 percent of total U.S. production in 2013 and has hovered around this number over the last decade.
In 2012, the Forest Service adopted the Colorado Roadless Rule to protect 4 million acres of wild national forest in the state, but the rule included a loophole to permit bulldozing roads for coal mining on 20,000 acres of roadless national forest in the North Fork Valley of the Gunnison County; the North Fork Valley is often considered the organic agriculture heartland of Colorado. The exception allows Arch Coal to clear roads and install industrial pads on about 20,000 acres of national forest land. The proposal provides for 350 million tons of coal to be mined. The loophole was thrown out by the U.S. District Court of Colorado in 2015 after the High Country Conservation, Earthjustice, and Wild Earth Guardians sued the Forest Service for failing to consider the climate change impacts. The lawsuit was seminal; as a result, the Obama Administration released new draft guidance on how federal agencies and departments should consider climate change impacts in their National Environmental Policy Act reviews.
Although the Commerce Clause gives Congress the power to regulate the oil and gas industry, it is largely left to the states-- enabling differing management strategies. Most oil and gas producing states have established conservation commissions, consisting of trade associations and industry officials, to regulate nearly all aspects of oil and gas. Oil and gas companies have thus been able to forge close ties with state regulators.
The primary statute governing oil and gas development in Colorado is The Oil and Gas Conservation Act (1951), giving the Colorado Oil and Gas Commission (1930s) the dual authority to regulate and develop the industry. Further, the COGCC’s “additional powers” give it implied authority to regulate almost all aspects of oil and gas operations. As such, efforts by local government to challenge rules have found it nearly impossible to prevail in court if challenged on state preemption grounds.
The strategy shift from self-sufficiency to self-reliance, or producing for the world market, broke down during the global food price crisis of 2007-08, when India and other rice exporters introduced export restrictions followed by an export ban. Releasing public stocks and providing consumer subsidies were among the most common measures applied to contain the problem of rising food prices-- a record purchase of rice and wheat by the Food Corporation of India in 2008 created an opportunity for the Indian government to release sufficient stock into the market to stabilize prices. This paper aims to defend the historical legacy of entitlements in India and thus the role of the Public Distribution System, as well as to refute those policies advocated by India's structural adjustment program.
As political Islam evolved, so with it has the question of who among the various powers in the region would control the potent new religious and political force. In Pakistan, Islamization served to associate devout bourgeoisie and Islamic intellectuals with a system that allowed the governing elites to remain-- in the form of military hierarchy. More significantly, it prevented the masses from rebelling in the name of Allah. The Iranian Revolution sought to use political Islam as a way to break its isolation and gain regional hegemony through "bridging the Arab-Persian divide" and were by far the most successful in mobilizing the poor, the merchants, and the secular middle class against injustice at the hand of the shah's governing elite and forced westernization through the White Revolution. Yet, the revolution was soon met with Saudi Arabia throwing its petrol-fuelled wealth behind a the most puritanical, conservative approach, funding the growth of any group or party that preached their Wahhabite creed anywhere in the world to reassert their own regional dominance. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the United States' win in the Persian Gulf War, the former sponsors of jihad in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the US and Gulf oil monarchies, lost concern for their proxies, and the Taliban and the evolving al-Qaeda turned against them-- garnering wide-reaching implications for the stability of the Muslim world.
Understanding the new prominence Iran had achieved through the defeat of Iraq and the Soviet Union, Israel seized the opportunity to rebuild its alliance with the US by focusing on their new shared enemy of radical Islam, in which Iran-- not Saudi Arabia-- was the most significant progenitor. The newfound prominence Iran experienced after the Persian Gulf War mirrors that which they were granted with the US occupation in Iraq, as it removed Saddam Hussein from power and both Coalition Provisional Authority proclamations and the Shia president installed pursued debilitating sectarian policies, cementing Shia dominance and metastasizing Sunni grievances.
This paper summarizes and analyzes the work of Trita Parsi's Treacherous Alliance, Gilles Kepel's Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, Vali Nasir's The Shia Revival, and Pinkaj Mishra's From the Ruin of Empire, as well as the development of Iraq's oil resources post-occupation to determine how major geopolitical shifts-- Mongol invasions, the formation of the Saudi Kingdom, colonialism, independence, the Arab-Israeli Wars of 1967 and 1973, The Iranian Revolution, the 1977 coup in Pakistan, the Iran-Iraq War, the Persian Gulf War, 9/11, the US occupation of Iraq, and oil-- have influenced the ideology and alliances of political Islam. The aim of the paper is not only to understand political Islam's evolution (or devolution?), but to determine how significantly Israel, US-Israeli relations, and US-Saudi relations have exacerbated radical Islam, to understand the foundation of ISIS, to analyze the implications of the Shia Revival, and to chart a course for possible regional balance in efforts to eliminate the political need for Islamic extremism. As Gilles Kepel notes, "to measure its (the Islamist upsurge of the 1970s') full impact, we need to identify its many dimensions and investigate the different periods of gestation, the networks, the lines of communication, the tendencies and ideas that composed it, within the context of the demographic, cultural, economic and social realities of the decade."
Argentina is also assessed as its the third largest grower of soybeans in the world, behind Brazil and the United States, as well as the world’s third largest grower of genetically engineered crops-- thus using a massive amount of atrazine and glyphosate. According to Al Jazeera, "Argentina's leaders say it has turned the country's economy around, while others say the consequences are a dramatic surge in cancer rates, birth defects and land theft." ("Modifying Argentina: GM soy and socio-environmental change," "The “soy-ization” of Argentina: The dynamics of the “globalized” privatization regime in a peripheral context").
This proposal focuses on the pesticides atrazine and glysophate, as their study illuminates the controversies outlined-- corporate control of science, monopolization of the agrochemical market, perpetuation and legitimization of monocultures, weak chemical legislation, and weak EPA monitoring and regulation. Myriad conflicts surround atrazine, the second most commonly used herbicide in the U.S. Not only is atrazine heavily used, it is also the most common chemical contaminant of ground and surface water. Because atrazine is applied to crops used as livestock feed, its residues are found not only in crops, but also in milk and meat. While not considered acutely toxic to people, atrazine’s long-term human health concerns include reproductive, developmental, and possible carcinogenic effects. Atrazine gained notoriety for its potential hormonal effects when exposure was shown to feminize male frogs in studies conducted by a University of California Berkeley professor; further studies confirm chemical castration in mammals, though Syngenta has attempted to suppress the scientific findings. Atrazine was outlawed in Europe in 2003 after links to prostate and breast cancer and its accumulation in groundwater.
Additionally, myriad conflicts surround glyphosate, the most commonly used herbicide in the world. In 2015 WHO classified glyphosate as "probably carcinogenic in humans.” In November 2015, the European Food Safety Authority published an updated assessment report on glyphosate, concluding that "the substance is unlikely to be genotoxic (i.e. damaging to DNA) or to pose a carcinogenic threat to humans." Glysophate is soon to be banned in The Netherlands, and is banned in Brazil and Sri Lanka.
The literature reviews will analyze the conclusions of environmental and human health impacts of atrazine and glyphosate. The ultimate purpose of the proposal is to determine conclusive scientific and economic understandings and develop key environmental policy to better regulate the pesticide industry internationally. ("Hermaphroditic, demasculinized frogs after exposure to the herbicide at low ecologically relevant doses," "Atrazine inhibition of testosterone production in rat males following peripubertal exposure," “A Qualitative Meta-Analysis Reveals Consistent Effects of Atrazine on Freshwater Fish and Amphibians," "Ecological risk assessment of atrazine in North American surface water," "Influence of glyphosate-resistant cropping systems on weed species shifts and glyphosate-resistant weed populations, " "Developmental Effects of Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals in Wildlife and Humans," "Impacts of atrazine in aquatic ecosystems," "An assessment of the genetic toxicity of atrazine: Relevance to human health and environmental effects," "Atrazine Disrupts the Hypothalamic Control of Pituitary-Ovarian Function").
For this plan, I utilize GIS to show the vast expanse of affected water resources and those projected to be affected—particularly in the Coal Creek River watershed, Ohio Creek Watershed, and the Carbon Creek Watershed. GIS will be used to compile relevant watershed information (past, present, and future) for analysis. GIS will serve as the backbone for the watershed and water quality analysis by gathering together key data and analytical components for review and analysis.
Managed money has moved from equities, to real estate, and finally to commodities. The Bank of International Settlements has documented the scale and growth of outstanding amounts of OTC commodity-linked derivatives for commodities other than gold and precious metals increased from $5.85 trillion in June 2006 to $7.05 trillion in June 2007 to as much as $12.39 in June 2008 . In 2008, World Bank President Zoellick warned that warned that 33 countries were at risk of social upheaval as a result of rising food costs . In 2008 maize prices doubled, wheat prices increased by 50 percent, and rice increased as much at 70 percent. Food prices had risen by 75 percent since 2005, and world grain reserves were at their lowest, at 54 days . Analyzing the ideology, economics and regulations behind the financialization of commodities provides key insight into the causes of the financial crisis.
The crisis is illuminated through fundamental changes in the capitalist world economy and the public’s understanding of those changes. This paper will focus on three factors that contributed to the financial crisis as manifested in the financialization of commodity markets. First, generally, during financial booms the wider public has little interest in financial regulation or the exponential growth of the finance sector. The distributional consequences remain highly technical, and therefore unclear to the general public. Thus the issue has little political traction . It can be argued that the saliency financialization of commodities was misconstrued to the public by Goldman Sachs and other major financial institutions. Second, money manager capitalism-- the economic system that has come to dominate the global economy in recent decades-- is characterized by highly leveraged funds seeking maximum returns in an environment that systematically under-prices risk. Finally, regulatory failures, compounded by over-reliance on market self-regulation overall lack of transparency, financial integrity and irresponsible behavior, have led to excessive risk-taking, unsustainably high asset prices, irresponsible leveraging and high levels of consumption fueled by easy credit and inflated asset price. Concerning commodity speculation, the economic system and regulatory failures are integrally linked. As the global financial system became fragile with the continuing implosion of the US housing finance market commodity speculation increasingly emerged as an important area for such financial investment. The United States became a major arena for such speculation largely due to the deregulation that made it possible for more players to enter into commodity trading. The rise of investments in commodity indexes is the most important cause for the explosion of commodities prices in recent years. Further, commodities merely represented the latest asset class identified by money manager capitalism as ripe for financialization .
Crystal Edmunds
Winter Quarter 2010
Professor Napit
The third great wave of outsourcing, the new scramble for Africa's land, the global land grab, agro-colonialism-- land acquisition and immense agricultural investments grew out of the 2007-2008 food crisis. “It started back in ancient times, with the theft of Africa’s intellectual property,” Dr. Lewis said, adding, “Again African people are pawns in the scramble for their gold and diamonds. But, more important is the scramble for Africa’s hottest commodity today, Africa’s farmland," said Dr. Lewis, who serves as an African adviser and consultant to the Diaspora Union (Shabazz, 2009).
When commodity prices soared, arid nations in the Middle East and Asia with large populations and an abundance of capital began searching for cheaper imports. Between the start of 2007 and the middle of 2008, The Economist index of food prices rose 78 percent; soybeans and rice both soared more than 130 percent. Meanwhile, food stocks slumped. In the five largest grain exporters, the ratio of stocks to consumption-plus-exports fell to 11 percent in 2009, below its ten-year average of over 15 percent (Economist). “They lost faith in the international market’s ability to take care of food,” says Devlin Kuyek, a researcher with GRAIN, a non-profit that supports small-scale farmers. “They took a more aggressive approach by looking for ways to buy up farmland for their own food needs.” While land acquisitions by foreign private investors have taken place on a small scale for decades, a changed economic and political environment seems to have accelerated this process.
With the increases in investment and attention comes a subsequent turn away from trade, markets and efficiency (If words were food, nobody would go hungry, 2009). Instead of buying food on world markets, governments and politically influential companies buy or lease farmland abroad, often the most fertile regions of a given poor country, grow the crops there and ship them back (Cornering foreign fields, 2009). Huge investment funds have already poured hundreds of billions of dollars into booming financial markets for commodities like wheat, corn and soybeans; a few big private investors are acting on their predictions that the world’s need for food will greatly increase— by buying farmland, fertilizer, grain elevators and shipping equipment (Henriques, 2008). Worrisome predictions that over the next 20 years the world’s population will increase by a third, demand for food and energy will increase by half and demand for fresh water will increase by 30 percent, have catalyzed such controversial agreements (Parker, 2009) Support for agro-fuels is also fueling the search for cultivatable land.
“It’s going on big time,” said Brad Cole, president of Cole Partners Asset Management in Chicago, which runs a fund of hedge funds focused on natural resources. “There is considerable interest in what we call ‘owning structure’— like United States farmland, Argentine farmland, and English farmland— wherever the profit picture is improving” (Henriques, 2008) Through government-backed corporations and sovereign wealth funds, the World Bank estimates 50 million hectare, roughly equivalent to half of China’s farmland, have been bought for food production (Kielburger, 2010). Further, public investments and aid in agricultural development have been steadily decreasing, allowing sufficient space for the encroachment of private investment. US aid to agriculture in Africa has dropped 85 percent since the 1980s. It has spent 20 times as much on food aid as on helping Africans better feed themselves. Other donors and developing countries' governments themselves neglected agriculture (Bertini, 2009). FAO estimates that developing countries need an additional $30 billion per year investment to double food production by 2050, which is needed to feed growing populations and ensure basic right to food (Hallam).
Putting a conservative figure on the land’s value, IFPRI calculates that these deals are worth $20 billion- $30 billion-- at least ten times as much as an emergency package for agriculture recently announced by the World Bank and 15 times more than the American administration’s new fund for food security (Cornering foreign fields, 2009). Klaus Deininger, an economist specializing in land policy at the World Bank, estimates that 10 to 30 percent of available arable land could be up for grabs, although only a fraction of the potential number of lease and sale agreements have been signed. About 95 percent of the cropland in Asia has been utilized, thus it is in Latin America and Africa where most of the demand for increased arable land will concentrate. (De Schutter, 2009). And according to FAO, only about 14 percent of the suited land in Africa is presently cultivated. Given Africa's resource endowments, natural resources are at the heart of FDI flows to the continent. Increases in investment flows are directly linked to global demand for energy and commodities such as oil. gold, copper, aluminum, and nickel. (UNCTAD, 2008) The perceived availability of land in Africa has attracted the attention of governments eager to tap into global demand for food and fuel (Cotula, 2009).
The deals are private so details are difficult to identify. But, most acquisitions are long-term leases, concessions or outright purchases ranging in length from 30 to 99 years (Kielburger, 2010). China is the leading nation leasing African farm land. Critics say the Asian nation has grabbed huge amounts of Africa’s natural resources while at the same time dumping cheaply manufactured products and indulging in an unequal trade policy (Shabazz, 2009).
Further, despite the spate of media reports and some isolated examples of forerunner research, there is still very little empirical evidence about international land deals and their positive and negative impacts (Cotula, 2009). African ties to the land transcend economic and utilitarian considerations (Kugelman, 2009). Some argue that these investments could mark the beginning of a fundamental change in the geopolitics of international agriculture (Kugelman, 2009).
Despite its history of degradation and extreme poverty, Niger is one of the world's foremost examples of a green economy . As new assessments by UNEP indicate that nature may represent between 50 percent and 90 percent of incomes in the developing world-- Niger has progressively reinstated trees, soil and water as capital . A farmer-managed, agro-environmental transformation has occurred over the past three decades in the West African Sahel-- the largest environmental transformation in the region, and perhaps even in Africa. At its cornerstone is community-based forest ecosystem management-- not UN-REDD or other multilateral initiatives. As Chris Reij from the Centre for International Cooperation has so eloquently stated, “The changes that have been observed (in Niger) suggest that farmers are not the helpless victims of environmental change, but rather agents who try to make the best use of productive and investment opportunities. ”
Further, the overarching lesson gathered from the basins of the Jordan, the Nile, and the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and other regions of water dispute is not that worsening scarcity will lead inevitably to water wars. It is rather that unilateral actions to engage in a water development initiatives in the absence of a treaty or institutional mechanism that safeguards the interests of other countries in the basin is the most destabilizing, often spurring hostility before cooperation is pursued. (World Summit on Sustainable Development, 2001). The way the Nile is managed in coming decades will have worldwide implications (Terje Tvedt, The River Nile In The Post-Colonial Age, 2010).