Extraterritorial state responsibility

Extraterritorial state responsibilityThe plundering of resources in sub-Saharan Africa

Extraterritorial state responsibility.The plundering of resources in sub-Saharan Africa.

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David Gallar, Isabel Vara Sánchez and Sara Martínez Frías, Instituto de Sociología y Estu-dios Campesinos (Institute for Sociology and Rural Studies) – ISEC –.

Jessica Duncan, from the Centre for Food Policy, City University, London.

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Photography: Ana Belén Simón

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THE PLUNDERING OF RESOURCES IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA 5

INTRODUCTION

PART ITHE CONCEPTUAL CONTEXT OF FOOD SOVEREIGNTY

FOOD SOVEREIGNTY

The principles and main elements of Food Sovereignty

Human Rights and Food Sovereignty

Food Sovereignty and Gender

The situation of African farmers with regards to Food Sovereignty

THE WORLD GOVERNANCE OF FOOD SOVEREIGNTY: THREATS AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR FOOD SOVEREIGNTY

The Committee on World Food Security (CFS)

Principles and Directives for the Large-scale Acquisition and Leasing of Land

Food Sovereignty and the European Union

PART IIINSTRUMENTS FOR THE COMMERCIALISATION OF AGRICULTURE AND FOOD

ALLIANCE FOR A GREEN REVOLUTION IN AFRICA: UNLEARNED LESSONS

COMMERCIAL AGREEMENTS BETWEEN THE EUROPEAN UNION AND SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

The EPAs and African regional disintegration

The impact of EPAs upon Food Sovereignty in Sub-Saharan Africa

PUBLIC INSTRUMENTS FOR THE CORPORATE IMPLANTATION OF THE SPANISH STATE IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

Spain’s Commerce and investment in Sub-Saharan Africa

The Instituto Español de Comercio Exterior (Spanish Institute for Foreign Trade – ICEX)

Spanish international cooperation: investment as a tool for development policies

The Africa Plan

PART IIITHE MAIN THREATS TO FOOD SOVEREIGNTY IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

The fi shing industry and fi sh-farming

Agricultural Production

Land accumulation

Genetic erosion and the loss of biodiversit

The extraterritorial responsibility of states and of transnational companies as a tranversal element of the threats to African food sovereignty

RECOMMENDATIONS

For the world governance of food security

Concerning the Principles and Directives for the Large-scale Acquisition and Leasing of Land

Concerning Food Sovereignty and the European Union

Concerning fi shing

Concerning agricultural investment

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Index

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PAREN, AQUÍ VIVE GENTE6

Increasingly over the past few years, many Af-

rican countries have seen their populations’

access to food come under threat and become

restricted. Amongst other reasons, this is a consequence of the ever more aggressive imple-mentation of agro-industrial policies promoted by African as well as foreign governments. The result of these policies is the growing presence of foreign multinationals on the African continent, many of which are European – including Span-ish ones – and that hoard and exploit its natural resources in order to meet the demand in their countries of origin as well as in other countries; all of this being done at a rate that is dictated by the current global food industry, also known as “agribusiness”.

As will be exposed in this report, the way in

which this production outline (considering food as merchandise) and the manner in which it is implemented in the majority of African coun-tries violates human rights – including the right to food – and threatens the Food Sovereignty of African people.

This report analyses the main threats to Food Sovereignty in Africa and sets out three case studies researched by Veterinarios Sin Fronteras in three African countries: Mozambique, Senegal and Uganda. Finally, as a result of the joint iden-tifi cation with several African farming and fi shing organisations, recommendations are proposed to the various key decision-makers enabling progress towards guaranteeing Food Rights and Sovereignty in Africa.

In the 2010 report “The state of food insecu-rity in the world”, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimated that there were 925 million malnourished persons in the world. Food insecurity, defi ned as the lack of access to suffi cient, nutritious, harmless and

culturally adapted food, aff ects 1,300 million more people who suff er from nourishment defi -ciencies”, as well as a billion people who suff er from obesity (ibid).

The fi gures for Sub-Saharan Africa are devastat-ing: 30% of the population experiences famine and there are 239 million undernourished per-sons (FAO, 2010). The situation continues to

get worse due to the on-going international and national policies that promote the development of industrial agriculture and the new threats made by the international political context of the exploitation and privatising of African natural re-sources.

The fact that the amount of undernourished people is incessantly rising in the world and particularly in Africa confi rms the observation that this is not a technical and agronomical productivity issue, but that it is instead a politi-cal issue of access to natural resources and to food that depends upon the organisation of the world system, as well as the role of the food in-dustry system protected by international trade institutions. At the same time, the proliferation of international institutions and instruments that have been created to fi ght poverty and to increase food security is inversely proportional to the effi ciency that they have eff ectively dem-onstrated.

It should be underlined that the problem of

Introduction

The problem of famine in the world is a fundamentally rural and more specifi cally feminine problem


famine in the world is a fundamentally rural and more specifically feminine problem: 70% of undernourished persons live in rural areas (FAO, 2008) and it is estimated that of these, seven out of ten persons who die of starvation are women and young girls, which leads to the need to reconsider agricultural, rural and devel-opment policies.

The propositions for the resolution of these is-sues revolve around three concepts: the Right to Food (RF), Food Security (FS) and Food Sover-eignty (FSov).

At Veterinarios Sin Fronteras we politically uphold the idea of Food Sovereignty as an inte-grated proposition that enables the fulfi lment of the Right to Food, also including an alternative development context that addresses the social, economic, environmental and cultural conse-quences of the Western development model and its food industry system.

The proposition of Food Sovereignty, originating in the Southern farmers’ movements and organ-ised by the La Vía Campesina (LVC) organisation and complemented by various sectors of civil society, represents an alternative based upon the debunking of the “myths” of the current de-velopment model. It proposes the creation of a localised food industry system in which farmers, persons involved in small-scale fi shing and herd-ing can have access to natural resources and apply their traditional management systems, which have been proven to be able to durably meet their needs and those of their communi-ties. All of this is included within a proposal that furthermore defends the environmental aspect by envisaging the eff ects of large-scale food in-dustry on climate change and environmental pollution.

In Sub-Saharan Africa the defence of Food Sovereignty and access to resources by the aforementioned sectors is in danger and is more and more worrying. In this report, Veterinarios Sin Fronteras aim to show how the threat to Food Sovereignty manifests itself, putting particular emphasis upon the way in which the presence of

European – including Spanish – companies con-stitutes one of the main factors that threatens Food Sovereignty.

Veterinarios Sin Fronteras delegates visited Mo-zambique, Senegal and Uganda twice; the fi rst visit took place in November and December of 2010 and the second in April of 2011. On both occasions, the organisation met with farmers’, fi shermen’s, fi shwives’ representatives and leaders, non-government organisations, public authorities and with the representatives of vari-ous European companies involved in agricultural and fi shery operations in the aforementioned countries.

These visits gave rise to the three case stud-ies that will be exposed in this report and that illustrate the negative eff ects entailed by the promotion, on the part of African and European governments, of agro-industrial policies that ignore the rights of local communities, strip-ping them of the access to resources and, as a result, of their Food Sovereignty. Exposing these will show the importance of disposing of the de-

1 An organisation that brings together 149 farmers’ organisations from 69 countries around the world that in turn represent mil-lions of rural families.

CHIMOIO LOCAL MARKET, MOZAMBIQUE.


liberate recognition within international legal instruments of the so-called “extraterritorial re-sponsibility” of states for what their citizens and companies do in other nations.

This report therefore consists of six chapters. The fi rst chapter addresses the development of the concept of Food Sovereignty, positioning the main thematic axes, their links with women’s is-sues and those of farmers’ movements and other agents for their practical construction.

The second chapter analyses the existing gov-ernance spaces for Food Sovereignty on the international and regional stages, putting par-ticular emphasis upon the recent reform of the FAO’s Committee on Food Security, which can potentially open up new intervention spaces for civil society. It also studies the principles and directives concerning large-scale land acquisi-tion that have been deployed (or that are being established) by various international institutions and bodies, as well as the European Union’s main policies that aff ect, or have the potential to aff ect Food Sovereignty in Africa.

Chapters 3 and 4 will address the situation of Sub-Saharan Africa in the context of the “instru-ments for the commercialisation of agriculture and food” that are being implemented on the continent, paying specifi c attention to the role of public policies that link African countries to the European Union. Therefore, we will present its role of its application on the African continent by means of the AGRA initiative (Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa); we will analyse the potential eff ects that would be entailed by the signature of the EPAs or Economic Partnership Agreements, as well as situating the importance of commercial exchanges between both regions.

Afterwards, chapter 5 will pay particular atten-tion to the public policies that link Spain and Spanish companies to countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. In the fi nal part of this chapter we will comment on the role of cooperation policies, considering a critical position regarding the vari-ous Cooperation Plans as well as the successive Africa Plans that, beyond their good intentions, are used in practice depending upon the politi-

cal and commercial interests of the State and of Spanish companies. This way we will conduct a critical analysis based on the concept of “anti-cooperation”.

In chapter 6, entitled “The main threats to Food Sovereignty in Sub-Saharan Africa”, we present the case studies and the various threats are stud-ied according to the following aspects: industrial fi shing, agricultural production, land-hoarding, and the genetic erosion and loss of biodiversity.

At the end of the report, Veterinarios Sin Fron-teras formulates a set of recommendations that reflect and uphold the claims of several Europe-an and African non-government organisations, as well as those of African farmers’ fi shermens’ and fi shwives’ organisations.

TRADITIONAL FARM WORK TOOL, MOZAMBIQUE.

PART I

THE CONCEPTUAL CONTEXT OF FOOD SOVEREIGNTY



WOMEN WORKING IN THE PROCESSING OF FISH, SANT LOUIS, SENEGAL

The various declarations of intent, some action programmes, political, theoretical and ideologi-cal discussions have revolved around three basic concepts with which we must try to treat the problem of famine and food insecurity and pro-pose specifi c contexts of action that address its true causes: the Right to Food (RA), Food Secu-rity (FS) and Food Sovereignty (FSov).

In this chapter we will develop the content neces-sary to acknowledge the signifi cation of the Food Sovereignty (FSov) concept, off ering an historic and conceptual explanation of its development. We will address the analysis and proposals made in the context of FSov regarding the integrated issue of the means of production, the handling of natu-ral resources, relationships between the rural and urban worlds, North-South relationships, the ex-change of knowledge and the condition of women.

The origins of the FSov concept stem from La Vía Campesina (LVC), an organisation that brings together 150 farmers’ organisations from 70 countries around the world that in turn represent millions of rural families 2. In 1996 LVC published a proposition shared with other social organisa-tions as a tool with which to confront the use made by institutions of the FS terminology, cor-responding to an industrial agriculture model specifi c to neoliberal globalisation.

This proposal arose from the perspective of small producing communities and on the ba-sis of the acknowledgement that the issues of famine and poverty particularly aff ect the rural areas of developing countries. The considera-tion therefore stems from farmers’ movements in the South who suff er from the measures of restructuring Plans and the regulations imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB) and the World Trade Organisa-tion (WTO) aimed at bringing an end to foreign debt. Nonetheless, this proposal integrates and situates farmers in the South and in the North in the same groups aff ected and excluded by inter-national agrarian and commercial policies.

The FSov concept has incorporated other agents and opinions so as to provide integrated answers to the global problems of present-day citizens (and of future generations). It has been adopted by various Civil Society Organisations (CSO) and Non-Government Organisations (NGO), result-ing in the generation of a movement in favour of FSov in which farmers’, rural workers’, herd-ers’ and fi sherfolks’ organisations, NGOs groups from the academic world, organisations from the environmentalist social movement, femi-nists responsible consumption movements, etc. take part in the creation and application of the concept. At the present time, the World Forums on Food Sovereignty (WFFSov) and the Interna-tional Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty

Food Sovereignty


* Chapter written by Sara Martínez Frías, Isabel Vara Sánchez, David Gallar Hernández - Instituto de Sociología y Estudios Cam-pesinos (Institutefor Sociology and Rural Studies) – ISEC –.

3 http://www.foodsovereignty.org/public/index/indexeng2.php; http://foodsovereignty-org.web34.winsvr.net/



(IPC) 3 are, along with LVC, the collective spaces of creation of FSov.

Within the variety of specifi c defi nitions of FSov, one of the most complete ones is given by the WFFSov of Havana: “food sovereignty is the way towards the eradication of famine and malnutri-tion and the guaranteeing of lasting and durable food security for all peoples. By food sovereignty we mean the peoples’ right to defi ne their own durable policies and strategies for the produc-tion, distribution and consumption of food that guarantees the right to food for all the popu-

lation, based upon small- and medium-scale production, respecting its own cultures and the diversity of farming, fi shing and livestock tech-niques means of trade and rural management, in which women play a fundamental role” (WFFSov, 2001). In turn, the Nyeleni WFFSov of 2007 came up with a more concise defi nition: “Food sover-eignty is the people’s right to adequate food from a health and cultural standpoint, obtained by means of durable and ecological methods, and their right to defi ne their own food and agricul-tural systems”.

3 http://www.foodsovereignty.org/public/index/indexeng2.php; http://foodsovereignty-org.web34.winsvr.net/

ASSOCIATION JUNE 16 FARMERS, MANICA PROVINCE, MOZAMBIQUE


In the Rome declaration “Food Sovereignty: a future without famine”, LVC (1996) envisaged seven principles “as a fundamental context nec-essary for food security”:

1. Food, a Basic Human Right; 2. Agrarian Reform for FSov; 3. the Protection of Natural Resources; 4. the Reorganisation of the Food Trade; 5. the Global Elimination of Famine; and 6. Democratic Control.

For its part, the WFFSov (2002) proposes an out-line of four “pillars” of FSov, which are:

1. The Right to food; 2. Access to productive resources; 3. Dominant agro-ecological production; and 4. Trade and local markets,

although at Veterinarios Sin Fronteras we con-sider that they do not give suffi cient visibility to aspects relating to the need for more democracy in the global handling of food and the develop-ment model (Windfuhr & Jonsen, 2005:16).

In any case, the demand for the Right to Food

(RF) is basic to the creation of FSov. This, as we shall see later, entails referring to a legal system of international and national regulations that protect persons’ rights to food that is adequate in quantity and in quality – harmless, nutritious and culturally acceptable – whether by means of physical access to markets or by means of ac-cess to productive resources – land, water, air, seeds and knowledge.

On of the issues upon which a large part of this report will concentrate is the access to produc-tive resources, which constitutes another of the essential elements within the concept of FSov, which in turn must correspond to a change in the agro-ecological productive model and a localised food industry system. The aim would therefore be to promote access to the durable use of their land, water, genetic resources and other natu-ral resources by small-scale producers’ groups, groups involved in herding, small-scale fi shing and indigenous populations, and equitably shar-

ing the benefi ts derived from its use (Windfuhr & Jonsen, 2005:16).

Cultural diversity and the knowledge associ-

ated to each agrarian, rural and indigenous culture, along with the associated food cultures, are fundamental elements for achieving FSov, since they entail a security in the durable use of natural resources, integrating their handling as part of their culture and even giving them a sacred and existential dimension. The respect of cultural diversity and of the products of the management of natural and social resources are part of the adaptation to biophysical diff erences, providing appropriate solutions in the shape of local varieties and races, farming and indigenous knowledge, social systems for collective man-agement, gastronomy and food cultures, etc.

FSov can only be achieved by means of an agro-

ecological productive model in which there is an ecological handling of natural resources in their technical and agronomic perspective, and a social and ideological transition towards a new paradigm that transforms the hegemonic model of production, transformation, distribution, con-sumption and waste management, modifying the legislation and the institutions that prevent their development and promote a globalised food industry system. This implies situating dif-ferent scopes of action in an integrated manner, off ering a fundamental perspective that calls for the participative and democratic control of the food industry system as a whole: on the part of farmers’ and rural social movements, ur-ban consumers’ movements, environmentalist movements, scientists linked to the paradigm of ecology and complexity, etc.

As many studies can confi rm (Pretty, 2006; IAASTD, 2008; Uphoff & Altieri et al, 1999; Badg-eley et al, 2007), traditional peasant agriculture has demonstrated its productive capacity with the appropriate technologies and knowledge for ecological handling, even in adverse condi-tions. As Altieri suggests (2009), traditional agricultural ecosystems in which complex and

The principles and main elements of Food Sovereignty



diversifi ed crop systems reach high productive outputs, with the ability to respond to stressful environmental conditions, with a high degree of resistance, and handling great biodiversity – that furthermore entails a reduced in situ re-sistance to GMOs. The IAASTD’s (International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development) underlines that the traditional and local knowledge systems improve the quality of farmland and biodiver-sity, as well as the handling of nutrients, pests and water, and the ability to respond to changing environmental stresses associated to the cli-mate (Altieri, 2009:33). Nonetheless, this rural knowledge necessary for handling biodiversity and agricultural ecosystems are permanently under threat in the same way as their material support and initiatives are required for partici-pative agrarian extension and communication in order to maintain, develop and complete this knowledge in conjunction with the appropriate techniques and technologies that arise from par-ticipative agro-ecological research.

The protection of the health of the ecosystems is a sine qua non condition for enabling the viabil-ity of durable rural agriculture in the same way as this type of rural agriculture is essential for the protection of the global environment: “ag-riculture and people to feed the world and cool the Planet” (LVC, 2009a:74; 2009b). Indeed, according to GRAIN (2009:25-33) the current food industry system represents approximately between 44% and 57% of global greenhouse gas emissions, whereas a model based upon lo-cal rural agriculture could reduce between one half and three quarters of the global emissions of these gases, given that rural agriculture 1) is able to recover the organic material in the soil, avoiding about 30% of the gases, 2) represents a reduction of the production of meat and the reintegration of livestock breeding and farming, which would avoid between 5% and 9% of gases, 3) is situated within a context of local markets with a high incidence of fresh foods, avoiding between 10% and 12% of the emission of gases, and 4) would stem the need to reclaim new land from forests for extensive farming devoted to food raw materials or agricultural fuels, avoiding

between 15% and 18% of greenhouse gases.

The integration of livestock breeding and ag-riculture is another key element in any kind of durable agrarian management (IAASTD, 2008). And indeed, although this report will be refer-ring particularly to the agricultural and fi sheries issue, all the questions envisaged can and must be transposed to the handling of livestock and forestry. In short, the focus here refers to the handling of natural resources from an agro-ecological viewpoint and must be applied to any domain.

For Veterinarios Sin Fronteras the priority of the local markets is the corollary for the entire change to the food industry model that has been detailed until now and to achieve an integrated and integrating vision from the viewpoint of FSov. It means promoting the right to produc-


CORN DRYING IN THE SUN, MOZAMBIQUE.


tion and the access to productive resources by means of rural agro-ecological management, relocating the food industry system because of its ecological, economic, social and cultural consequences; in this context the right to food can be fulfi lled and controlled by means of more horizontal community processes. In this sense, the revaluation of local food cultures is deemed to be of great importance to resist the “food im-perialism that attacks the diversity of people’s food cultures, their national, cultural and ethnic identities” (WFFSov, 2001).

Finally, as we have repeatedly maintained at Veterinarios Sin Fronteras and in several fora, agrarian reform must be complete, envisaged not only as access to land, but also as part of a transition towards agro-ecological models. In this sense, land is not a generic resource, but must instead be considered as the access to fertile, unpolluted soils that are accessible for production, with decent pastures, etc. Agrarian reform must guarantee security in the ownership and use of land - for those who already worked it and those who did not own it – and must go hand-in-hand with public policies that promote and invest in small-scale rural agro-ecological agriculture: loans, agrarian extension, research, valuation in local markets, ecologically adapted social and material infrastructures, etc. This right to land must be implemented in a context of equality and non-discrimination for reasons

of gender, religion, race, social class or ideol-ogy: “the land belongs to those who work on it” (LVC, 1996). Particular attention must be given to access to land by women and the devolution of territories to their indigenous populations.

Rural agriculture, herding, small-scale fi shing and indigenous communities can feed themselves and feed the world. The entire context of the FSov policies that replace the dominant model is what guarantees a truly durable FS.


FLOUR OF MANIOC, MUBENDE UGANDA.


Half of the billion persons who suff er from fam-ine are farmers. A further 22% are landless farmers who often get by with the incomes ob-tained in precarious work conditions as landless labourers; a further 8% are to be found in rural communities that devote themselves to fi shing, hunting or gathering. In other words, 70% of people who suff er from famine live in rural areas (FAO, 2008).

These rural areas are in fact marginalised areas: not because they are “far away”, but because they often “do not have access to secure property deeds, to loans, to agrarian technical assistance services, to local markets and to agricultural research. This lack of access to productive re-sources or to work means that families cannot produce or purchase adequate food” (FIAN-LVC, 2004:6). The hoarding of fertile land, the priva-tising of water, the oligopolistic at all levels of the food industry system (seeds, fertilisers, her-bicides and pesticides, distribution, sales, food culture) does reach the remotest corners of all continents, displacing, substituting, or putting pressure on farmers, herders, small-scale fi sh-ing communities and indigenous peoples, who lose the control of productive resources to be able to feed themselves and feed their communi-ties.

From farmers’ point of view, FSov calls for the specifi c recognition of Farmers’ Rights as part of international legislation on Human Rights: the Universal Declaration, the International Cov-enant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), the Vienna Declaration on Human Rights and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The strategy of ad-hering to the language of Human Rights on the part of FSov in conjunction with the rhetoric of FR incorporates the concept of the interrelation-ship and interconnection between these Rights. Indeed, it is denounced that “the violation of the right to adequate food often goes hand-in-hand with the violation of other economic, social and cultural rights: the right to housing, to health or

to education. It is therefore the inattention to-wards the marginal rural areas that often leads to a multiple discrimination of this group” (FIAN-LVC, 2004:9).

Complaints have been made concerning several cases in which the civil and political rights of farmers in rural areas are systematically violated by means of harassment, political persecution, the lack of access to justice, etc, as well as the violation of the right to protect themselves and to fi ght for their livelihoods and to develop their political role via justice, trades unionism and as-sociationism. At the same time, the influence of international agrarian and commercial policies – and their transferral to the national level – such as the WTO, the WB, the IMF and other regional

Human Rights and Food Sovereignty


ANA, DISPLACED BY COFFEE COMPANY, KAFFE NEUMANN GRUPPE, UGANDA


macro-policies, represents a clear attack on the functions of local markets in the form of dump-ing 4 and other structural perturbations.

In view of this situation, LVC has created a “Declaration of Farmers’ Rights” (LVC, 2009c), considering farmers to be those persons who have “a direct and special relationship with the land and nature by means of the production of food and/or other agricultural products”, who engage in agriculture, livestock breeding, herd-ing, crafts linked to agriculture or other similar

occupations, whether they are farmers with land or without land 5. Due to the specifi c shortcom-ings presented by the attention to the condition of farmers around the world, it suggests as basic and fundamental instruments the signature of an International Agreement on Farmers’ Rights and the holding of an International Convention on the issue. In this sense, the Declaration warns that there is legal precedent that can be used to defend the rights of farmers but that has not yet been put into practical use 6.

5 “The term ‘farmer’ also applies to persons without land. According to the defi nition given by the UN Organjsation for Food and Agriculture (FAO 1984), the following categories of persons can be considered as being without land and it is probable that they are confronted to diffi culties to ensure their livelihoods: 1) families of farmers who have little or no land; 2) non-farming families in rural areas, with little or no land and whose members devote themselves to various activities such as fi shing, craftwork for local markets or the provision of services; 3) other herding, nomadic families, farmers who do crop rotation, hunters and gatherers, and persons with similar livelihoods” (Article I).

6 “The farmers’ fi ght is fully applicable to all international human rights instruments, including the special processes of the Hu-man Rights Council, which deal with the right to food, to housing, to water access, the defenders of human rights, indigenous peo-ples , racism and racial discrimination as well as women’s rights. These international UN instruments do not completely address or prevent human rights violations, particularly regarding farmers’ rights. We have observed the limitations of ISESCR as a tool for the protection of farmers’ rights. Apart from this, the Farmers’ Charter created by the UN in 1979, was unable to protect farmers-from international liberalisation policies. The other international agrgeements that are also concerned with farmers’ rights could not be applied either. These agreements include WTO Agreement 169, The Agreementt of Clause 8-J on Biodiversity, Point 14.60 Agenda 21 and the Cartagena Protocol. Even the UN conducted controversial policies that are adapted to the interests of transna-tional corporations instead of to the interests of farmers around the world” (section IV.


4 The practice of dumping consists in selling national products overseas at a price that is lower than that in the country of origin. It can have commercial goals (cornering markets via the elimination of rivals, or simply the defence of threatened markets), mone-tary goals (the acquisition of absolutely necessary foreign currencies) or political objectives (the economic and political servitude of importing countries). When the State has recourse to these practices, it uses more indirect means: subsidies and bonuses to exporting companies. But genereally speaking, dumping has harmful consequences for national consumption or for international trade, to which it introduces the idea of unfair competition. For this reason, all international agreements condemn this practice and foresee measues that eliminate the existing economic distortion (ant-dumping legislation, legal action).


7 UN Women (formerly the United Nations Development Fund for Women – UNIFEM), consulted on 10/11/2011 http://www.unwomen.org)

It is calculated that there are currently a billion people living in absolute poverty. According to the United Nation Organisation – UN Women, 70% of these are women. It is also estimated that seven out of ten people who die of starva-tion in the world are women and young girls 7. According to data from the FAO there are more than 1.6 billion rural women in the world, most of whom are farmers, who represent a quarter of the world’s population. These women would provide between 60% and 80% of the food pro-duction in the poorest countries and around 50% worldwide. Nevertheless, not only does this contribution go unnoticed, but it also contrasts with the fact that only 1% of land ownership and tenure is in the name of farming women.

In this sense, since its beginnings La Vía Camp-esina has always paid particular attention in its FSov proposition to the condition of omen in the rural agricultural world and to the way in which they are aff ected by the marginalisation suff ered by rural and agricultural areas in general. For its part, the 2001 WFFSov stated, in paragraph 23: “We acknowledge and appreciate the fundamen-

tal role of women in the production, harvesting, sales and transformation of agriculture and fi shing production and in the conservation and reproduction of peoples’ food cultures. We support women’s struggle to have access to productive resources, for their right to produce and consume local production”. In the acknowl-edgement of women’s essential labour for life it is pointed out that it is “women who feed the world” (Herrero & Vilella, 2009).

In short, FSov, which originated in social move-ments, is part of a stream of criticism of Western Modernism and its system of hegemonic ref-erences, that have been turned into a dogma for development and progress in the shape of economic growth and the domination of diff er-ences. Horizontality, equality and diversity are essential in social relationships and women are a basic part when it comes to putting into practice FSov (both for the ends s well as for the means). Farming women would be the counterparts of the patriarchal model of market- and benefi ts-oriented industrial agriculture.

Food Sovereignty and Gender

PEASANTS MOZAMBICAN.



Some of the people devoted to farming on the African continent, and their organisations, have begun to agree with the diagnosis made by LVC re-garding the agrarian and food issues, particularly in a continent that is fundamentally rural and in which food insecurity is a constant factor. This is nonetheless a new constant factor given that – as indicated by Holt-Giménez & Pajel (2010:73) – until 1970 the continent was self-suffi cient with regards to food, and was also an exporter of food, exporting an average of 1.3 million tonnes of food per year between 1966 and 1970 (BBC, 2006).

In the meantime, most of the people who suff er from starvation are farming families in rural areas who farm less than two hectares of land in margi-nalised conditions with regard to access to land, to funding and public investment, to agrarian ex-tension programmes and to local markets. Rural agriculture is besieged by the globalised food in-dustry system that floods the local markets with imported products and by the agricultural export policies that off er currencies to governments in order to pay the debts with the WB and the IMF. As in the case of Ethiopia during the famine of the 1908s, this means that the best and most fertile land was devote to growing crops for exportation.

In turn, the structural adjustment policies led to the implementation of this kind of policy that, if production was successful, led to an overproduc-tion of specifi c products and, therefore, to the plunging of its price on international markets; for example, the success of the programme in Ghana to expand cocoa provoked a drop in the internatio-

nal cocoa price of some 48% between 1986 and 1989, threatening to “increase the vulnerability of the whole economy according to the whims of the cocoa market” (Abugre, 1993). In 2002-2003, the collapse of the price of coff ee contributed to another food emergency in Ethiopia (Oxfam, 2006:20).

On the African continent there are many organisa-tions and collectives that are involved in achieving Food Sovereignty by means of the defence of their rights in the rural environment, the launching of various local market initiatives, the incorporation of agro-ecological agronomic techniques and the transition to and maintenance of traditional orga-nic agriculture, political training processes, etc. At the same time, one has to base oneself on the sur-vival of a strong rural fabric and a rural agriculture that, albeit marginalised, possesses an immense social base and that preserves the knowledge and structures necessary to create a food sovereignty movement. Whether by means of organisation or community-level natural resource management mechanisms, Sub-Saharan Africa contains great human and natural potential. The traditional ex-tensive agriculture systems, the informal seed systems, the herding systems, the integration of farming and livestock breeding, forestry mana-gement, small-scale fi shing communities on the coasts or by lakes, fi sh-farming projects, etc. are ecological means of managing natural resources that sustain the viability of the change in the mo-del in the context of FSov.

The situation of African farmers with regards to Food Sovereignty

At the present time, almost all African countries import food and

the continent imports 25% of its food (Green Revolution, 2008).



World Governance of Food Security:

Threats and Opportunities for Food Sovereignty *

The “The Right to Food. Urgent” campaign puts forwards four groups of causes of famine and food insecurity:

1. the unchecked exploitation of natural resources due to harvesting, pollution, ap-propriation and privatising; 2. diffi cult access to natural resources (land, water, biodiversity and forests) and their unfair distribution; 3. economic and commercial policies that are applied to the agrarian sector and that are derived from the World Trade Or-ganisation (WTO), and other regional and international policies such as the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) in the European Union (EU);4. natural disasters and humanitarian catas-trophes (Medina et al, 2004:37).

Many of these factors are the result of interna-tional or global systems that in turn regulate them, establishing governance methods and policies with implications for states and their citizens. This is why it is fundamental to under-stand worldwide food security policies and their contexts, taking into account not only the threats for food sovereignty, but also the opportunities.

To start off with, it is a good idea to explain what is meant by policies and governance. Policies can be defi ned quite simply as plans of action. In view of what is meant by government, “govern-ance implies – on the part of the State – more indirect and gentle forms of leadership, and re-

flects cooperative results, often involving a wide variety of civil society agents as well as govern-mental bureaucracy and direct intervention by the State” 9. It is “an interactive process between public state legislation and policies with private interests and agents” 10. More specifi cally, food governance envisages regulatory mechanisms in the domain of agriculture, food and health that are organised and sanctioned by the political sector in the context of a social formation and that in turn generate policies rules and regula-tions that intervene beyond the local domain but whilst having important local implications. To the aforementioned defi nition, we can add the regulations and practices that establish limita-tions and incentivise governments.

With regard to food sovereignty and world gov-ernance, it remains fundamental to understand international fi nancial institutions. Financial institutions such as the G8, the United Nations Organisation for Food and Agriculture (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Develop-ment (IFAD), the World Food Programme (WFP), the WB and the WTO amongst others, tend to present policies that are contradictory and of-ten promote the policies of the great powers. In this context, there is little or nothing left with which to promote the interests of the sustainable small-scale food producers and durable produc-tion approaches. At Veterinarios Sin Fronteras we believe that the current “global architecture” does not provide us with the food systems that we need and it is therefore important to unite

* Chapter written by Jessica Duncan, Centre for Food Policy, City University, London.

9 Ibíd., 15.

10 Ibíd., 81.



strengths around the creation of alternative pro-cesses that uphold the ability, structures and supportive and encouragement structures for the systems that we are aiming for.

In advance, during and after the 2007-2008 cri-sis, worldwide institutions involved in food and agriculture appeared or were reformed with new contexts and policies. This is partly due to the

fact that there is renewed interest in agricultural investment and food security, brought about by the vulnerability that was exposed by the price rises. Above all, the interconnection between food security issues and the need for multilat-eral to reduce the situation of insecurity stands out. This way the worldwide policy spaces are re-inforced in food and agriculture issues as well as by means of sectors and industries.


LAND GRABBING CONFERENCE, MALI.


The Committee on World Food Security (CFS), created on the recommendation of the 1974 World Food Conference, is used in the United Nations system as a forum for the revision and assessment of worldwide food security policies, including the production of foods and the physical and econo-mic access to it.

The 35th Session of the Committee on World

Food Security (CFS) took place between 14th and 17th October 2009. During the session, the CFS member states agreed upon a wide-ranging reform that off ers opportunities for progres-sing towards a political context regarding food sovereignty. Firstly, it situates itself as a “plat-form for debating and coordination with a view to strengthening collaborative action amongst governments, regional organisations, national organisations and agencies, NGOs, SCOs, food organisations and other important parties” (CFS: 2009/2: Paragraph 5.i), particularly those aff ec-ted by food insecurity. This political convergence is primordial for the commitment of SCOs and also to resist against policies and practices that are in contradiction with food security. It also aims to establish ties between worldwide policies and na-tional actions supporting the plans promoted by the countries themselves. Through greater centra-lisation of power and discussion, the opportunity to have a more specifi c orientation and to commit to the system in a more concerted, collective and cohesive way is envisaged.

The CFS refers to the Right to Food as a primor-dial objective. Resting on a well-established legal mechanism that has been approved and ratifi ed by the member states, it constitutes a strate-gic means of contextualising the debate. Before requesting that countries should develop food se-curity policies, a right to food-based approach reminds the countries of their commitment to the goal of food security for all.

Before the 36th Committee on World Food Securi-ty, the CFS invited civil society groups, NGOs and their networks to establish an autonomous me-chanism that would facilitate participation in the

CFS. At Veterinarios Sin Fronteras we participated actively in the discussions.

The purpose of the civil society mechanism

(CSM) is to facilitate the participation in the CFS of SCOs, enabling contribution to negotiations and decisions and also providing a space for dialogue between a wide variety of civil society agents. The CSM is made up of the Coordination Committee, consisting of forty focus points (members) from eleven constituencies (main interested parties) and sixteen sub-regions, elected in acknowled-gement of the diversity of histories, realities and experiences of each region. Small-scale farmers represent the CC’s greatest constituency given that they represent the largest part of the un-dernourished world population and also produce the greatest proportion of food in the world. The geographic and gender balance amongst the fo-cus points of the CFS’s Coordination Committee is guaranteed by means of the mechanism itself.

The Committee on World Food Security (CFS)


FLAGS OF THE UNITED NATIONS COUNTRIES.


Other fundamental aspects include translation, training and adequate funding.

The 36th Session of the Committee on World

Food Security took place at the FAO’s headquar-ters in Rom between 11th and 16th October 2010, with the participation of delegates from the 126 committee members; participants from 11 United Nations bodies and programmes; 47 international non-government organisations; and observers from 15 inter-government organisations.

The main points on the Session’s agenda were three round tables on policies and the consensus on the development of a Worldwide Strategic Context. More specifi cally, during the round table on “land tenure and international investment in agricultu-re”, the committee supported the continuation of the participative process for the development of the Voluntary Directives for Responsible Gover-nance of the Tenure of Land and Other Natural Resources, based upon the existing regional pro-cesses in view of submitting the directives for appreciation during the 37th Session of the CFS. It was decided to create an open CFS work group to revise the fi rst draft of the Voluntary Directives. The Committee took note of the development of the Principles of the World Bank for Responsible Investment in Agriculture that Respects Rights, Livelihoods and Resources, and decided to launch a participative process to evaluate the principles within the CFS. The Committee also gave its en-couragement to governments and interested parties to participate in the creation processes for the Voluntary Directives and Responsible Agricul-tural Investment and to ensure the coherency and complementarity between both processes.

After the 36th Session, the High-Level Experts’ Group launched a consultation on two issues: the instability of land prices and tenure on the one hand and international investment in agriculture on the other.

During the 37th Session of the Committee for

World Food Safety that took place between 17th and 22nd October 2011 and was attended by 83 SCOs and NGOs, the CFS was invited to approve the fi nal draft of the Voluntary Directives for the Responsible Governance of Land Tenure, Fishing

and Forestry in the context of national food se-curity. But despite the eff orts made by all parties regarding the negotiation of the Directives, it was impossible to complete the process. It was thus decided that more time would be necessary for its continuation and completion and the recommen-dation was made to make the most of the already established and solid base, concentrating upon the remaining paragraphs and observing and maintaining the spirit of understanding that had been attained in previous negotiations.

The new CFS provides the best opportunity for advancing food sovereignty in the governance of worldwide food security and can be seen as a mo-del for coordination and participation around the world. Its revolutionary restructuring, which gives civil society its voice and access whilst at the same time guaranteeing that decision-making rests in the hands of the countries involved is an important step that covers the key principles of a political context of food sovereignty. Nonetheless, for the entire potential of the CFS to become eff ective, the countries will have to become involved in the pro-cess and funding will be required to support the work of the MESA, the Work Group, poor countries and civil society. Meanwhile, it is hoped that civil society organisations will progress hand-in-hand with the Civil Society Mechanism to guarantee their continued involvement in the process. What remains to be seen is whether or not the system of the UN and the FAO will be suffi ciently power-ful or influential to take a place at the forefront of food security governance. This depends upon the actions undertaken by the member countries.



The food crisis, in conjunction with the fi nancial, environmental and energy crises, has further pro-nounced the shortcomings and vulnerability of the energy and food systems. Concern about an increase in food insecurity, profi t-making issues, meteorological instability due to climate change, speculation on assets and the potential for inves-tment opportunities are contributing towards a new worldwide rush for land control.

This process, which has been given various names including investment, seizure and land acquisi-tion, has fi elded harsh criticism from civil society and represents a tangible threat for food sovereig-nty, particularly in Africa. A recent study by the World Bank 12 showed that during the fi rst eleven months of 2009, a total of 110 million acres world-wide were subjected to exploitative trade; more than 70% of this fi gure was in Africa (particularly in Ethiopia, Mozambique and the Sudan).

This section takes into account the main contexts and policies for the response to the phenomenon, as well as the repercussions upon food sovereign-ty. More specifi cally, there has been a comparative analysis of global principals and emerging di-rectives by means of a political context for food Sovereignty. The aim of this chapter is not to re-view land seizures, since there is an ever-greater store of literature and research regarding this is-sue 13. As a starting-point, however, and in order to

provide an important context, we will summarise the main aspects of land seizure here.

Land seizure, a phenomenon that is far from being novel, can be defi ned as the loss of land by rural populations in favour of the large-scale acquisi-tion of land by foreign investors (companies or states). Countries that are poor in resources but with a thriving economy are acquiring land in countries that are rich in resources but that have a poor economy, in order to meet their own food and energy needs 14. As reported by GRAIN, “the combination of the food and fi nancial crises has turned arable land into a new strategic asset” 15. There are various means through which land can be lost: purchasing, renting and contractual agri-culture, all for the purpose of industrial agriculture production. Land seizure also involves commercial transactions (national and international) and land speculation. In most cases these kinds of agree-ments are negotiated with national governments, and sometimes they themselves launch the nego-tiations.

Those in favour of these investments claim that they are advantageous for all: the receiving com-munities experience economic growth and develop their rural environment, bringing in benefi ts for investors and consumers. The situation is therefo-re regarded as a means of increasing capital and providing valuable investment to agriculture. This

Principles and Directives for the Large-scale Acquisition and Renting of Land*

12 From the World Bank: http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/0,,contentMDK:22694293~pagePK:64165401~piPK:64165026~theSitePK:469372,00.html

13 To obtain more information concerning the appropriation of land, refer to: Cotula, L. Land Deals in Africa: What is in the Con-tracts? London: IIED. 2011. http://pubs.iied.org/12568IIED.html; Cotula, L, Vermeulen, S, Leonard, R. and Keeley, J. Land Grab or Development Opportunity? Agricultural Investments and International Land Deals in Africa. London: IIED. 2008; Amigos de la Tierra Europa. Africa: Up for Grabs. 2010. http://www.foeeurope.org/agrofuels/FoEE_Africa_up_for_grabs_2010.pdf; GRAIN. Seized: The 2008 Land Grab for Food and Financial Security. Barcelona: GRAIN. 2008; Daniel, S.,and Mittal, A. The Great Land Grab: Rush for the World’s Farmland Threatens Food Security for the Poor. Berkeley, CA: Oakland Institute. 2009.

The International Land Coalition has a website devoted to the commercial pressures upon land (http://www.landcoalition.org/cpl). It also coordinates a dialogue initiative along with Oxfam Novib, Action Aid International, Roppa, the Asian Farmers’ Assso-ciation and COPROFAM. Go to: http://www.landcoalition.org/global-initiatives/commercial-pressures-land/dialogue-initiative; http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/pdfs/LandGrab_fi nal_web.pdf .

14 For example, go to: Intenational Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), www.ifpri.org/pubs/bp/bp013.asp..

15 GRAIN. 2008. Page 2.



provides opportunities for increased employment and social development, particularly in rural areas.

Nonetheless, an analysis of the last 50 years, par-ticularly in impoverished countries, makes it clear up to which point these large-scale investments exploit local resources and communities, above all those that depend on the land, including livestock breeders. At VSF we believe that such land inves-tments have negative eff ects on political stability, social cohesion, human rights, durable food pro-duction, the food security of households and the protection of the environment in the exploited countries. There is a concern that investments bring in very little with regard to the course of de-velopment, since the regulatory contexts of direct foreign land investment, particularly for agricul-ture, are inconsistent 16. These investments also threaten the rights to the ownership and usufruct of land and ignore or underrate land ownership systems that might not necessarily correspond to the Western private ownership model. Furthermo-re, investments go against the responsibility of the State as set out by international law.

Secure access to land and other natural resources is of the same degree of importance as the fulfi l-ment of the right to food, despite the fact that that the right to food does not automatically translate into the right to land. Nevertheless, from the point of view of food sovereignty the right to land is fun-damental. As has already been mentioned, food sovereignty is above all a means of producing food and, without access to land by means of a diversity of ways of using land, food sovereignty becomes impossible. Corporate and national land inves-tment programmes represent a serious threat to food sovereignty.

It is fundamental to exercise good governance in land tenure issues since the lack of governance in this domain “translates into a loss of lives and of livelihoods; it discourages investment and general economic growth and dissuades from the durable use of natural resources” 17. Despite international obligations, many states continue to invest in fo-reign land for single crop-based exports. This kind of investments has been a cause of concern and

there have been various initiatives from a variety of perspectives and approaches that, in one way or another, aim to mediate in the process. Of the-se, three contexts have assumed a dominant role in the international and worldwide debate (there is also a fourth context at regional level that will be addressed further on, EU Directives on land po-licy: Directives for the support of the design and processes for reform of land policies in developing countries) that we will address as follows.

16 Daniel, S., and Mittal. 2009.17 FAO. 2009. Page 1.


PATH BETWEEN FAMILY AGRICULTURAL PLOTS, UGANDA.


At the end of 2009 during the 13th Session of the UN Human Rights Council, the Special Reporter on the Right to Food, Olivier Schutter, presented “large-scale land acquisition and renting: a set of minimum measures and principles to deal

with the problem of human rights”. This report presents the 11 minimal principles regarding human rights that can be applied to the large-scale acquisition or renting of land, which can be summed up as follows:

The Set of Minimum Principles for Arable Land Investment

1. The negotiations must be undertaken in an entirely transparent manner.

2. Agreement will be freely and previously communicated.

3. Legislation will be adopted in order to pro-tect the rights of local communities.

4. Local populations should benefi t from the incomes created by the investment agree-ments.

5. The states and the investments must be es-tablished and promote agricultural systems that contribute to the creation of employment in poor rural areas or wherever there is a lack of opportunities for employment.

6. Forms of agricultural production that are environmentally friendly and that do not speed up climate change, land depletion or the deple-tion of drinking water will be promoted.

7. Investors’ obligations will be clearly defi ned and executed.

8. The investment agreements with import-ing countries must include a clause that guarantees that there will be a percentage of production that will be aimed at the local market.

9. An impact evaluation must be carried out before closing negotiations.

10. Consulting and cooperating with indig-enous populations with good will, respecting the specifi c mechanisms that protect their rights to land with regard to International Law.

11. Contractual agricultural employees must receive adequate protection and their fun-damental labour and human rights must be legislated and respected.

The intention of these principles is to inform about current initiatives such as the adop-tion of directives concerning land policies and the management of international and regional organisations. Apart from that, they are also designed so as for the negotiations for land ac-

quisition and renting fulfi l the basic procedural requisites. In consequence, these principles cre-ate a context that can be used to analyse the new directives and principles from the perspective of human rights and the right to food.



At the beginning of 2009 the World Bank launched an in-depth study called “Large-scale acquisitions of rights over land for the purpose of agricultural exploitation or for its natural resources”. The study concentrated on the regu-latory contexts and on the social, economic, and environmental repercussions derived from the case studies. The result of this research, along with contributions from the FAO, the IFAD, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Devel-opment (UNCTAD) and consultation with other international bodies were the Principles for Re-sponsible Agricultural Investment (RAI). Some non-government organisations and civil society organisations also took part in the round tables.

The RAI originates from a perspective of corpo-rate social responsibility, with the intention of providing a referential context that can guide countries, corporations and other agents in the development of responsible investment from a social point of view. The fi nal report of the BM’s study also suggests future steps that of-fer better practices, directives and governance contexts. Generally speaking, RAI acknowledges that land rights must be respected, although no reference is made to the non-Western forms of land tenure or communal lands that often play a fundamental role in livelihoods. As a result RAI does not go far enough in guaranteeing that the receiving countries and the investors ac-knowledge the right of peoples to have access to land. At no moment does it satisfactorily ad-dress what happens to the victims of evictions once land transactions are completed. It does not even call for an even more necessary evalu-ation of whether or not these agreements really represent a good approach to guarantee the lo-cal populations’ long-term needs in terms of food security and rights.

At Veterinarios Sin Fronteras we observe that such principles do not do a lot to resolve the prob-lem: what moves the investors is monetary gain.

Their benefi t margins or the ability to ensure food in their countries prevails over the needs, rights and wishes of local populations, because they have the means to pay for it. From the view-point of food sovereignty, this process threatens to impose neo-colonial development models in the countries whilst people are obliged to give up agriculture. Ironically, some of their investments are motivated by the fact that many people have given up agriculture in their own countries. In this sense, the principles are inadequate, par-ticularly because the markets for basic products continue to fluctuate and because the demand for food is necessarily going to increase.

In keeping with what several organisations have said, at Veterinarios Sin Fronteras we believe that the aforementioned principles will not achieve the established goals. They are more of an at-tempt to justify land grabbing. Encouraging the corporate sector (both national and foreign) to carry out long-term acquisitions of the land of ru-ral populations is totally unacceptable whatever the directives that are observed. The WB’s princi-ples, which would be totally voluntary, are aimed at turning attention away from the fact that the worldwide food crisis characterised by the fact that each day there are a million more starving people in the world, will not be resolved with large-scale industrial agriculture, the objective according to which all of these land acquisitions are made 18.

At the same time, another worrying aspect is that the RAI points to the need to consult with the parties aff ected by large-scale land acquisitions and, despite this, do not present any guidelines or markers regarding what kind of consultation should take place. On the basis of food sover-eignty and even from a democratic point of view, it is fundamental that the principles of free, pre-vious and informed consent of all people who work the land should be defended in all of these negotiations.

Principles for Responsible Agricultural Investment (RAI)



Since January 2010, the “Principles for a re-sponsible agricultural investment that respects rights, livelihoods and resources” have been promoted by the World Bank (WB), the Interna-tional Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the United Nations Organisation for Agriculture and Food (FAO). The governments of Japan and the United States have also adopted RAI during international round tables.

According to RAI’s website, “there already exists

a wide-ranging consensus that some of the prin-ciples should constitute the starting-point for the designing of the international context. None-theless, most observers agree that the principles should not be legally binding, that they should have a flexible supervision mechanism and that they should take into account the country’s cir-cumstances” 19.

On the basis of a political context of food sov-ereignty, the principles of respect for people’s rights should eff ectively be legally binding and be the object of rigorous supervision.

18 Go to http://www.focusweb.org/content/stop-land-grabbing-now

19 Go to http://www.focusweb.org/content/stop-land-grabbing-now


HANDS OF A FARMER, MOZAMBIQUE.


Given that the purpose of this report is to under-stand the consequences of the new governance contexts for food sovereignty, it is useful to com-pare these last two groups of principles on the basis of a political context of food sovereignty. For a start, the processes for large-scale land acquisition and renting generally contradict themselves in a political context of food sov-ereignty and represent a sizeable threat to it, particularly in Africa.

Firstly, both sets of principles include the need for transparency in the negotiations. RAI also calls for the assessment and assumption of re-sponsibility in land access processes and the associated investments. Both sets of principles also insist upon consultation. Whereas the RAI asks for participative consultation that leads to applicable agreements, the Special Reporter for the Right to Food introduces the principles of pre-viously informed free consent and asks that the impact evaluations should be included as part of the negotiation process. Both sets of principles demand the respect of land rights but the prin-ciples of the SRORF (Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food) go one step further by demanding the approval of laws that protect communities and respect for the rights of indigenous peoples.

The economic issue is present in both sets of principles. The RAI concentrates on the econom-ic viability of projects, affi rming that they should result in a durable shared value. The SRORF puts economic benefi t on the side of the community and demands that a proportion of the crops subject to such initiatives should be reserved for sale on the local market. The RAI suggests that investments should have a positive social impact without increasing vulnerability, whilst the SRORF’s principles concentrate upon the creation of agrarian exploitation systems that address rural poverty and unemployment. The SRORF also includes a principle of respect for the rights of rural workers.

Both sets of principles insist on taking into ac-count environmental considerations. The SRORF

asks for the development of production methods that are environmentally friendly and that do not accelerate ecological problems. The RAI de-mands a positive impact on the part of investors and encourages the durable use of resources. Based on the perspective of food sovereignty, the language of this RAI principle appears vague and disappointing. As a principle, environmental durability should be a prerequisite for new pro-jects that are undertaken on the acquired land, and not a mere suggestion. If this aspect cannot be strengthened, the result will be a set of prin-ciples that legitimise large-scale land acquisition projects without guaranteeing the protection of the rights of the population or that of the land upon which it depends.

Finally, the RAI adopts food security as a princi-ple and asks that all projects should contribute towards its consolidation. Food security is not di-rectly included in the SRORF’s principles but all the elements of food security are included in the principles and measures for addressing human rights issues.

Comparison of principles



The FAO has been working on the governance of land tenure since 2005 and has observed a generalised interest in the development and adoption of voluntary directives associated at international level with the execution at national level. The political process for these directives began in the International Conference on Agrar-ian Reform and Rural Development of 2006, in whose final declaration 92 FAO member coun-tries affirmed the importance of Objective 1.2(b) of the Plan of Action of the World Food Summit 20. On the basis of this, the FAO under-took a series of thematic studies and organised a meeting of the team of experts. As we have already seen, from 2009 until 2011 the carried out the preparation of the Voluntary Directives (VD) that include process for consultation with the various interested parties. The intention is to apply the Voluntary Directives in 2012 by means of the preparation of national and re-gional policies and plans of action.

The VD on land tenure and natural resources are a response to the rising pressure on land and natural resources since new areas are be-ing cultivated or are being taken over by urban expansion, their access and control is chang-ing, or they are being abandoned. They are also linked to support for the progressive fulfilment of the right to adequate food in the context on National Food Security, taking it as a reference. This is not a reaction to land grabbing, nor is it a means of defence against this phenomenon. But according to which directives end up being established, they could provide a considerable motive (ethically, politically and ecologically) against this practice.

The VD are inspired by the belief that “respon-sible governance of tenure is a guarantee that the relevant policies and regulations are ori-ented towards durability and beneficial results and that the related services are provided ef-ficiently, effectively and equitably” 21. Here, responsible governance acknowledges not only statutory tenure (private and public property), but also customary tenure and common proper-ty. This is fundamental within the FSov context because many cultures do not share the West-ern customs and laws on property and are, as a result, very vulnerable when such approaches are used to analyse the use of, ownership of and access to land.

The VD are intended to be used by persons in charge of formulating policies, by govern-ments, by the private sector and by civil society organisations. The process for developing the VD is still being developed but there is gen-eral – albeit timid – general support for the process amongst CSOs. This backing is linked to the acceptance of an approach that is con-centrated upon human rights highlighting the universal nature, interdependence, indivisibility and interrelation between them. The principles of participation, responsibility, non-discrimi-nation, transparency, human dignity, gender equality, empowerment and the rule of law are part of the responsible governance-based ap-proach 22.

The VD will constitute a context of policies and programmes on the tenure of land and natural resources that are not legally binding. In any case, it is hoped that they will make reference to the current binding international human

The voluntary Directives

20 “Establishing legal and other mechanisms, whenever relevant, that enable progress in agrarian reform, acknowledging and protecting property rights, water use and usufruct, to improve poor persons’ and women’s access to resources. Such mecha-nisms will also have to promote the preservation and durable use of natural resources (such as land, water and forests), reduc-ing risks and stimulating investment” (The TRome Declaration on World Food Security, November 1996).

21 FAO. 2009. Page 1.

22 FAO. Governance of Tenure: Finding Common Ground. ND. Page 4. http://www.fao.org/fi leadmin/user_upload/nr/land_ten-ure/images/LandtenureENGpagebypage.pdf



rights, given that these are linked to land and to natural resources. It is also hoped that they will include descriptions of how these obligations will be applied. At Veterinarios Sin Fronteras we are supporting this initiative since it is the only one that promotes a true participation of civil society in the process of drafting the voluntary Directives, including participation in the FSC.


FOREIGN INDUSTRIAL SHIFT AND CRAFT BOAT, SANT LOUIS, SENEGAL.


A. To off er a basis for the commitment of the African member states’ commitment to the formulation and execution of well-designed land policies as a basis for sustainable human development that includes guarantees for social stability, maintaining economic growth and reducing poverty, protecting natural re-sources from degradation and pollution;

B. to promote the consensus of the shared principles as the basis for secure access to land for all, increasing agricultural productiv-ity and preserving livelihoods;

C. underlining the need for popular participa-tion in the formulation and execution of the land policy in view of providing better man-agement of land resources;

D. suggesting regulations for better practices for the reform of land policies and points of reference for the deployment of the land in-stitutions that the member states can adopt in keeping with their respective contexts;

E. establish a political context to address the problems that arise and anticipate future us-age with regard to land resources;

F. providing a basis for a more coherent mod-el of collaboration between states, citizens and associations for the development of the formulation of the land policy and its applica-tion on the continent;

G. establishing general principles so that development associations can commit to mo-bilising resources to create capacities aimed at land policy reform processes;

H. developing directives for regional conver-gence regarding the durable management and use of land and the associated resources shared by two or more member states in sev-eral parts of Africa.

The African Union clearly understands the impor-tance of land management and security, planning and livelihoods, and several member states have launched agrarian reform processes. Nonetheless, many of these reforms lack consistency and har-monisation between laws and sectorial policies. To this end, a pan-African process was launched in 2006 in order to develop a context and directives for land policies. The process was undertaken by the African Union, the UN, the Economic Commis-sion for Africa and the African Development Bank

in consultation with regions and concerned par-ties, including civil society. The objective was to strengthen land rights, increase productivity and guarantee livelihoods. In 2009, the context was submitted to the Assembly of Heads of state and Governments of the African Union and in July of that same year a Declaration on the land issue in Africa was adopted 23.

As it is outlined in the resulting report “Framework and Guidelines on Land Policy in Africa (revised version)” 24, the goal of the Context is:

The Declaration on the land issue in Africa

23 http://www.gltn.net/images/stories/assembly_decision_-_land.pdf

24 The Framework and Guidelines on Land Policy in Africa (revised version) is available on: http://www.gltn.net/en/home/land-law-and-enforcement/framework-and-guidelines-on-land-policy-in-africa-revised-version-/details.html



The context addresses the “land issue” in Africa, ascribing its origins to geopolitical, economic, social and demographic factors that have wors-ened due to worldwide imperatives such as diff ering forms of colonisation as well as cultural and economic diversity. As a result, thousands of legal contexts have emerged regulating the use, tenure and management of land. The context emphasises the need to guarantee land rights for women but also to promote access to land for foreign commercial investors with interests in large-scale operations. This is justifi ed by re-ferring to the extensive irrigation networks but is situated at the same level as farmers, particu-

larly farming women. This situation represents a tangible threat for food sovereignty, given that within a political context for food sovereignty, the priority is to hand it over to local farmers (with gender equality coming into play).

In this sense, at Veterinarios Sin Fronteras we wish to emphasise that the Context of the Di-rectives is just that; a set of directives that are presented to states as recommended processes and better practices, but concentrating upon for-eign investment and the extraction of resources at the expense of agricultural productivity and social security represents a tangible threat to food sovereignty.


CROPS FIELD, UGANDA.


We shall now enumerate some of the main EU regulatory tools and contexts (apart from the EPAs, which will be dealt with in the next chapter)

that are relevant to the eff ects of this study and that have, or may have, a potential impact upon Food Sovereignty in Africa.

In 2002 an EU work group on agrarian issues was created in order to develop the directives for the Common Agrarian Policy: Directives for the support of the agrarian policy and the reform processes for agrarian policies in devel-oping countries. The idea behind the directives is that access to land and natural resources have caused growing concern for developing countries and their donors. The European Com-mission stressed that access is fundamental for fair and durable social and economic develop-ment as well as for good governance. When the directives were approved and adopted by the European Council and Parliament in December 2004, the work group was closed 26.

After the recorded high for food prices in 2007-2008 and with growing concern regarding large-scale land acquisition, in January 2009 the European Commission proposed the reacti-vation of the EU Work Group on Agrarian Issues. The revived Work Group, made up of repre-sentatives from the European Commission and Member States, has two main objectives: 1) shar-ing information and exchanging experiences; 2) developing common positions for the EU and recommendations regarding land policies and reform initiatives in developing countries. The meetings of the work group are open to non-European third-party countries, development bodies, international organisations and fi nancial

institutions that operate on interventions linked

to land in developing countries.

The work of this group could have important

repercussions upon food sovereignty in Africa,

particularly with regard to its analyses of large-

scale land acquisitions and of the principles and

Food Sovereignty and the European Union*

26 The Directives for the Common Agrarian Policy can be consulted on the European Commission’s website on development and cooperation, EuropeAid: http://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/what/development-policies/intervention-areas/ruraldev/rural_land-policy_en.htm

Directives of the Common Agrarian Policy and Work Group


BANANA TREE, UGANDA.


directives that, as a result, are arising at various levels (see previous sections). It is important for this group to continue to be transparent and to continue the research into the experiences of people who have been affected by large-scale land negotiations. The Work Group should de-velop recommendations in view of the need to create a regional and binding legal context that acknowledges and regulates the Members states’ extra-territorial responsibility for what their citizens and companies do in third-party countries.

As has already been widely acknowledged, the

duty to protect and guarantee the human right to food and its economic, social and cultural aspects in Africa is the particular – but not ex-clusive – concern of the African states. The EU countries have complementary extra-territorial obligations towards starvation and malnutri-tion in Africa and other areas. The EU member states have a duty to protect the right to food in these countries by means of active measures (these include regulation, supervision, and due diligence in their sphere of influence) in order to avoid, amongst other things, land grabbing in these countries. We will speak of this in the next chapter.



In July 2007 the European Commission pre-sented a communiqué with the title “Advancing African Agriculture” (AAA), with the goal of pro-viding strategic guidance for assigning European Development Funds and other EC resources and the general coordination of European aid to Af-rican agriculture by all the member states. This report was revised and approved by the Euro-pean Council and Parliament in November 2007. The European civil society agents – in collabora-tion with African farmers from regional platforms – undertook periodical reviews (and drafted sev-eral thematic reports) with the aim of controlling up to what point the European policies had been in keeping with he criteria agreed to in the EC’s communiqué of 2007. 27

At the end of 2010, the European Commission published a communiqué with the title “A stra-tegic context for the European Union to help developing countries to address problems de-rived from food security” (COM (2010) 127 fi nal)28. In keeping with the Declaration of the World Summit on Food Security (2009), the regulatory context attempts to address food se-curity problems in developing countries in rural and urban contexts:

1. Increasing the availability of food; 2. improving access to food; 3. improving the nutritional adaptation of the consumption of food; and4. reinforcing the prevention and manage-ment of crises.

The communiqué is centred on the progress of Millennium Development Objective Nº 1 (MDO1) (the eradication of poverty and famine in the world) and suggests that the progress in the achievement of this objective, and food secu-rity, have been geographically unequal. Quoting the 2009 report on the MDOs, the communiqué indicates that the proportion of malnourished

persons in Sub-Saharan Africa dropped to 29% in 2008 when it was at 32% in 1990-1992. As a result of all of this the EU context will concen-trate upon improving the incomes of small-scale farmers and of their communities as well as supporting agriculture and food security in countries where this is one of the priorities. The context also indicates that by supporting small-scale agriculture, the EU should prioritise the intensifi cation of approaches that are durable and effi cient from an ecological point of view, re-specting the functional diversity of agriculture. This approach, which pays particular attention to women and small-scale owners, is in keeping with the political context of food sovereignty.

With regard to land tenure, the context indi-cates that secure access to land and its use are fundamental for increasing the productiv-ity of small-scale farmers. The European Union and its member states are ready to support the development of principles that are agreed upon internationally for responsible investment in farmland (with no mention of the RAI) and should base themselves upon the current eff orts including the directives for agrarian policies (EU Directives for supporting design and reform processes for agrarian policies in developing countries (2004) and the African Directives on agrarian policies (2009)).

The context moves away from an alignment with a political context of food sovereignty in its analysis of trade, in which it mentions that international trade can make a substantial con-tribution to the availability of food by increasing this availability on the market. Whereas the con-text promotes the objective of a complete food industry chain with a diversity of markets and the harmonisation of regulations, a food sov-ereignty-based approach would encourage the promotion of local and regional markets before

The EU context: “Encouraging agriculture in Africa”

27 The reports on AAA are available at http://www.europafrica.info/en/documenti/advancing-african-agriculture

28 http://ec.europa.eu/development/icenter/repository/COMM_PDF_COM_2010_0127_EN.PDF



getting involved with international commerce, particularly with the maintenance of community agricultural subsidies.

The context presented three sets of conditions so that the EU member states might make the most of the efficiency of investments in food security, of which the report highlights the EU priorities in the promotion of food security in Africa. In the name of efficiency, the work Context requests that aid should be specified for each country and that the development of policies should be combined with the empow-

erment of the most vulnerable populations of these countries. They prioritise four dimensions that are interrelated to small-scale agriculture: development, governance, regional integration and their mechanisms for assisting vulnerable populations. More specifically, the context asks the EU to improve the resistance of small farm-ing estates and rural livelihoods; that it should support good governance, regional agriculture and food security policies; and that it should strengthen aid mechanisms for vulnerable sec-tors of the population.


PART II

INSTRUMENTS FOR THE COMMERCIALISATION OF AGRICULTURE AND FOOD

JATROPHA PLANTATION, MOZAMBIQUE.



The industrialisation process of agriculture, car-ried out by means of policies by international bodies (FAO, IMF, WB, GATT – currently the WTO, amongst others), implies the concentration of decision-making cores that cover what we eat (product design), when we eat it (disappearance of “seasons”), how we eat it (level of process-ing), how it is produced (industrial agriculture and fi shing) and where it is bought (large retail chains) (COAG, 2007).

At Veterinarios Sin Fronteras we have on nu-merous occasions maintained that addressing the issue of famine and poverty only by means of modernising agriculture and increasing agri-cultural production, as was done in the case of the so-called Green Revolution, does not resolve the problem, since it ignores the concentration of economic power, particularly with regard to

land access and purchasing power (Lappé et al, 1998). Any policy that is aimed at relieving the problem of famine will not only have to design strategies focused on food production, but will also have to take into account the established social relationships in the shape of economic, political and cultural regulations, which will determine the distribution of the benefi ts of ag-ricultural production; benefi ts that will be aimed and the owners of the means of production and crops.

Another commercialisation measure, and one that is more specifi c and tangible, is the regularisation of commercial relationships at in-ternational level, by means of the many bilateral and multilateral agreements. They are the result of the creation of a world based on the principle of free trade and that translates into import and export transactions between countries that have a high level of inequality. The rules of the game are not the same for all the players and the coun-tries of Sub-Saharan Africa are playing with a disadvantage.

Not all the commercialisation tools are as ob-vious as this. International development and cooperation policies that, of course, aim to be a benefi t to the countries to which they are di-rected, can become a vector for neo-colonialism from various angles and a way into Sub-Saharan African countries for political and economic power, without taking into account the needs of the local population.

CHEMICAL FERTILIZERS, UGANDA.



A new Green Revolution is spreading through Africa. The main agent of this expansion is the so-called Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA 29) made up of and promoted by the Roc-kefeller Foundation – that funded the fi rst Green Revolution – and the Bill &Melinda Gates Founda-tion. The Rockefeller Foundation went public with its intention to promote a new Green Revolution in Africa justifying – amongst other reasons – that “one of the main reasons of the lack of effi cien-cy [of agriculture in Africa] is that in the great majority of small-scale estates the crops are not high-output varieties commonly used in other continents” (Rockefeller Foundation, 2006). It was Africa’s turn (as expressed in the report “Africa’s turn. A New Green Revolution for the 21st Century” by the Rockefeller Foundation (2006)).

The path chosen by AGRA, which prioritises gene-tic improvement and the use of chemical fertilisers, diff ers from the fi rst Green Revolution because of considerable participation from the private sec-tor (Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta, Yara Fertilizer, amongst others) (Holt-Giménez et al, 2009). One of the principal warnings of AGRA’s critics is that this orchestration of strategies in African agrarian policy might be a substitution of the rural eco-nomy by a market-oriented agricultural system. By pursuing this goal, AGRA may become a “Trojan Horse” that may allow the massive penetration of the continent by large international fertiliser and chemical pesticide companies and particularly, seed companies aimed at traditional improve-ment and genetic engineering (African Centre of Biosafety, 2010 30).

Nevertheless, its associates such as the African

Agriculture Technology Foundation are promo-ting its legalisation and the Gates Foundation is funding their development. Recently, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced a new project to introduce the soy value chain to small producers’ groups in Africa in association with Te-chnoServe (an American non-profi t organisation) and the Syngenta Corporation (Swanby, 2010). It has a budget of eight million US dollars over four years and its implementation will reach 37,000 small-scale farmers in Zambia and Mozambique with the intention to extend the model to other re-gions. This association of organisations favours an agricultural strategy of opening new markets for corporate interests. This is an open door for the Cargill Agribusiness to displace traditional African agricultural practices and crops. The worldwi-de demand for soya crops is growing because of pressure from the livestock sector and the deve-lopment of biofuels, which makes it an incentive for investment. This model threatens to introduce African farmers to a high-risk global marketplace and to the dependence upon industrial raw mate-rials. Moreover, it might be a means of entry for genetically modifi ed organisms throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2010 South Africa had already begun exporting GMO’s to the rest of Africa and the government of Mozambique accepted the im-port of 35,000 tons of genetically modifi ed soya (ibid.).

Below is a summary of the main reasons why a new Green Revolution would not resolve the pro-blem of famine and poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa (Holt-Gimenez et al, 2006):

* Chapter written by Sara Martínez Frías, Isabel Vara Sánchez, David Gallar Hernández - Instituto de Sociología y Estudios Cam-pesinos (Institutefor Sociology and Rural Studies) – ISEC –.29 www.agra-alliance.org (Consulted on 18th October 2010)

30 http://www.biosafetyafrica.net (Consulted on 18th October 2010)

Alliance for a green revolution in Africa:

unlearned lessons


A. Farmers and persons involved in small-

scale agriculture cannot pay for the

technology that is derived from the Green

Revolution. In Sub-Saharan Africa, most of the people working the land do so on small estates and are exposed to debt.

B. The technologies of the Green Revolution

damage the ecosystem and expose farmers

to greater environmental risks.

C. The Green Revolution leads to the loss of

agricultural biodiversity and endangers the

reproduction of the agricultural ecosystems

managed by persons involved in family ag-

riculture. Biological reductionism creates a problem of ecological imbalance and makes populations more vulnerable to plagues and illnesses.

D. The problems of famine and poverty are

not only a result of the lack of food but also

to the lack of resources for obtaining it.

The link between food production and not suff ering from the issue of famine becomes imbalanced when agrarian models are aimed at a global marketplace in which the popula-tion does not have equal access either to food or to the resources for its production.

E. Technological considerations do not func-

tion if structural inequalities in the market

systems and their policies are not dealt

with. Worldwide distribution and the privati-sation of food industry systems have pushed many people away from agriculture.

F. The private sector cannot resolve food

production, distribution and sales problems

by itself.

G. The introduction of genetic engineer-

ing will make farmers in Sub-Saharan

Africa more environmentally vulnerable. Growing genetically modifi ed organisms en-tails widely accepted environmental risks (Altieri, 2003) and it has in fact accelerated the evolution of “superweeds” and plagues of resistant insects, the unintentional transfer of “transgenes” to local varieties of crops with unforeseeable eff ects, the accumulation of the Bt toxin in the soil, damaging the edaphic fauna and its negative impact on insects that regulate plagues and the substitution of local varieties, etc.

H. The introduction of crops that are the

result of genetic engineering to rural ag-

riculture will lead to increased debt and to

the bankruptcy of small-scale farmers. The substantial investments and high costs of new technologies that belong to large pri-vate sector companies cannot be supported by rural farmers. If the new technologies are distributed in a “philanthropic” manner for the inclusion of rural communities in market-oriented agrarian models, this will generate dependence upon the technological bundles of external inputs in the medium term.



I. The AGRA initiative is not the only option

and does not take into account experience

with an agro-ecological approach developed

on the back of the failure of the Green Revo-

lution. Durable agriculture can off er great increases in the production of food in Africa and the agro-ecological approach with par-ticipative models for the development and distribution of technology can be a basis of social change in the domain of agriculture. In a study conducted by Pretty (1999) and that covered 45 durable agriculture projects and/or initiatives in 17 African countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Ma-lawi, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe), for a total of 730,000 households and some 900,000 hectares it was shown that models containing agro-ecological practices have substantially improved food production and food security in the households. In 95% of the projects, productive output has improved by between 50% and 100% (corn, sorghum, millet, rice, potatoes and plantains). Total agricultural food production has increased in all of them. This analysis demonstrates that durable ag-riculture can off er great increases in food production in Africa.

J. The AGRA initiative does not allow

farmers to be the main agents for the de-

velopment of agriculture, livestock farming

and fi shing. The creation of agrarian devel-opment policies that is being conducted by AGRA responds to decisions established from “above”, bringing together large corpo-rations, philanthropic bodies, development agencies, international and national bodies as well as African governments. The partici-pation of farmers’ movements is limited and the proposals for agrarian reform and Food Sovereignty are left off the agenda. True de-velopment at human scale (Max-Neef, 1993) requires the inclusion of proposals designed by the social base, taking into account basic human needs beyond the concept of mon-etary gain.



The Cotonou Agreement signed in 2000 for a 20-year period and fi rst revised in 2005, consti-tutes the valid legal context in which the current commercial relationships between the EU and African, Caribbean and Pacifi c (ACP) countries exist, and represents a new phase in the coop-eration between both agents.

The Cotonou Agreement attempted to establish a new panorama that would include concerns that go beyond mere commercial exchanges and even the concern for the economic develop-ment of ACP countries, which had already been expressed in the Lomé agreements, including another series of objectives amongst its priori-ties, such as the promotion of social and cultural development in ACP countries, the contribution to the creation of their peace and security and the encouragement of a stable and democratic political environment.

The most refi ned product to come from the Cotonou Agreement is the launching of the Eco-nomic Partnership Agreements (EPA), which the EU has been negotiating since 2002 with the 77 ACP countries (and as such with countries in Sub-Saharan Africa).

The EPAs will be the agreements dealt with in this chapter, not because there are no other types of agreements established between the EU and Sub-Saharan Africa regarding inter-national trade (like the investment protection agreements, for example), but because they are currently the most relevant agreements for the defi nition of commercial relationships between both agents. If the negotiation period were suc-cessful, the EPAs would actually represent an

essential change in the economic and productive structure of the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.

EPAs represent the opening (by means of reduced duties) of African markets to European products. Far from maintaining the non-reciprocal trade system that favoured the ACP countries, the aim of the EPAs is totally diff erent: to impose upon ACP countries the gradual reduction of the duties that until now were levied on products from the EU, which was a means of protection for national production. The EU wants the ACP countries to liberalise at least 80 per cent of their European imports over the next 15 years. No sector is ex-empt from this (Oxfam International, 2008).

In this sense, any steps that are taken towards establishing a system for commercial exchange “in equal conditions”, ignoring the fact that not all of the economies that participate in such a system have the same strength, influence and coercive capacity, can only go in favour of the strongest and most predatory economies. Via the EPAs, the EU is shamelessly defending its commercial interests and seeking the opening of new markets into which they can inject their surpluses (in many cases subsidised by the gov-ernments of the EU member states), regardless of the damage that this may cause to the econo-mies and societies of third-party countries.

Commercial agreements between the European Union and Sub-Saharan Africa




The negotiation process in Sub-Saharan Africa collapsed at the end of 2007, when eighteen Afri-can countries decided to retire from their regional negotiation groups. On 2nd October 2007, the

East African requested a two-year extension for the negotiation period in order to reach a regional agreement, but the EU refused, encouraging bilat-eral signatures with Ghana and the Ivory Coast.

EPAs and African regional disintegration


At Veterinarios Sin Fronteras we subscribe to the opinion that the EPAs prevent the reinforcement of African regional integration (GEA, 2009), since the majority of them are signed without respecting the regional groups. The fact that some ACP countries belonging to the same re-gional group are negotiating the EPAs in diff erent “negotiation groups” would, for example, enable countries from the same integration project to agree upon diff erent trade duties, origins regula-tions and liberalisation programmes with the EU, which in turn would damage their Customs unity, would go against trade within the group and, in short, would slow down regional integration (Jo-vtis, 2009). For example, it should be pointed out that the COMESA (Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa) has signed several diff erent agreements with the EU. Five COMESA countries have signed an “EAC text”, with the same tariff classifi cation, and another fi ve have signed individual “ESA texts”. Yet another six countries subscribed to the “Everything But Arms” programme. The Customs Union (SACU), the oldest union in the world, has been drawn into a crisis because of the EPA negotiation pro-

cess. South Africa, which represents more than 90% of the region’s incomes, has not reached an agreement in the EPA environment, whereas oth-er countries have done so. Namibia initialled the agreement on the condition that the text would be modifi ed (Le Roux, 2008).

This amalgamation of agreements undermines the power that Sub-Saharan Africa could have as a negotiator if it acted as a cohesive negotiating group before the EU. In an attempt to preserve some common criteria, African heads of state are asking for bilateral agreements to be channelled through the African Union beforehand (Abeba, 2008), but the EU prefers to sign individually and does not concede enough time to favour the adoption of joint agreements on the part of Afri-can regions (Oxfam International, 2009).

From 2008 onwards, after the crisis of 2007, a second phase of negotiations began. During this phase, two radically diff ering lines of negotiation could be appreciated (Jovtis, 2008):

• The one undertaken by the Least Developed Countries (LDC), favouring the preferential Everything But Arms (EBA) treatment system that, with a regime similar to that of Cotonou, enables free access to European markets for many products (apart from arms) with no requirement of reciprocity.

• The one undertaken by 35 other ACP countries that have already signed interim agreements, which are temporary bilateral agreements established between each of these countries and the EU as a fundamental step towards defi ning the defi nitive contents of the EPAs. These agreements are WTO-compatible, eliminating the advantages off ered by the Preferential Guarantee Systems.


Table 1: TARIFFS IN KENYA

For persons involved in small-scale farming in Sub-Saharan Africa, unfair competition from Eu-ropean subsidised food products is a reality. Over the last 15 years, imports to Western Africa (that occur mainly in the agro-food industry) from Europe have increased by 84%, which has harmful eff ects on African farmers, who stand by as national products are pushed aside by oth-ers that come from international trade that are cheaper. In Kenya during the Nineties, the local dairy industry collapsed when international prices dropped below national production costs, condemning 600,00 people whose jobs depended upon agriculture into poverty. In the face of this crisis situation, the Kenyan government increased tariff s from 25% to 35% and up to 60% in 2003, operating a tangible improvement to the situation that had engulfed the country31.

Source: own data based on information obtained from Oxfam International, 2008 and Veteri-narios Sin Fronteras, 2008.

The opening and liberalisation of markets re-presents a serious threat for the FSov of African populations. Whereas by subscribing to an EPA Sub-Saharan African countries are obliged to remove their agrarian protections regarding tariffs and price control, the EU’s industria-lised countries do not have to modify any of their agriculture subsidies, which is the basis for dumping. This causes a situation of extreme vulnerability for the economies of most Afri-

can countries: On the one hand they find that

the product that they are selling hardly has any

added value on the international marketplace

and on the other, they find that their national

productive systems are defenceless against the

voracity of a market that does not understand

farmers’ needs or take into account the fragility

of local realities that can result from non-discri-

minatory tariff modifications.

Furthermore, the reduction of tariff barriers for the entry of EU products can represent a reduc-tion of tax revenues for African governments. In the case of Uganda, for example, these repre-

sent around 50% of tax revenues (Veterinarios Sin Fronteras, 2008). This reduction in gover-nment revenue would have a particular impact upon social, health and education programmes.

The impact of the EPAs upon Food Sovereignty in Sub-Saharan Africa

31 The Commonwealth Secretariat on Gender and Trade. ‘EU Set to Milk East Africa with Subsidised Goods?’ 15th Novem-ber 2007.



Table 3: UGANDA AND THE EPAs

The Interim Agreement that Uganda signed as part of the EAC (East African Community) condi-tions its capacity for negotiation with other globally important agents such as China. In Article 16 (A more favourable treatment resulting from the economic integration agreements) it is estab-lished that with regard to the conditions of free movement for goods, the EAC will have to come to an agreement with the EU on all favourable treatments as a result of the EAC undertaking an economic integration process with any other economic power. Even though Article 16 estab-lishes that this aspect will not be taken into account for inter-African agreements, in Caribbean or Pacifi c countries it will aff ect any economy with a percentage of international trade exceeding 1%, as occurs with China. This way, the EU maintains its dominant position in view of the threat represented by the entrance into Africa of the Asian market, ignoring the consequences that this kind of agreement may have upon the Ugandan population.

Source: Veterinarios Sin Fronteras, 2008

Table 2: THE CASE OF COTTON IN WESTERN AND CENTRAL AFRICA

Cotton farmers in Western and Central Africa appear to have the most effi cient production sys-tem in the world in terms of production costs. According to fi gures available for 2001 onwards, production from a hectare of cotton plants costs $ 0.21 in Benin and Mali. In Burkina Faso, the cost is of $ 0.22, whilst this fi gure rises to 68 cents in the US.

At the time, between 1990 and 1997, cotton gave a considerable boost to the economies of Burki-na Faso and Mali. In Burkina Faso for example, cotton production increased by 175% between 1993 and 1998, which in turn led to a rise in revenues. As a result of this, the poverty fi gures dropped from 50% to 42% in cotton-growing areas, whilst the poverty levels rose in other areas.

Cotton prices began to drop in the mid-Nineties. Between 1997 and 2002 the average global market price dropped by 40%. One of the most decisive factors in the price tumble was over-production due to the liberalisation of the cotton sector in the US, the consequence of this being a drop in prices around the world. In 1996, instead of re-implanting demand-regulation programmes, the American government passed an Agriculture Bill that envisaged direct aid pay-ments to compensate producing groups due to low global prices. These subsidies enabled the planters to continue overproducing so that the United States, despite the high cost of its cot-ton production, are the largest exporter and the second-largest producer of cotton in the world. Most of this aid went to no more than a dozen companies such as Cargill, which received more than 87 million dollars. The total amount of subsidies awarded to these twelve companies repre-sented half of the total amount of aid, in other words 843.9 million dollars.

The EU is not an important cotton producer since it only provides 2.5% of world production (EC production is mainly concentrated in Greece). Nonetheless, he subsidies that it gives to Spanish and Greek production groups are extremely high since they are respectively equivalent to 180% and 169% of global prices.



With the goal of strengthening Spanish corpo-rate fabric, encouraging its competitiveness and supporting its exports to Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as to incentivise trade relationships between both agents, the Spanish government has devel-oped a series of commercial policy instruments.

This chapter analyses several public policies

aimed at supporting the opening and interna-tionalisation of Spanish economy. As well as providing a description of its most relevant as-pects, it sets out the concerns expressed by civil society with regard to its eff ects upon the target countries. Finally, it presents its application in Sub-Saharan countries, particularly within the context of the Africa Plan.

The set of fi nancial instruments governed by var-ious public, private or mixed bodies is called the Spanish System of Public Funding for Interna-tionalisation. Integrated into the structure of the Spanish state, this system aims to promote and empower investments and exports by Spanish companies in geographically foreign markets.

The State bodies and mechanisms that promote and support internationalisation are not limited to specifi c institutions or means of intervention, but instead there is a wide and diversifi ed pub-lic structure that is at the service of private expansion. The growth of the national economy depends more and more upon the activities, ben-efi ts and capital that Spanish companies bring in from beyond their own borders.

Below, we will outline the map of bodies, in-struments and objectives as well as the kind of support given by the Spanish state. As a fi rst general approach, the highest-ranking State bodies that are involved in corporate internation-alisation are the following:

Public instruments for the corporate implantation of the spanish state in Sub-Saharan Africa

Organismos y mecanismos públicos para la internacionalización 32

32 The following information and tables are taken from the report “Public policies, private benefi ts” (2010) by Rodrigo Fernández Miranda and Ridrigo Ruiz Rubio, published by the Foro de Turismo Responsable.



State bodies for internationalisation

Ministry of Industry, Tour-

ism and Trade (MITT)

Ministry of Economy and

the Exchequer (MEE)

Ministry of Foreign Aff airs

and Cooperation (MFAC)

“…this is the department in charge of the proposal and execution of government policy regarding indus-trial development, trade policy, energy policy, of small- and medium-sized companies, of tourism, of telecom-munications and of the information society”.

The Inland Revenue, the Offi cial Credit Institution (OCI), the National Statistics Institute (NSI), Lotteries and Gambling, the Treasury Depart-ment and the General Direction of the Land Registry depend upon the MEE.

General Administration of the State that (…) to execute the unity of the State’s foreign activity, is in charge of executing the following functions: planning, directing, executing and evaluating the state’s Foreign Policy; concentrating and boosting Spanish relationships with other states and with international organisations; en-couraging Spain’s economic, cultural and scientifi c relationships; directing the International Development Coop-eration Policy; ensuring the protection of Spanish citizens overseas and tak-ing part in the proposal and application of the immigration policy.

The MITT is built around the follow-ing organs: the Secretary of State for Tourism; the Secretary of State for Trade; the Secretary of State for Tel-ecommunications and the Information Society.

Amongst its work sections one can sin-gle out: …treasury and fi nancial policy, funding of autonomies, local funding, European Union funds… General State Budgets… corporate accountancy and auditing… international.

This ministry dispose of a Secretary of State for Foreign Aff airs; a Secre-tary of State for the European Union; a Secretary of State for International Cooperation, a Secretary of State for Latin America; a Secretary of State for Consular and Immigration Issues.

Organismo Funciones Características



State bodies for internationalisation

Spanish Institute for

Foreign Trade (ICEX)

Offi cial Credit Institution

(OCI)

Spanish Company for

Development Funding

(COFIDES)

A public body that depends upon the Secretary of State for Tourism and Trade and whose mission is to provide its services to Spanish companies to promote and/or facilitate their international projection, increase ex-ports and improve the international appreciation of Spanish capital. The ICEX is one of the main centres that controls the promotion and interna-tionalisation of Spanish companies.

Part of the MEE, the OCI is a corporate public body “that is considered as a State Financial Agency (…) It supports the investment projects of Spanish companies so that they can be more competitive and contribute towards our country’s economic progress”.

“A joint-stock company (…) whose goal is to provide fi nancial support to viable private projects that are undertaken in emerging or developing countries in which there is some kind of Spanish interest, to contribute towards the development of these countries as well as to the internationalisation of Spanish economy and companies with profi tability criteria”.

The sectors of activity are the de-sign and execution of programmes for the commercial promotion of Spanish companies on international markets; Training managers and employees of Spanish companies in Foreign Trade; Creation and publish-ing of reports and studies on Spanish products and companies, as well as on international markets; Promoting investment projects, the relocation of production activities and corporate cooperation on international markets.

The OCI has shares in various com-panies: Fund Fund-ico(100%); Euro-OCI Fund (100%); Axis Cor-porate Participations (100%); the Spanish Rebonding Company (CERSA – 23.81%); the Spanish Devel-opment Funding Company (COFIDES – 25.25%); the European Investment Fund (EIF – 0.28%); Carbon Fund for Spanish Companies (FC2E – 25%).

The following participate in its social capital: the Spanish Institute for For-eign Trade (ICEX); the Offi cial Credit Institution (OCI); the National Innova-tion Company (ENISA); BBVA; BSCH; Banco Sabadell. COFIDES, by means of Law 66/97 of Fidcal, Economic and Social Order Measures controls two funds for investment in capital and quasi-capital that were created to support the internationalisation of Spanish companies: FIEX and FON-PYME, registered to the MITT and controlled by COFIDES.

Organismo Funciones Características

These front-line ministries, institutions, public or mixed companies represent the first and second levels in the hierarchy of a pyramidal structure that is expanding in order to be able to accommodate a greater amount of projects, sectors, geographic areas and types of public intervention tools.



Public instruments for private internationalisation

MITYC-ICEX

MITYC-ICEX

MITYC-ICEX

MITYC-ICEX

MITYC-ICEX

MITYC-ICEX

BODIES AND INSTRUMENTS FOR INTERNATIONALISATION: DESCRIPTION AND OBJECTIVES

Funding and Aid mechanism

Institutional Support Tool



Funding and Aid mechanism


Programme for Support to Foreign Investment Projects (PAPI)

Programme for the prospection of Overseas Investments (PROSPINVER)

Programme for the identifi cation, Diff usion and Support for New Investment Initiatives (PIDINVER)

Programme for Access to Multilateral Markets (PAMU)

Fund for Integrated Aid to Projects (FAIP)

Catalogue of fi nancial support instruments for foreign implantation and investment

Providing support for productive projects for corporate investment or cooperation conducted by Spanish companies overseas.

Facilitates or enables an initial con-tact between a Spanish company and an interesting market or an in-vestment opportunity overseas.

Promoting the creation of corporate alliances (joint-ventures) between Spanish companies and companies from other “target” countries.

This Assistance Programme aims to facilitate Spanish corporate access for participation in contracts funded by Multilateral Financial Institutions (MFI).

Supporting “Spanish engineering, consultancy and contracting com-panies involved in civil and industrial projects” to encourage their partici-pation in international tenders and bidding outside the European Union.

Informing interested Spanish com-panies about the various fi nancial instruments proposed by Public Ad-ministrations to provide support for corporate internationalisation.

Body Instrument Type Objectives

Generally speaking, there are three types of in-struments for the public promotion of Spanish corporate internationalisation. This distinction is done depending upon the nature and the objectives that each one has: funding and aid mechanisms; institutional support instruments and, finally, tax incentives.

It is difficult to present a static and long-lasting depiction of this network, since modifications

occur almost constantly. Beyond the two-party alternation in central government, as the in-ternationalisation of ETNs has become more important in the Spanish GDP, new bodies, com-panies, tools and budgetary entries in public funds, al aimed at improving these processes, have been created. The dynamic international markets require public support elements that must also be dynamic.



MITYC- General

Direction of

International

Funding (DGFI)

MITYC- DGFI

MITYC-DGFI

MITYC-CDTI

International

Direction

MITYC- CDTI

International

Direction

MITYC- CDTI

International

Direction

MITYC- European

Community

Programmes

MITYC- European

Community

Programmes

MITYC- European

Community

programmes


Funding and Aid Mechanism



Funding and Aid Mechanisms



European Community Funding and Aid Mechanisms



Viability Studies Fund (FEV)

Agreement for the Reciprocal Promotion of Interests (APRI)

Agreement for the Conversion of Debt into Investment

Technological Promo-tion Projects

Eureka Project

Iberoeka Project

AL-INVEST Programme

ASIA-INVEST Programme

PROINVEST Programme

Instrument funded via a charge to the DAF to favour the internationalisation of Spanish companies by means of the introduction of Spanish engineering, consultancy and technology fi rms, as well as Spanish know-how, into the preparation phases of projects…There are three types of FEV: public, private and multilateral.

“Providing an environment that is stable and favourable to investment and that enables the reduction of political and legal uncertainty factors that sometimes aff ect the develop-ment of investment projects with which companies are usually con-fronted overseas.

The conversion of foreign debt into private and public investments for Spanish companies and NGDOs.

“A Public and corporate body (…) that promotes the innovation and technological development of Span-ish companies”. Funding for the foreign exploitation of technologies developed by Spanish companies.

Providing support for technological cooperation in Europe.

Providing support for technological cooperation in Latin America.

European programmes aimed at strengthening economic cooperation between Europe and Latin America.

European programmes aimed at strengthening economic coopera-tion between Europe and Asia.

European programmes aimed at strengthening economic cooperation between Europe and ACP countries.




COFIDES

COFIDES

COFIDES

COFIDES

MEH - ICO

MEH - ICO

COFIDES









Country Expansion Line

Funding Line for Invest-ments in the Tourism Sector (FINTUR)

Funding Line for Invest-ments in the Services Sector (FINSER)

China Line

Reciprocal Interests Convention (CARI)

SUPERCARI

COFIDES-FOMIN Joint-funding line

Joint funding of productive invest-ments by Spanish companies in these countries, giving priority to projects in the infrastructures, pub-lic services and transport sectors amongst others.

This is a public funding line aimed directly at the tourism sector and whose goal is to contribute to-wards the medium- and long-term financial needs of Spanish compa-nies in this sector in “developing countries”.

The goal of this instrument is public contribution to the medium- and long-term fi nancial needs of investment projects by Spanish companies in the services sector overseas, more specifi cally in “de-veloping countries”.

The joint funding of productive in-vestments by Spanish companies in China, giving priority to projects in the infrastructures, public services sectors.

A fi nancial body whose objective is to ensure that private fi nancial bodies give long-term credits for export with a fi xed interest rate that is lower than the market rate. CARI functions like an interest rate in-surance, eliminating the risk of an eventual rise in interest rates.

This is a credit for funding Spanish arms exports.

Provides support for the long-term funding requirements of produc-tive investment projects by Spanish companies in Latin America.




COFIDES

COFIDES

COFIDES

COFIDES

COFIDES

COFIDES

COFIDES

COFIDES






Funding and AidMechanism




COFIDES for African, Caribbean and Pacifi c (ACP) countries

COFIDES-CII for investments in Latin American countries

Fund for Overseas Investments (FIEX)

Fund for Overseas investments by SMEs (FONPYME)

Country Expansion Line

Line of Funding for Investments in the Tourism Sector (FIN-TUR)

Line of Funding for Investments in the Ser-vices Sector (FINSER)

China Line

Providing support for projects by Spanish companies in ACP countries.

Providing support for the medium- and long-term funding requirements of productive investment projects by Spanish companies in Latin Ameri-can countries.

Providing support for the own re-sources requirements of investment projects by Spanish companies in overseas markets.

Providing support for the own re-sources requirements of projects by Spanish SMEs in overseas markets.

Joint-funding of productive invest-ments by Spanish companies in these countries, giving priority to projects in the infrastructures, pub-lic services and transport sectors amongst others.

This is a public line of funding that is directly aimed at the tourism sec-tor whose objective is to contribute towards the medium- and long-term funding requirements o Spanish companies in this sector in “develop-ing countries”.

The objective of this instrument is the public contribution to the me-dium- and long-term funding needs of investment projects by Spanish companies in the services sector overseas, mores specifi cally in “de-veloping countries”.

Joint funding of productive invest-ments by Spanish companies in China, giving priority to projects in the infrastructures, public services sectors.




COFIDES

ICO - COFIDES

MEH-Inland

Revenue

MEH-Inland

Revenue

MEH-Offi ce of

the Secretary

of State for

Trade

COFI MEH

– General

Direction of

Corporate

Funding (DG-

FINT) DES

MEH – MAEC –

MITYC – ICO




Tax Incentive Instrument

Tax Incentive Instruments

Funding and aid Mechanism – Institu-tional Support Tool

Funding and Aid Mecha-nism – Institutional Support Tool

Funding and Aid Mecha-nism

FINBRAND – Line for internationalisation

ICO line for internation-alisation

Deductions for Spanish Investments Overseas

Conventions for the avoidance of Double Taxation

Spanish Company for Export Credit Insurance (CESCE)

Debt Conversion

Development Aid Fund (DAF)

Medium- and long-term funding for the promotion of the internationalisation process of “relevant” Spanish brands. It envisages newly-implanted projects as well as the expansion of affi liates and the acquisition of foreign companies.

Joint funding of productive projects by Spanish companies overseas.

The exemption of benefi ts obtained in foreign territories, deductions for the implantation in other countries and for exports.

These are conventions signed by Spain and other states win order to avoid dou-ble taxation for companies that operate in both territories.

Covers the political and commercial risks derived from foreign trade opera-tions.

These are bilateral agreements by means of which Spain cancels part of the foreign debt and the debtor state commits to the use of the liberated funds for the devel-opment of the country. Conversions can cover private or public investments.

Credits awarded to “developing” coun-tries for the funding of projects to be undertaken by Spanish companies that are equipped with Spanish assets and services. These funds have a double goal: the internationalisation of Spanish com-panies; promoting the development of the countries receiving this funding.

The DAF is considered to be a develop-ment cooperation tool due to the fact that credits are awarded under con-ditions that are more advantageous than those of the market, and with the theoretical objective of promoting the development of the debtor state.




There is also a series of bodies programme and instruments that are conducted in a decentralised way by some of the Autonomous Regions with the goal of promoting the internationalisation of the companies from various Spanish regions:

Support for internationalisation from regional governments

ANDALUSIA

ARAGON

ASTURIAS

CANARY

ISLANDS

CANTABRIA

CASTILE -

LA MANCHA

REGIONAL BODIES FOR CORPORATE INTERNATIONALISATION

Andalusian Agency for Foreign Pro-motion (EXTENDA) – Reports to the Regional Ministry for Tourism, Trade and Sports of the Regional Government

Aragón Exterior (AREX) – Public com-pany registered to the Department of Economy, Inland Revenue and Employ-ment of the Government of Aragon.

Asturex: Sociedad de Promoción Exterior Principado de Asturias SA.

Sociedad Canaria de Fomento Económi-co SA (PROEXCA) –Registered to the Regional Ministry for Economy and Inland Revenue

Sociedad para el Desarrollo Regional de Cantabria (SODERCAN) – Made up of the Regional Government of Cantabria, the Caja Cantabria Bank and the Chamber of Commerce of Cantabria

Instituto de Promoción Exterior de Castilla la Mancha (IPEX) –_ Registered to the Vice-presidency and Regional Ministry of Economy and Inland Revenue

Internationalisation body at regional level. Its goal is “to facilitate the internationalisation of SMEs from An-dalucía that have the ability to compete by means of off ering a variety of services”

“It is the Aragon government’s tool for promoting foreign expansion of Aragon’s economy”72. Mission: consultancy and support for internationalisation projects for Aragon’s companies, with a network of bu-reaus in more than 20 countries.

Date of creation: 2005. Asturex consists of the Government of the Principality, the Federation of Astu-rian Businessmen and the Chambers of Commerce of Avilés, Gijón and Oviedo.

Its goal: supporting the direct promotion of Asturian companies, the increase and geographic diversifi cation of Asturian exports and the increase of cooperation amongst companies.73.

Its goals are the promotion of the internationalisation of companies from the Canary Islands, strengthening the local corporate fabric and attracting foreign invest-ment to the islands. 74 .

Its objectives are focused on promoting the interna-tionalisation of companies from Cantabria, increasing and diversifying exports, amongst other functions. 75.

Created in 2002, IPEX aims to increase the overseas corporate presence of Castilla-La Mancha primarily in countries outside the EU 76.

Internationalisation BodyRegional Government

Functions and activities



Castile and

León

Catalonia

Ceuta

Valencia

Galicia

Euskadi

(the Basque

Country)

Extremadura


ADE Internacional Excal SA

Acció Centre d’Innovació i De-senvolupament Empresarial (CIDEM-COPCA)

Sociedad de Fomento de Ceuta PROC-ESA: Sociedad Privada Municipal para el Fomento y la Promoción del Desar-rollo Socioeconómico de Ceuta SA

Instituto Valenciano de la Exportación (IVEX)

Instituto Gallego de Promoción Económica (IGAPE)

Sociedad para la Promoción y Recon-versión Industrial (SPRI)

Sociedad de Fomento Industrial de Extremadura (SOFIEX)

Its goal is to promote the internationalisation of the region’s companies. Excal off ers consultancy and pro-motion of foreign trade. It is a key instrument for the corporate internationalisation of Castilla y León.

Made up of the Regional Government of Catalonia, Cata-lan Chambers of Commerce and Industry and more than 100 private bodies that are registered with the Depart-ment for Innovation, Universities and Companies, it is the Regional Government’s tool for the promotion of the internationalisation of Catalan companies.

PROCESA “has the mission of facilitating, stimulating, channelling and validating projects and initiatives of a corporate nature…”.Amongst other things, PROCESA manages the inte-grated operations programme between Spain and Morocco.

“… it is the regional government’s tool for internation-alising the corporate fabric of the Region of Valencia… The company was created under the joint initiative of the Regional Ministry for Industry, Trade and Innova-tion and the Chambers of Commerce of the Region of Valencia, facilitating the access to the global market for the region’s companies with the aim of making in-ternationalisation the key to their progress and future success…”.

It is Galicia’s Development Agency. Amongst its objec-tives is supporting Galician companies that wish to acquire an international dimension. The body off ers lines of funding, consultancy, corpo-rate diagnoses, various forms of institutional support and market research, amongst other functions”.

Amongst other things, its goal is focused on contrib-uting to the internationalisation of Basque companies and it disposes of a network of bureaus in 27 coun-tries. “Mission: promoting the internationalisation of Basque companies, thus contributing to increasing their competitiveness and their potential for creating wealth and employment…”.

It aims to attract investments to the region and to sup-port local corporate projects in various sectors. SOFIEX and the Sociedad de Gestión Pública de Extremadura (GPEX) have signed a collaboration convention with COFIDES to promote the internation-alisation of companies from Extremadura.

Regional Government

Internationalisation Body Functions and activities



LA RIOJA

MADRID

MELILLA

MURCIA

NAVARRE


ADER: Agencia de Desarrollo Económico de La Rioja – This is a pub-lic body of the Regional Government that is registered with the Regional Ministry for Industry, Innovation and Employment.

PromoMadrid – Reports to the Regional Ministry for Economy and Technological Innovation of the Re-gional Government of Madrid.

Sociedad Pública Promoción Económica de Melilla (PROMESA).

Instituto de Fomento de la Región de Murcia (INFO)

Departamento de Innovación, Empresa y Empleo

A public body whose mission focuses on improving the region’s corporate and industrial activity, devel-oping an economic and industrial policy.As for the internationalisation of regional compa-nies, ADER primarily concentrates on training and information.

Amongst its functions is the support for companies from Madrid in view of their internationalisation, as well as attracting foreign investment to the region. It also carries out sectorial promotion activities. “Goals: Providing companies from Madrid with use-ful information for the development and execution of their internationalisation strategy (…)Training people in charge of the internationalisation processes within companies from Madrid so that they can carry out their activity in the most effi cient and successful way possible” .

A local development agency that has been involved in assisting and incentivising the Autonomous City’s corporate sector for the past 15 years.

“amongst a corporate audience (…) The Foreign Trade section of the Public Works Institute deploys its activities in the context of the Foreign Promotion Plan… whose objectives include the optimisation of the internationalisation of companies from Murcia by means of the incorporation of new companies, the diversifi cation of export products, penetration of new markets and the consolidation of existing markets” .

By means of the Plan for the Internationalisation of Navarra’s Companies, this body aims for the pen-etration and creation of Navarre’s companies in foreign markets. For the development of the Plan for the Internationalisation of Navarra’s Companies, there are collaboration agreements with the Offi cial Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Navarra, and another with ICEX.

Regional Government

Internationalisation Body Functions and activities


This analysis enables us to demonstrate an en-tire legal and political network at the service of Spanish companies. It exposes the divergences between the commitments of these policies and their effective fulfilment or the complaints from

civil society, as well as the contradictions that exist between Spanish policies and institutions and development in Sub-Saharan Africa in the context of Spanish International Cooperation.


Table 4: MAIN INSTRUMENTS FOR SUPPORTING SPANISH TRADE

AND INVESTMENT IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

According to information obtained from the ICEX (Spanish Institute for Foreign Trade) website, some of the instruments for the promotion of Spanish exports to Sub-Saharan Africa are:

• Support for Spain’s commercial offi ces in Sub-Saharan Africa.

• ICEX’s promotion and information activities (trade fairs, trade missions, campaigns, technical symposiums, etc.).

• FAD (Development Aid Fund) loans awarded to African governments for the funding of projects to be undertaken by Spanish companies.

• Public funding of viability studies (FEV) carried out by Spanish companies.

• CESCE cover for corporate risks in African countries.

And the main instruments for the promotion of Spanish investment in Sub-Saharan Africa are:

• Funding by COFIDES for the creation/acquisition of companies in Africa by means of medium- and long-term loans.

• Agreements with the Spanish government for the reciprocal promotion and protection of investments in African countries (APPRI).

• Multilateral instruments for supporting investment in Sub-Saharan Africa (European Financing Partners – EFP – and BEI).

Source: table extracted as-is from Marin et al, 2009.



Within the policy directives established by the EU, Spain maintains trade relationships for export and import with several countries in Sub-Saharan Afri-ca. Therefore Spanish exports have mainly been aimed at fi ve countries in Sub-Saharan Africa: South Africa, Nigeria, Angola, Senegal and Ghana, countries that concentrate more than half of all the exports made in the 1995-2007 period.

South Africa, which represented 27.9%of all Spa-nish exports in 2007, had a growth of almost 500% in 2007 with regard to 1995 and is currently the main target for Spanish products (OPEX, 2009).

It is followed by Nigeria and Angola with 11.2% and 6.7% respectively. Exports to Senegal and Ghana each represent around 5% of Spanish exports to Sub-Saharan Africa (OPEX, 2009).

These fi ve countries represent 56% of Spanish exports. The remaining 44% of exports is spread out over the other 43 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, mainly in the Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Libe-ria, Cameroon, Gabon, Kenya and the Seychelles. In the remaining countries, trade relationships are practically non-existent, since in all they do not re-present more than 1% of exports.

As for imports, albeit with a greater percentage than exports (56% and 38% respectively), Nigeria and South Africa continue to be Spain’s primary trade associates (OPEX, 2009).

The level of specialisation of Spanish exports to the African continent is high: more than half of the export flows are concentrated upon equipment and semi-manufactured goods. As for goods and services imported from the African continent by Spain, 64% are aimed at the acquisition of energy products. In sectorial terms, the concentration is also very high: three sectors absorb around 66% of the funds. The main target sector for inves-tments between 1993 and 1995 was the fi shing and fi sh-farming sector, with 87% of investments. Wood, cork and basket making, with 27%, became the greatest targets in the 1996-2000 period. The

fi shing and fi sh-farming sector, which appears amongst the main targets of Spanish investments during the reference periods that are taken into account, was once again the favourite in 2006 and 2007 (OPEX, 2009). Amongst other sectors with some level of importance in quantitative terms, one fi nds food and drinks products, wood and cork, real estate operations, etc. Spanish investors also direct their resources towards other sectors, such as hotels, oil extraction transport or recrea-tional activities, but without exceeding, jointly, 30% of total Spanish investment.

In the two main target countries, the level of sec-torial concentration is extremely high, particularly in the case of Namibia, where one could speak of single-sector investment: in this country the fi s-hing and fi sh-farming sector concentrates 95% of Spanish investments. Forty-eight per cent of the investments made in South Africa were aimed ant the metallurgy sector (OPEX, 2009).

The following table lists the commercial exchanges established between Spain and some countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. The information was obtained from the ICEX (Spanish Institute for Foreign Trade) website, updated in August 2010.

Spanish trade and investment in Sub-Saharan Africa


FOREIGN INDUSTRIAL SHIFT IN THE DISTANCE AND CRAFT BOAT, SANT LOUIS, SENEGAL.


Table 5: THE EXCHANGE OF TRADE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN SPAIN

AND SOME COUNTRIES IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

ANGOLA 33

Angola has never traditionally been a target country for substantial Spanish investment, although there is a noticeable presence in the energy, health and construction sectors. The main sector in which Spain imports from Angola is the environment and energy sector, with 268,838,000 Euros followed at a distance by that of fi sh and seafood, with 4,290,000 Euros. As for the main sectors in which Spain exports to Angola there is that of industrial technology, with 100,066,000 Euros, followed by the auxiliary mechanics and construction sectors, with 43,923,000 Euros.

GHANA 34

The main sector that Spain imports from Ghana is the bakery and others sector, with a total of 47,510,000 Euros. The main sector that Spain exports to Ghana is that of auxiliary mechanics and construction, with a total of 45,198,000 Euros, followed by the chemical industry sector, with 19,819,000 Euros and by the industrial technology sector with 14,346,000 Euros. Accord-ing to the ICEX, Spanish investment in Ghana does not represent a large amount, although from September 1994 until September 2005, 19 Spanish investment projects have been registered in Ghana, in the agriculture, construction, export, trade, manufacturing, services and tourism sectors.

EQUATORIAL GUINEA 35

In 2007, Equatorial Guinea was ranked fi fth for Spanish exports to Sub-Saharan Africa with 5.1% of its total exports. Spanish exports to Equatorial Guinea reached a record fi gure in 2008 with 144 million Euros. Amongst the products one can note machinery (19 M€), motor-cars and accessories (16 M€), drinks (15 M€) and electrical equipment (11 M€). For their part, imports reached record fi gures in 2008, with 1,882 million Euros, and are concentrated in the fuel sector (1,870 M€). Crude oil represents 98.35% of total imports. Other entries. The Isolux company is currently operating the Bata electrical power station for a sum of around 1 M€/year and the “Hermanos Martínez” and “Comercial Santy” corporate groups control a fair portion of the food wholesale and retail business in Equatorial Guinea (ICEX, 2009).

MAURITANIA 36

In 2007 Spain was Mauritania’s third client after China and France, due to the import of fi shing products. Spanish investment in Mauritania has traditionally been associated to mixed Hispa-no-Mauritanian companies. There are currently 20 companies operating in Mauritania, some of which are full affi liates of Spanish mother companies, most of which are based in the Ca-nary Islands. Fishing has always been a traditional investment sector although there is only one fi sh processing plant operated with Spanish capital and there are very few active companies with Spanish capital. Transport is a key sector for Spanish investment, with the presence of two Spanish maritime transport companies, two air transport companies and two land passenger transport companies that regularly operate in Mauritania.


33 http://www.ofi cinascomerciales.es/icex/cda/controller/pageOfecomes/0,,5280449_5282899_5283038_0_AO,00.html (Consulted on 2/10/2010)

34 http://www.ofi cinascomerciales.es/icex/cda/controller/pageOfecomes/0,,5280449_5282899_5283038_0_GH,00.html (Consulted on 10/10/2010)

35 http://www.ofi cinascomerciales.es/icex/cda/controller/pageOfecomes/0,,5280449_5282899_5283038_0_GQ,00.html (Consulted on 3rd November 2010)


Table 5: THE EXCHANGE OF TRADE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN SPAIN

AND SOME COUNTRIES IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

MOZAMBIQUE 37

Spain is one of Mozambique’s main commercial associates (as a client as well as a supplier). Furthermore, the forthcoming signature by both nations of an Agreement for the Promotion and Protection of Investments will create a legal context that will be favourable to the interests of Spanish companies in Mozambique. Spain intends to fund small projects in very diverse sectors of the Mozambiquan economy, which will introduce new companies into this country’s market-place. In 2007, Spain’s exports to Mozambique amounted to 13.8 million Euros, 77% of which corresponded to raw materials, industrial products and equipment. In 2008 (from January to November), exports amounted to 21.9 million Euros, of which 52% were machinery and electrical and mechanical goods.

According to data from ICEX, updated on 8/2010 , the fi sh and seafood sector is the fi rst-ranking sector imported to Spain from Mozambique, with 97,722,000 Euros, followed by the raw materi-als, semi-manufactured and intermediate products sector, with 13,749,000 Euros. It is curious to note that, in the ranking of the main sectors exported from Spain to Mozambique, one fi nds fi sh and seafood in ninth place, with 185,000 Euros.

NAMIBIA 39

Spain is Namibia’s third-ranked client, after the United Kingdom and South Africa. Neverthe-less, if one does not take into account diamonds, Spain would be Namibia’s principal EC client, since it purchases about a third of all the products that this country exports to the European Union. It is followed in importance by France, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands. The strong Spanish presence in the fi shing sector is undoubtedly the determining factor in the importance of exports of fi sh from Namibia to Spain. The main sector Spain imports from Namibia is fi sh and seafood, with 109,957,000 Euros, far ahead of horticultural products, with 191,000 Euros. The main sector exported to Namibia from Spain is that of raw materials, semi-manufactured goods and intermediate products, with 3,585,000, followed by industrial technology with 1,908,000 Euros.

SOUTH AFRICA 40

The main sector imported by Spain from South Africa is that of environment and energy pro-duction, with 189,923,000 Euros, followed by the raw materials, semi-manufactured goods and intermediate products sector with 109,965,000 Euros. As for the main sectors exported to Na-mibia from Spain, in fi rst place there is the industrial technology sector, with 293,474,000 Euros, followed by the chemical industry sector with 74,064,000 Euros.

Fuente: elaboración propia a través de información extraída de www.icex.es

36 http://www.ofi cinascomerciales.es/icex/cda/controller/pageOfecomes/0,5310,5280449_5304715_5296234_0_MR,00.html (Consulted on 3rd November 2010)

37 http://www.ofi cinascomerciales.es/icex/cda/controller/pageOfecomes/0,5310,5280449_5304715_5296234_0_MZ,00.html (Consulted on 3rd November 2010)

38 http://www.ofi cinascomerciales.es/icex/cda/controller/pageOfecomes/0,5310,5280449_5320986_5320988_0_MZ,00.html (Consultada el 10/11/ 2010)

39 http://www.ofi cinascomerciales.es/icex/cda/controller/pageOfecomes/0,5310,5280449_5308104_5308301_0_NA,00.html (Consultada el 5/11/2010)

40 http://www.ofi cinascomerciales.es/icex/cda/controller/pageOfecomes/0,5310,5280449_5320986_5320988_0_ZA,00.html (Consultada el 5 de Noviembre de 2010)



According to the information on its website 41, the ICEX is “a Public Body with specifi c legal per-sonality registered with the Secretary of State for Foreign Commerce reporting to the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade, that provides its services to Spanish companies in order to promote and facilitate their international pro-jection”. To this end “it designs and executes commercial promotion programmes in foreign markets, promotes investment, industrial im-plantation or corporate cooperation projects in foreign markets amongst other things” 42.

For this purpose, the ICEX has developed various instruments with which to support the implanta-

tion of Spanish companies on foreign markets. These include commercial promotion activities (trade missions, promotion and publicity cam-paigns), information and communication (the ICEX website, call centres, market research, thematic seminars in Spain and overseas, in-vestment and corporate cooperation for a) and training courses (foreign commerce grants pro-grammes) (Ligero, 2007). The ICEX deploys its activities outside Spain by means of the rein-forcement of the Network of Spanish Overseas Economic and Commercial Bureaus, which has seven offi ces in Sub-Saharan Africa (Nigeria, Senegal, Ghana, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya, An-gola and South Africa) (Marín et al, 2009).

In 2008, on request from the CAPCAO (Assess-ment Committee for Trade with Sub-Saharan Africa), the ICEX created the Support Programme for Projects in Sub-Saharan Africa (PAPAS) . The specifi c goal of this programme is to support and encourage sales of Spanish products as well as the commercial and productive implantation of Spanish companies in the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa (Angola, Zambia, São Tomé and Príncipe, Benin, Burkina Faso the Cape Verde Islands, Cameroon, the Ivory Coast, Chad, Ga-bon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, the Republic of the Congo, Senegal, Si-erra Leone and Togo).

This programme off ers aid for legal consultancy, rents and external services, expenses and travel

or promotional matter, and allows across-the-board projects in all sectors. Moreover, and in keeping with the philosophy of the Africa Plan (addressed later on in this report), the pro-gramme functions in such a way that projects that are submitted to the ICEX by companies are not only evaluated according to the usual param-eters (the solidity and maturity of the project, for example), but are also evaluated according to the creation of employment in the target coun-try, the transferral of technology and knowledge, the consolidation of the stable corporate fabric overseas and support for the development and export strategies of the target countries.

At Veterinarios Sin Fronteras we are doubtful of the de facto benefi ts of the immersion of foreign and Spanish companies in the economies and

The Spanish Institute for Foreign Commerce (ICEX)

Support Programme for Projects in Sub-Saharan Africa (PAPAS)

41 http://www.icex.es

42 http://www.icex.es/icex/cda/controller/pageICEX/0,6558,5518394_5593051_5711547_0_0_-1,00.html (Consulted on 13/10/2010)

43 http://www.icex.es/icex/cda/controller/pageICEX/0,6558,5518394_6186001_5586834_4095211_0_-1,00.html (Consulted on 5/11/2010)



societies of the ACP countries and, more spe-cifi cally, in the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa; countries in which, as can be seen throughout the document, the Spanish government has taken a particular interest in recent years. If there is real concern on the part of the Spanish government for development at all levels (social, cultural, economic, etc.) in poor countries, it would be lo-gical to design and implement policies that would

contribute towards the economic and social rein-

forcement of these countries according to their

endogenous abilities and not according to the in-

terests of international private capital, in this case,

Spanish capital. The more dependent a country

is when consolidating the economic and social

functions of its foreign interactions, the more it

will be vulnerable to external interests.

The Agreements for the Reciprocal Promotion and Protection of Investments (APPRI)

44 Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism. http://www.comercio.mityc.es (Consulted on 29/11/2011)

The APPRIs are bilateral treaties concerning di-rect foreign investment (DFI) and investment portfolios, as well as loans, property conces-sions and rights registered between two states on the basis of reciprocity. They constitute a basic tool of the institutional activity of the Sec-retariat of State for Trade and Tourism in the context of support plans for the internation-alisation of Spanish companies, with the goal of creating conditions of political and legal security for the investments made by the investors from each state in the other state’s territory 44.

In 2010, Spain signed APPRIs with Gabon, Equa-torial Guinea, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Senegal, Angola and Mauritania (Ministry of In-dustry, Tourism and Trade, List of valid APPRIs, 2010). “As acknowledged by the Africa Plan, they take on a specifi c strategic interest in the case of Sub-Saharan Africa, but nonetheless, the Spanish corporate world is still of the opinion that many African countries do not off er suffi -cient guarantees for their potential investments” (Marín et al, 2009).


YUCCA PLANT IN FAMILY OPERATION, UGANDA.


The ineffi ciency of International Cooperation. An introduction to the concept of Anti-cooperation

David Llistar coined the term “Anti-cooperation” (2009) in this sense. This concept attempts to show up the neo-colonial mechanisms that still exist today in a North-South direction, as well as the little importance carried by development policies compared to all the other foreign poli-cies and lifestyles of wealthy countries, which directly or indirectly cause serious prejudices in Southern countries, as we shall see further on. If Development Cooperation is supposed to mean all activities in the North that are benefi cial (at least in principle) to Southern countries, then “Anti-cooperation” means the exact opposite, in other words, activities conducted in and by the North and whose eff ects are directly or indirectly harmful to the South (Llistar, 2006). With such a consideration, it would appear to be diffi cult to achieve the objectives presented in the develop-ment policies of Northern countries, whatever the tools may be, if at the same time the anti-cooperation activities that are being carried out

are not reconsidered.

Development cooperation enables wealthy coun-tries to position themselves within the context of concern for inequality and poverty in the world without the need to address their real causes, whilst they actively develop means by which they can continue to wield political, economic and cultural control on a global scale. This gives rise to the paradox that cooperation and anti-cooper-ation tend to be conducted by the same agents. The following section illustrates the Anti-coop-eration concept by means of a study of various mechanisms deployed by the Spanish govern-ment in order to support the internationalisation of Spanish companies in the context of Spanish international cooperation.

Despite the apparent work of Development Coo-peration over the past 60 years to alleviate the problem of starvation, instead of reducing, the number of people living in conditions of food ins-tability continues to rise year after year. This lack of correlation between “concern” and “results” proves that something is not being done right.

The Spanish International Development Coope-ration Agency (AECID) is the body that controls the Spanish policy for international development cooperation. It is a public-law company registered

to the Ministry for Foreign Aff airs and Cooperation via the offi ce of the Secretary of State for Inter-national Cooperation (SECI) 45. The 3rd Directive Plan for Spanish Development Cooperation for the 2009-2012 period, identifi es some of the cau-ses of this lack of correlation, such as the lack of funding, the ineffi ciency of development aid and the need for better coordination amongst develo-pment agents and policies. Although these causes do have their part to play in this, continuing to consider them as central elements of this failure only distracts attention from the real problem.

Spanish international cooperation: investment as a tool for development policy

45 http://www.aecid.es/web/es/aecid/ (Consulted on 12/11/2010)



Spanish cooperation and its paradoxes

The Spanish government’s activities in the fi eld of cooperation, designed with a neoliberal ap-proach, do not diff er from those of other wealthy countries. The proposal of this approach is “to alleviate the extreme poverty caused by the essential adjustment programmes whilst mod-ernising and expanding the structures of global capitalism” (Llistar, 2009).

When the use of cooperation funds from the Spanish government is analysed, it is necessary to address the following issues: what is being fi -nanced and where it is being fi nanced, in order to fi nally attempt to understand the directly and indirectly moves the Cooperation and develop-ment aid process, and the interdependence of the agents that characterises it.

Via the AECID, the Spanish government distrib-utes and provides development aid by means of various sources: subsidies given to Spanish or foreign NGDOs and to Spanish companies whose fi eldwork takes place in poor countries; International Cooperation contributions made directly to institutions or other bodies in the countries benefi ting from aid, without the need for intermediaries; and fi nally by means of the Permanent Open Tender (CAP).

The AECID devoted 238,769,776.07 € (which represents 24.80% of its total budget of 962,774,141.60 €) to NGDOs in 2010. More specifi cally, 53,166,161.58 Euros have been in-vested in Sub-Saharan Africa, which is 22.40% of the budget aimed at all the NGOs operating worldwide. The country that has benefi ted the most from this has been Mozambique, which has been awarded 8,604,059.45 Euros, which represents 3.63% of the total budget, fol-lowed by Equatorial Guinea with 7,952,922.00

Euros (3.36% of the total), Senegal with 6,263,998.97 Euros (2.64%) and Ethiopia, which received 4,198,170.00 Euros (1.77% of the total) (AECID, 2011).

The International Cooperation subsidies represented a total of 49,631,354.66 Euros (AECID, 2009). These have a more institution-al outlook and tend to be aimed at reinforcing the institutions of impoverished countries (such as Mozambique’s Ministry of Finance, the Development Agency in Senegal or the Namibian government) or at supporting the actions of multilateral bodies such as the FAO and UNICEF (with projects in Angola, Maurita-nia, Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea and Niger).

For its part, in the CAP 14 projects in Sub-Saharan Africa related to the agriculture and fi shing sector and local trade were funded for a total of 2,541,078.00 Euros 46.

WHAT IS BEING FINANCED

46 Direction of Cooperation for Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe. Annex 1. Resolution of 1st October 2010 of the Presidency of the Span-ish Agency for International Development Cooperation on the partial adjudication of open and permanent tender aid for coopera-tion and development aid activities, corresponding to the fi rst procedure of 2010 (Published on the website on 20/10/2010).



The analysis of the Directive Plan’s strate-gic priorities reveals that it is the productive sector (including agriculture and FS) that the AECID contributed the most in 2010, with a provision of 48,097,303.22 Euros, which represents 20.30% of its total budget. This fi gure is much higher than that of the fol-lowing investment sector: health (including sexual & reproductive health), with a provision of 34,538,049.47 Euros (14.57% of the total amount), or education, with 41,063,085.98 Euros (17.33% of the total) (AECID, 2011).

One can deduce from this that the Spanish government considers the agriculture and fi shing sector to be a high-priority sector that could represent a force for development for impoverished countries whose economies and survival depend upon it. In view of this, one should ask oneself what type of projects (and from which perspective) is being supported since, depending upon how the intervention is conducted in the benefi ciary country, the in-terferences that may arise can be of one or the other kind, and can occasionally cause eff ects on the population that are more harmful than

those that one is attempting to relieve. Sup-porting family agriculture by highlighting rural know-how, or strengthening local trade chan-nels and the empowerment of the aff ected community from the perspective of FSov, are not the same as providing support via the dis-tribution of genetically modifi ed seeds in the case of a food emergency.

In cases of food emergencies, the Spanish government usually acts multilaterally, asso-ciating with international bodies such as the UN. The World Food Programme is the main United Nations agency that is in charge of providing food aid in an emergency situation. It receives 48% of the food from the United States (Congressional Research Service Re-port for Congress, 2005) and may only buy up to 30% of food aid locally, since it contin-ues to receive the majority of contributions from governmental donors in the shape of food and not in monetary form (Oxfam In-ternational, 2005). The example illustrated in the table shows the activity of the inter-national community in a food emergency situation in Mozambique.

HOW IT IS FINANCED



Table 6: FOOD AID IN THE 2005 FOOD CRISIS IN MOZAMBIQUE

After four consecutive years of drought, the condition of Mozambiquan rural families was alarm-ing, with an estimate of more than 800,000 persons aff ected by the food crisis 47. Faced with this situation, on 13th September 2005, the government of Mozambique and the PMA launched an urgent call to the international community for it to support the drought victims in the coun-try. The PMA’s partners in the distribution of food products were several national NGOs such as Ara, Bades, Cedes, Cruz Vermelha de Moçambique, Igreja Presbiteriana de Moçambique and O Concelho Cristão de Moçambique, and international ones such as World Vision, Jamo, LWF, Samaritano and IRD. Another important agent was the INGC (Instituto Nacional de Gestión de Calamidades) 48. Most of the products that were distributed did not come from national produc-tion: the millet was mainly purchased in South Africa; the beans came from China, the US and Kenya; the olyra, millet flour and soya flour came from the US; the rice came from Japan, Algeria and Pakistan; and the vegetable oil came from the EU.

This way, via the PMA, the UN facilitated the imports of basic products fundamentally coming from wealthy and industrialised countries that view emergency situations as an opportunity to shift their surplus agricultural produce.

Source: compiled internally according to Martínez, 2010

47 http://www.afrol.com/es/articles/16965 (consulted on 05/09/2010)

48 Institute that reports to the government of Mozambique.



Table 7: GEOGRAPHIC PRIORITIES ESTABLISHED IN THE 3RD DIRECTIVE PLAN

49 http://www.aecid.es/web/es/publicaciones/Documentos/Otros/Africa/Prog_Nauta.html (Consulted on 05/11/2010)

The 3rd Directive Plan distributes the coun-tries benefi tting from Offi cial Development Assistance (ODA) into three diff erent catego-ries (A, B and C) that defi ne the government’s

geographic priority in the domain of coopera-tion. The intention is for the “A” and “B” group countries to concentrate 85% of aid by 2012 (AECID, 2009).

WHERE IT IS FINANCED

GROUP A:

EXTENSIVE ASSOCIATION

GROUP B:

FOCALISED ASSOCIATION

GROUP C:

FOCALISED ASSOCIATION

WITH MEDIUM-INCOME

COUNTRIES FOR THE

CONSOLIDATION OF DEVEL-

OPMENT ACHIEVEMENTS

Least Developed Countries, Low Income Countries or Medium-Low Income Coun-tries in which the programme of Spanish Cooperation has opportunities to establish an effi cient long-term association.

Countries that, for various reasons, do not allow a Type A association. ODA is concen-trated upon a single key sector or on more than one, but with a single approach, as-sociated to a specifi c situation (such as cases of vulnerability to disasters caused by natural events, conflicts or post-conflict situations, etc.)

Countries in which the presence of Spanish Cooperation and the country’s potential as a development associate enables the deployment of specifi c association strat-egies, included as commitments on the international agenda for effi ciency.

Ethiopia, Mali, Mozambique, Senegal, the Cape Verde Islands and Niger

Equatorial Guinea, the Sudan, Guinea-Bissau, Gambia, Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Guinea

Namibia

Categories Description Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa

At Veterinarios Sin Fronteras, we fi nd that it is very telling that some of the countries the Di-rective Plan has prioritised, even in Group A, are countries in which Spain has the greatest corpo-rate interests, such as Senegal and Mozambique with regard to fi shing. In order to nurture good relationships with the governments of countries with which Spain has maintained commercial and fi shing resource exploitation activities for decades, the Nuta Programme, promoted by the

AECID, has been specially created. The goal of

this programme is to contribute towards the eco-

nomic and social progress of African countries

by means of the development of their fi shing

sector. It funds marine research programmes

and fi shing resources; projects linked to fi shing

resource policies and control; training projects;

fi shing development programmes and fi sh-farm-

ing projects 49.


Source: compiled internally from information obtained from the 3rd Directive Plan for Spanish Cooperation (2009-2012)


50 http://www.rlc.fao.org/fondo/ (Consulted on 30/10/2010)

51 http://www.rlc.fao.org/faoespana/proyecto/africa.html (Consulted on 15/10/2010)

With regard to the development of fi sh-farming, the Nauta Programme organised a seminar in Accra (Ghana) on 23/03/07 with the aim of de-veloping the implementation plan for the use and dissemination of genetically modifi ed Nile Tilapia in the Volta Basin and adjoining areas, bringing together directing authorities from Benin, Burki-na Faso, the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Mali and Togo. This is an example of how, when concerned with the situation of food insecurity of African popula-tions, Spanish cooperation is introducing highly technical exogenous farming methods, and fur-thermore ignoring the controversy that shadows the debate on genetically modifi ed organisms and their individual, social and environmental consequences.

The Spanish FAO Fund for Africa, Asia and East-ern Europe was created in 2008 as a multilateral means of addressing the problem of famine in these territories 50. In this context and by means of this Fund, in the agriculture sector the Spanish government has encouraged the promotion of intensive rice production as a response to the in-creased prices of food, fuel and fertilisers in Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and the Ivory Coast. It has not paused to consider the consequences that the implementation of intensive rice pro-duction methods may have in these countries where historically, rice has been grown using traditional methods that are specifi cally adapted to the crop context, and whose production was primarily aimed at feeding the families and at the local and/or regional market.

Back in the domain of fi sh-farming, the FAO-Spain Fund, in coordination with the activities undertaken by the Nauta Programme, has also developed a programme in the Volta Basin area called “Fish-farming Investments for the reduc-tion of Poverty in the Volta Basin” 51. One of the project’s goals is – textually – the following: “Providing education to poor people for the fi sh-farming business and establishing national and Spanish SMEs” On the one hand, this highlights the assistive concept of the “enlightened rich” who have the moral duty to teach the “poor” in

order to help them to escape from poverty and, on the other hand, shows the direct link that ex-ists between the cooperation sector and the corporate world.

In fact, Spain has established alliances with the private corporate sector and private clusters as a key instrument in the development policy, for technical assistance reasons as well as for envis-aging and executing development cooperation programmes, with Chambers of Commerce, the Spanish Confederation of Corporate Organisa-tions (CEOE) or the ICEX as key contacts. All of this is set out in the “Public and Private Alliance for Development” (APPD).

This alliance between sectors aims to address two antithetic goals at once: contributing to-wards developing the African population and favouring Spanish corporate access to Sub-Sa-haran Africa.

In light of this fact it is important to underline two items: a) that the Spanish government con-siders investment as a development policy tool, in other words, as an activity through which the donor aims to get something in return (not altru-istic) and that, therefore, will be undertaken in the sectors or territories in which there is a clear scope for returns; b) that, in turn, it promotes the exporting of the know-how and technology of private bodies before the endogenous and par-ticipative creation of technology and know-how that is locally appropriate in a geographic, bio-physical and – above all – cultural way.

Even more surprising is the inclusion, as a de-velopment policy, of credit-type contributions (these are not donation and must be returned according to certain conditions) to micro, small and medium enterprises in the associate coun-tries. These credit-type contributions end up by generating debt in the countries receiving the “aid” and thus deepening the rifts that exists between wealthy countries and impoverished nations. In this sense, the debt that Spain pos-sesses as a creditor before third-parties is o three diff erent categories that can be listed as



52 For more information about this issue, consult the following website: www.quiendebeaquien.org

53 “An illegal debt is deemed to be that which originates from loans that hide, fund or whose results are behaviour, mechanisms or phenomena that, in the medium or long term, violate the dignity of the life of citizens of the world and/or endanger the pacifi c coexistence of peoples” (Gómez et al, 2008).

follows: the Development Aid Fund (FAD), trade debt and other kinds of debt (government-to-

government credits, lines of credit with specifi c nature and endorsements) 52.

The FAD credits, awarded to Southern coun-tries by the Official Credit Institute (ICO) after approval by the Cabinet, have in the past repre-sented a very significant part of Spanish ODA. These Development Aid Funds offer the ben-eficiary countries bilateral funding in terms of concession (according to the Spanish govern-ment these terms are more favourable than those of the market) with the goals of, on the one hand, contributing to the development of the beneficiary country – by means of the concession of soft funds – and, on the other, encouraging the internationalisation of Spanish companies (QDQ, 2007).

“The Spanish government is responsible for choosing the target countries for the credits, the criteria that will be applied to them, the opera-tions that will be funded and the companies that will be contracted, since because of the linked nature of these credits, they are only conceded in order to acquire goods and services from Span-ish companies” (Gómez et al, 2008). What id of great concern is that these loan will be account-ed for as ODA in cases in which “they meet the principles of the cooperation policy, contained in the Directive Plan an in the other planning and strategy documents of Spanish development co-operation”.

Therefore, the goal of a part of ODA is not to be a tool for off ering resources to the benefi ciary countries, but instead to favour and promote the penetration of Southern economies by Spanish companies, thus increasing the exports of Span-ish products (Muñoz, 2007).

Spanish civil society reproaches the FAD’s secre-cy and lack of transparency, the lack of control over the fi nal purpose of the funds awarded and over the execution of the funded projects, as well as over the evaluation of their social and environmental eff ects and their contribution to the extent of the countries’ debt (Gómez et al, 2008; Marín et al, 2009). In 2007 the external debt for which Spain was a creditor amounted to 8,495.60 million Euros, of which almost 50% (4,195 million Euros) was debt from FAD credits, whilst 43% (3,661 million Euros) corresponded to trade debt or that generated by the CESCE (Carrión et al, 2009). Furthermore, the illegal nature of some FAD credits has been criticised53, given that they were aimed at purchasing arms (usually for the purpose of quelling civil protests or maintaining a dictatorship); funding wars for the invasion and annexation of neighbouring territories; corrupting Southern economic ad po-litical power (rerouting loans that never reached the country); purchasing luxury goods for the elites of the debtor country; fi nancing infrastruc-tures for the usage and benefi t of translational companies; so-called development projects with serious economic, social and environmental ef-fects; or loans imposed by the International Monetary Fund with harmful conditions for the population’s wellbeing (Gómez et al, 2008).

In the case of Sub-Saharan countries, 200 mil-lion Euros were directed between 2001 and 2006 and, in 2007, FAD credit lines were approved for a sum of 239 million Euros (51% of the FAD total for internationalisation forecast for that year). In

The FAD credits and Sub-Saharan Africa



the Spanish Cooperation’s 2005-2008 Country Strategy Document for Senegal there is an ex-plicit mention of the “success” of the FAD credits given to several Spanish companies for the de-velopment of photovoltaic projects in the Sine Salloum Basin, laboratory equipment for quality control for exports, storage and distribution fa-cilities for agricultural and fi shing products and freezing facilities for artisan fi shing. In the case of Somalia, criticism has been aimed at the fact that the entire foreign debt that the country has towards Spain “corresponds to two FAD credits given to the dictatorial regime of Muhammad Ziyad Vallo for the sale of Spanish lorries and military vehicles. Somalia is currently embroiled in a military conflict that confronts various clans and ‘warlords’ and it is calculated that the for-eign debt is equivalent to 300% of the country’s GDP” (Carrión et al, 2009). In 2003 Ethiopia, Uganda and Cameroon reimbursed a total of 23.5 million Euros to Spain in the devolution of Development Aid Fund (FAD) credits; this is six times more that what they received as donations (3.6 million Euros) (Intermón Oxfam, 2003).

The Fund for the Promotion of Development (FONPRODE), which is included in the Directive Plans of Spanish Cooperation and the Annual Plans for International Cooperation and which is not linked to commercial interests, was cre-ated in 2010 as a response to the historic claims of Spanish civil society and as a result of the reform of FAD funds. It includes a wide variety of instruments for direct and indirect funding (state-to-state donations) that can either be refundable or non-refundable (contributions to non-fi nancial multilateral development bodies). For 2011 it disposed of a budget 954 million Eu-ros, which is 22% of the total envisaged ODA.

It should be pointed out that this line continues to position private companies as key agents for international cooperation and that “the insuf-ficient control and assessment mechanisms that are envisaged and, above all, the impos-sibility of controlling the funds lent out via go-betweens like IFIs or investment funds, are an open door to the creation of more illegal debt and to the promotion of irresponsible invest-

ments” (Fresnillo, 2011).

At the same time another commercial policy tool, the Fund for Corporate Internationalisation (FIEM), was created; it is totally separate, and is run by the Ministry for Industry, Tourism and Trade via the Offi ce of the Secretary of State for Trade: it is aimed at the internationalisation of Spanish companies. The FIEM, which has a budg-etary allocation of more than 316 million Euros for 2011, specialises in the concession of loans and credits to states, foreign regional, provin-cial and local public administrations, as well as foreign public and private companies in order to fund projects (despite the high levels of foreign debt held by many countries that are prioritised in the Spanish development policy).

COFFEE PLANTATION, NEUMANN KAFEE GRUPPE, UGANDA.



54 The motives of loss in view of which the CESCE provides cover to Spanish companies overseas are: civil or international wars, revolutions, revolts, terrorism, considerable civil unrest or any similar circumstance that occurs overseas; catastrophic circum-stances or occurences such as cyclones, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or tidal waves, as well as nuclear accidents and those occasioned by chemical, biochemical or similar substances that also occur overseas; particularly serious political or economic events that occur overseas, such as balance payment crises or signifi cant alterations to monetary equity that cause a general situation of insolvency; the expropriation, nationalisation, confi scation or seizure dictated by foreign authorities that fall back on the foreign purchaser or on the Spanish foreign investment (Ortega, 2004; ODG, 2004).

55 Russia, Peru, Egypt, Cuba, Algeria or Angola.

The FEV line was created in 1995 under the responsibility of the FAD allocations and is di-rected by the Offi ce of the Secretary of State for Trade. It is a binding and fi nalist instrument that is used to favour the internationalisation of Spanish companies by means of offi cial fi nancial of various kinds to consultancy and technical assistance overseas aimed at the creation of feasibility studies and project preparation, the development of sectorial or geographic contex-tual development plans, as well as the design of regulations or sectorial planning and, generally speaking, economic institutional strengthening.

The goal is, on the one hand, to promote the par-ticipation of Spanish consultancy, engineering

and technology companies in the preparatory phases of trade and investment projects in foreign countries and, on the other hand, to fa-cilitate the participation of Spanish companies in the subsequent execution of projects derived from the studies. The FEV can be requested by a Southern country, a non-consulting Spanish company or by multilateral institutions to which Spain contributes via funds, generally develop-ment banks (Marín et al, 2009).

As far as Sub-Saharan Africa is concerned, fi ve studies were funded between 2001 and 2006 for a total value of some 460,000 Euros, concen-trated in three countries (Mozambique, Nigeria and the Cape Verde Islands).

The Fund for Viability Studies (FEV)

For its part, the CESCE (Spanish Company for Export Credit Insurance) is an Export Credit Agency (ECA) founded in 1970; it is mixed in na-ture, made up of 50.25% of public capital and 49.75% private capital (with the participation of banks such as the Banco Santander Central His-pano and the Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria) (Ortega, 2004; ODG, 2004) and reports to the Ministry of Economy via the Offi ce of the Secre-tary of State for Trade and Tourism.

The main objective of CESC is to facilitate the internationalisation of the private sector using public funding. In this way it controls in its own name and for the state the cover of risks in view of any loss 54 that a Spanish company might incur

overseas, particularly covering the risks of not being paid for the sales of products and services by Spanish companies in foreign marketplaces. It has insured projects that have reached 52% of the total foreign debt. Amongst the ten countries that have the greatest debt towards Spain, six of them 55 have ore than two-thirds of their debt in the hands of the CESCE (ODG, 2004).

The following table presents a summary taken from the document La Agencia española de crédito a la exportación: CESCE (Vargas, 2009; ODG, 2009), which gives a synthesised summary of the standard process that follows the conces-sion and payment of a CESCE credit.

The CESCE and Sub-Saharan Africa



Table 8: FUNCTIONING OF THE CESCE CREDITS

1. The Spanish company negotiates with a bank for the latter to give a loan to the purchaser of Spanish products from an impoverished country.

2. The bank concedes the loan and obtains insurance via the CESCE so that if the payment does not occur, the bank will be paid directly by the CESCE and the CESCE will then have to obtain the money from the debtor.

3. The CESCE and the bank impose sovereign guarantee clauses according to which the impov-erished country’s government guarantees that if the contracting company cannot pay, it will be the State that will assume the debt and become the debtor (accepting these conditions to ensure that there is investment in the country).

4. If a non-payment occurs, the CESCE will demand the money directly from the poor state. At that moment, the debt will become a public debt between the poor country and Spain. In many cases, above all if it is a Peripheral State, it will be obliged to assume this debt given that part of the project has been undertaken by means of funding obtained from Develop-ment Aid Fund credits.

Source: compiled internally according to information obtained from ODG, 2009



As has been explained throughout this chapter, there is proof that the Spanish government is, in actual fact, aiming for the development of a new cooperation policy according to what is called “fi nancial cooperation”, based on the unchecked and unquestioned promotion of refundable ODA.

Cooperation should not be considered as a means of economic interference but instead as a means of support to the way in which the aid-receiving countries understand and do things and should, in any case, not be linked to any cor-porate interest from the donor countries.

The Spanish government should, in this sense, extensively review its cooperation policy as well as Law 11/2010: Law on the Reform of the System of Financial Support to the Internation-alisation of Spanish Companies by following the

advice given by the state “Quién debe a Quién?” (“Who is in Debt to Whom?) (QDQ) campaign 56. This indicates that the FIEM will function accord-ing to the “sovereign guarantee”, implying the possibility of generating foreign debt in the case of non-payments, as well as pointing out that there are no signs of a reform of the CESCE.

Below we specify the minimum changes that the government should implement if this debt-generating mechanism were to be maintained; they are taken textually from the QDQ docu-ment Law 11/2010, of 28th June, on the Reform of the System for the Financial Support of the Internationalisation of Spanish Companies: Evaluation by the “Who is in debt to Whom?” campaign (2010). The present report sub-scribes to these proposals:

• Implementation of Integrated Public Audits, with participation from civil society, of the debt from all of Spain’s debtor countries in view of determining the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the de-manded debt (including debt generated by means of CESCE).

• Exclusion of all forms of support by means of CESCE insurance for projects that might potentially allow the violation of Human Rights and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

• Exclusion of al kinds of support by means of a CESCE insurance for projects that entail serious environmental impacts, that generate greater climate change (extractive industries and dams) and/or those that include nuclear technology.

• Explicit prohibition so that a CESCE cannot be used to support projects that fi nance military, police of double-use equipment.

• Establishing mechanisms that ensure a real implication of the aff ected populations in the deci-sions of environmental evaluations, compensation planning and relocations.


56 www.quiendebeaquien.org


The Spanish Development Finance Company (COFIDES)

COFIDES is a mixed-capital (public and private) company that has the participation of the ICEX, the Offi cial Credit Institute (ICO), The National Company for Innovation (ENISA), the Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA), the Banco Santander Central Hispano (BSCH) and the Ban-co de Sabadell. Its objective is “to facilitate the medium- and long-term funding of viable private foreign investment projects which channel some form of Spanish interest in order to contribute, according to profi tability criteria, to the develop-ment of the countries receiving the investments an well as to the internationalisation of Span-ish economy and companies” 57. As for the FAD credits, these to objectives are diffi cult to fulfi l simultaneously.

As well as its own resources, COFIDES handles the FIEX (large companies) and FONPYME (Small and Medium Enterprises) funds, which are regis-tered with the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade, on behalf of the state. COFIDES also acts via the funds of the European Financing Partners (EFP), a corporation made up of the European Investment Bank (EIB) and most of the bilateral European Development Funding Institutions.

More specifi cally in the context of the Africa Plan, COFIDES has the “Sub-Saharan Africa Line” to fi -nance investment projects in the food industry, renewable energy, public infrastructures and services and transport and tourism sectors. For example, in 2000, a 30-year concession was adjudicated to the BAKWENA PLATINUM COR-RIDOR consortium, led by the Spanish Grupo Dragados (now Grupo ACS), company, for the designing, building, funding, operation and main-tenance of the Platinum Highway in South Africa, with an investment of 16.64 million Euros by the FIEX. For 2011, the fi gure of the line of fi nance rises to 35 million Euros.

COFIDES has made the commitment of not funding investment programmes that entail a harmful environmental or social eff ect upon the country receiving the investment. In 2005it joined the Platform for the UN Global Compact, which envisages ten rules of conduct and activity concerning human rights, work, the environment and the fi ght against corruption. It also implant-ed a Rating of Operational Impacts (RIO) to be able to conducts ex-post evaluations of the pro-jects carried out with FIEX and FONPYME funds.

Despite acknowledging that the measures taken by COFIDES in this respect are clearly greater than those assumed by other bodies that pro-mote Spanish overseas investments such as, for example, the CESCE, civil society is critical of its shortcomings for the application of its principles and policies to the practical realities of the pro-ject evaluations. These shortcomings end up by translating into the funding of corporate projects that have important environmental and social ef-fects 58 (ODG, 2006).

One can also level criticism at the FINCARBONO initiative, which is aimed at funding Clean De-velopment Mechanisms (CDL) and that is part of the Spanish plan in order to fulfi l its commit-ments taken in the context of the Kyoto Protocol. The controversial CDLs enable governments and private companies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by means of investments in de-veloping countries aimed at projects that reduce carbon emissions worldwide. Various civil soci-ety organisations have expressed heir concern about the carbon business itself, claiming that, amongst other things, it diminishes the respon-sibility of polluting companies that continue to use fossil fuels, destroying forests and polluting communities, and that they are nothing more than false solutions that do not address the ac-tual sources of climate change.

57 http://www.cofi des.es/ (Conslulted on 29/11/2011)

58 For example, refer to the case of Pescanova in Chile, http://www.odg.cat/documents/enprofunditat/Deute_ecologic/Pes-cachile_es.pdf (Consulted on 29/11/2011)



Cooperation envisaged from the perspective of Food Sovereignty

Strategy lines of the Directive Plan such as ac-cess to decent food, or the fi ght against child malnutrition, will be hard to achieve with the encouragement of productive diversifi cation if this is promoted via foreign technologies that generate dependence and that require external resources for their durability; nor will this be so if, on the contrary, means of handling natural resources via endogenous technologies are not encouraged, or if the internal food marketplaces are not protected from foreign invasion.

Nor is the issue of famine just a question of lo-cal governance and of the active participation of the various sectors, as proposed in the Directive

Plan, given that without a productive and com-mercial structure controlled by local persons, it will be diffi cult to guarantee access to food and to the resources for producing it.

In order to turn Spanish cooperation into a stra-tegic tool at the service of Food Sovereignty, ACSUR – Las Segovias have developed, in their document “Cooperation projects in the creation of Food Sovereignty. Strategic contributions” (Jiménez, 2007), a series of key elements that should be present in cooperation projects and that should be taken into account by the Spanish government when defi ning support for a given cooperation or other project:

• The promotion and strengthening of community participation organised as a fundamental and essential element for the creation of FSov proposals.

• Free access to natural resources (land, wa-ter, forests, jungles, seeds) and productive resources (seeds and supplies for agricul-tural production, appropriate training and technology, funding…) for farming, ranching, indigenous and artisan fi shing populations.

• The recognition of women’s right to free ac-cess to and use of natural and productive resources, and to their participation in the productive, food distribution and consump-tion processes: this participation must be guaranteed.

• The promotion of diversifi ed production that is aimed at auto-consumption, that uses ecologically-friendly and durable agrarian techniques, and that are created on the basis

of shared traditional know-how that incor-porates appropriate, ecological and durable new technologies that must always respect the peoples’ cultural traditions.

• The promotion and defence of traditional, balanced and nourishing food systems that are based on the respect of peoples’ tradi-tional customs.

• The promotion and development of local markets with fair trade, based on local pro-duction and ethical consumption.

• The creation and strengthening of local, na-tional and international spaces and networks in the North and in the South, that can exert pressure on international institutions and on states to uphold producers’ and consumers’ rights and to inform the population and make it aware of the “under-developing” eff ects of the practices and policies implemented by wealthy countries upon poorer nations.



It is essential to promote the creation of solu-tion that emanate from African populations in a collective and consensual manner and that provide an answer to their needs, based on their means of resolution. Indeed, on the part of the Spanish government, Cooperation should not be considered as a form of economic meddling, but instead as support for the ways in which the aid-receiving countries understand and do things

and it should not, in any case, be bound to any kind of corporate interest in the donor countries (in this case, Spain); this should be reflected in all the documents that defi ne the strategy of Spanish Cooperation.

At Veterinarios Sin Fronteras we therefore believe that the Spanish government should support projects that are founded on FSov and worldwide social equality.




The Africa Plan as a market platform for the Spanish economy

The Ministry of Foreign aff airs and Cooperation’s (MAEC) Plan of Action for Africa, or “Africa Plan” is a governmental initiative that responds to the fact that “the African continent has become a strategic and political priority for Spanish for-eign activity” (MAEC, 2009).

The Ministry has already launched two Africa Plans since 2006. The fi rst Plan covered the 2006-2008 period. A second Africa Plan arose from the evaluation of the fi rst one, providing it with continuity, and was deployed for a four-year period from 2009-2012: it is currently on-going.

The Africa Plan (2009-2012) attempts to com-bine political strategies focused on national commercial interests with policies for the de-velopment of African local communities (GEA, 2009) and fi ghts against poverty; this Plan includes across-the-board objectives such as Human Rights, Gender Equality, Environmental Durability and adaptation to Climate Change.

Amongst its general objectives it includes Sup-port for process of Consolidating Democracy and creating Peace and Security in Africa. In this Plan, the security perspective highlights the tendency to give greater protection to economic stabilisa-tion activities rather than to the creation of social peace; it supports an institutional reinforcement that emanates from regional bodies such as the ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) and the NEPAD (New Partnership for Af-rica’s Development) programme, which aims to mobilise resources by means of attracting direct foreign investment as a way of addressing the eradication of poverty 59. There is once again the interlinking of such important challenges as the fi ght against poverty with economic growth with-out reconsidering the structural, political and economic causes of the problem and with the simplistic idea that by just creating companies one can provide a positive response to curtail-

ing poverty. It furthermore gives exaggerated importance to these organisations in detriment to other civil society organisations with projects and goals that denote an integrated focus on achieving the autonomy and integration of local populations.

One of the causes of the lack of investment in Sub-Saharan African countries has been the political and social instability and the lack of guarantees for the stabilisation of investments. The vision of the African continent’s reality con-centrates on endogenous causes, as much for poverty and migration as for armed conflicts, ignoring the structural causes (international economic policies, unbalanced international trade regulations, geopolitical and economic in-terests, etc.) and the intervention of external agents (governments, international bodies and multinational companies) (Alberdi and Bidaur-ratzaga, 2009; GEA, 2009). This means that the Plan’s goals appear to be disjointed and not to give a true solution to African problems.

For the second objective, the fi ght against pov-erty, the Plan includes the intention to promote access to decent and adequate food, to the en-couragement of durable production systems and support for small-scale producers as well as favouring the agreements necessary to exercise

The Africa Plan

59 http://www.un.org/spanish/africa/osaa/nepad.html



the right to food in an international environ-ment. Nevertheless, it does not specify how the processes for achieving this objective will be de-veloped, or how the aforementioned support will be provided, beyond the use of fi nancial facili-ties. In fact, in the fourth line of action it points to economic growth as a means of fi ghting against poverty and links this line to the specifi c objec-tives of the third objective, which refers to the promotion of trade and investment relationships between Spain and Africa and to the economic development of Africa.

The Africa Plan does not contain a prioritisation of the policy lines that it proposes and suff ers from a lack of budgetary precision as well as of evaluation markers for the assessment of the interventions (Alberdi and Bidaurratzaga, 2009; GEA, 2009). Just the description of the actions and the lack of prioritisation of the policies can lead to the subordination of objectives and ac-tivities on the basis of principles of social and environmental durability in the face of the pro-motion of objectives and policies that are focused on Spanish economic expansion in Sub-Saharan Africa. This focusing of business opportunities on the African continent is in opposition with an integrated strategy of development, autonomy and wellbeing of the local population.

As a matter of fact, in its fourth objective, the Plan highlights the promotion of trade and in-vestment relationships between Spain and Africa and African economic development, ODA – mul-tilateral and bilateral – and various economic tools that the Africa Plan considers to be tools that promote development (pro-development approach) (Marín et al, 2009). It is particularly focused upon two strategic sectors: the fi shing industry and energy security. As has already been mentioned, the Spanish administration’s support will be materialised via various instru-ments and will in turn be contextualised within an environment of European trade policies and development, mainly by means of the EPAs, which do not contribute to the strengthening of African regional integration (GEA, 2009), given that most of them are not signed from a stand-point of respect for regional groups.

In an analysis of trade relationships between Spain and Sub-Saharan Africa (Marín et al, 2009), it can be noticed that the most important instruments – in other words, those that have the greatest influence upon the application of other instruments of the Africa Plan – are: the public funding of viability studies (FEV) carried out by Spanish companies in Africa and the APPRIs with African countries. One of the instruments whose application depends on others is that of funding for Spanish companies for the creation/acquisi-tion of companies in Africa, according to which the establishing of Spanish companies in Sub-Saharan Africa should be preceded by a series of promotion and facilitation measures. This task is the responsibility of the ICEX.

The Plan specifi es the promotion of Double Taxa-tion Agreements and APPRIs that are particularly aimed at the protection of Spanish investments in overseas territories and whose conditions uphold the technological monopoly founded upon the protection of intellectual and industrial ownership and of the technical procedures, and the appropriation and exploitation of natural resources, with harmful consequences for tradi-tional rural communities (Romero, 2006; APPRI Spain-Senegal, 2006). Financial instruments supporting trade and investment (FAD, FEV and COFIDEX, amongst others) are maintained with the supposition that the defence of Spanish com-mercial interests is not incompatible with African development and that it benefi ts the African economies (Alberdi and Bidaurratzaga, 2009).

These instruments give rise to critical debates that the Africa Plan does not enter into (Marín et al, 2009); they have traditionally been con-sidered as generators of foreign debt (Romero, 2006) and, in many cases of ecological debt: debts that given their very dynamics, could hin-der the development of FSov processes.

As far as energy security is concerned, the Plan places specifi c emphasis upon investment in re-newable energies in Africa. Although this could be seen as an advantage in favour of African development, it could translate into the encour-agement of crops aimed at agricultural fuels based on an industrial agriculture single-crop



model that would require vast tracts of fertile land and that would be aimed at exportation, for which reason it could hardly be considered as an endogenous process for the development of the local population.

Despite the Africa Plan’s intentions regarding the facilitation of Spanish corporate penetration in Sub-Saharan Africa, the impact of the Africa

Plan’s (2006-2008) commercial and investment instruments, it can be noted that “the trend adopted by the flow of Spanish investments in Af-rica over the last 15 years seems to indicate that they have more in common with the economic and international juncture and obey punctual corporate decisions, than with the investment support measures envisaged in the Plan” (Marín et al, 2009: 52).



The Africa Plan and Spanish Cooperation

According to the Plan “development coopera-tion is a priority for the 2009-2012 Africa Plan”. And the 2009-2012 Directive Plan for Spanish Cooperation, along with other Spanish annual planning instruments (Annual Plans for Interna-tional Cooperation – PACI), sectorial planning instruments (Sectorial Strategies – DES) and geographic planning instruments (associative contexts for the country), will be the essential context that will guide the agents of Spanish co-operation in Africa throughout the validity period of the Africa Plan. Despite this attempt to align objectives, the Directive Plan does not explicitly mention the Africa Plan (GEA, 2009) although it does acknowledge the consolidation of Sub-Saharan Africa as a priority for Spanish foreign policy.

The African Studies Group (GEA) already pointed out that “instead of aiming most of its eff orts to-wards countries with the least amount of human development, Spanish bilateral cooperation is going to continue to favour countries with which one can come to migratory, economic and com-mercial agreements” (GEA, 2009). Indeed, as shown by Alberdi and Bidaurratzaga, “geographic priority is based upon economic and commercial links (Angola, Mozambique, South Africa and Nigeria), historic links (Equatorial Guinea) and links regulating migratory flows (Senegal, Mali and Mauritania). Ethiopia and Kenya are also pri-oritised because they are multilateral diplomatic centres” (Alberdi and Bidaurratzaga, 2009). This gives rise to an instrumentation of the develop-ment cooperation policy by other state policies in view of common interests (GEA, 2008) such as Human Rights, FR, the durable development of communities or FSov.

With regard to food and agriculture, the Plan simply establishes the intention of promoting participation in producers’ organisations, re-gional bodies, women’s networks and African civil society organisations, as well as highlighting its commitment to the FS sectors (agricultural and livestock farming development). In some

countries such as Niger, there exists a fi nancial commitment aimed at food security via CEDEAO and/or NEPAD funds that promote an export-ori-ented agricultural model which aims for an Africa that would be a net exporter of agricultural prod-ucts. This vision is in contrast with a strategy for the strengthening of productive capacities that gives priority to the self-suffi ciency of the com-munities instead of free trade, with partners such as the EU (GEA, 2009). Therefore there is not even the slightest intention of promoting FS-oriented policies as part of a series of measures for fi ghting against famine.

Despite attempting to establish common prin-ciples and goals regarding education, health, culture, environmental durability democratic governance, gender, migration, water, rural de-velopment, the fi ght against famine, etc, the fundamental issue is the cooperation model that derives from the Africa Plan. This Plan aims to encourage the coherency of Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and assumes the development policies defi ned by the Maastricht Treaty, the Cotonou Agreement and the Euro-pean Development Council.

In this sense, there is no criticism of neoliberal policies and unequal relationships continue be-tween donor and receiving countries, wherein the result of the apparent dialogue continues to be ignorant of the needs of African communities that do not participate in the decision-making processes regarding their problems; this means that within the Africa Plan there is barely any room for anti-hegemonic and emancipating alter-natives (Alberdi and Bidaurratzaga, 2009) that are proposed by social and farmers’ movements and civil society and which are situated within the Right to Food under equitable FS premises.


PART III

THE MAIN THREATS TO FOOD SOVEREIGNTY

IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

DINA APOLOT, REPRESENTATIVE ORGANIZATIONS. UGANDA.


THE MAIN THREATS TO FOOD SOVEREIGNTY IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

Africa, the third-largest continent with a total surface area of 30,272,922 square kilometres, represents a vast territory made up of savan-nahs, deserts, large tracts of forest and tropical rainforests, coasts dotted with mangroves, lakes, lagoons and large rivers. This translates into a great abundance of natural resources and con-siderable biodiversity: it has a wide variety of forest species, its soils are particularly rich in minerals and are ideal for pastures and agricul-tural crops, it has large lakes and coastal areas that are rich in fi shing resources as well as vast land surfaces that are home to a great quantity of animals that have traditionally been an impor-tant part of the African diet.

It would be expected that, in view of such a wealth of natural resources and a great cultural diversity, the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa should not experience any problems in meeting their basic needs. Nonetheless, and despite the inherent characteristics that give it a great po-tential to supply and consume its own resources, more than 50% of the African continent’s popu-lation lives below the poverty level as defi ned by the WB and its GDP only represents 2.6% of the world total, for which reason it is considered as the poorest continent in the world.

For the most part, this is due to a long history of colonisation and leaching of its resources and is causing the substitution of its traditional produc-tive model, based upon subsistence farming and herding, artisan fi shing and mainly aimed at sup-plying families, by a new productive model that is defi ned by a great dependence on external raw materials in which the creation of benefi ts is the central element, that places African farmers in a position of vulnerability and dependency upon of the fluctuations of the international market and of the specifi c interests of the investors. In a continent in which 60% of the workforce is in-volved in rural activities (only 15% are employed in the industrial sector 60), the consequences of this change of paradigm could be devastating for African farmers.

The exploitation activities are no longer neces-

sarily undertaken directly by the governments of wealthy countries, but instead by private capital from these countries, presented in the shape of multinational or transnational companies in the context of a political apparatus that favours it internationally. Therefore, the colonist-colony relationships that used to characterise interac-tions between Sub-Saharan Africa and the EU have now been transformed into unequal com-mercial relationships that allow the EU countries to continue reinforcing the dependency that they generated in the past, continuing to obtain low-cost raw materials or currencies from the exportation of their surplus products and that are therefore a clear reflection of their colonial origins.

In this context, African society, which includes farming, herding, fi shing, trade, processing and woodworking communities, is coming together to speak out against the consequences of foreign corporate activities, within the current economic system, could represent for African society and nature and, more specifi cally, for its peoples’ Food Sovereignty.

Throughout this chapter we will recap some of the main threats that are aimed at the African continent’s FSov and we shall therefore analyse those that affect such structural sectors as fishing and agriculture, the land-grabbing phe-nomenon and the genetic erosion process. This recap will pay particular attention to the role played by the Spanish government and com-panies in each of these threats, attempting to shed light their functions and actual intentions and to establish interrelationships, whenever possible, between the situation of poverty and vulnerability of the majority of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and the intervention of the Spanish corporate sector (mainly with private capital) in these countries.

60 Egypt, the Republic of South Africa, Tunisia and Morocco posess almost all of this activity.



* Chapter written by Sara Martínez Frías, Isabel Vara Sánchez, David Gallar Hernández - Instituto de Sociología y Estudios Cam-pesinos (Institutefor Sociology and Rural Studies) – ISEC –.61 http://www.fao.org/fi shery/es (Consulted on 15/10/2010)

62 http://www.iucn.org/knowledge/news/focus/water_2010/?5898/3/ (Consulted on 15/11/2010)

63 The Regional Fisheries Organisations are international organisations of countries that have fi shery interests in a given area. Some control all the fi sh species that can be found in a given area whilst others focus on highly migratory species, particularly tuna, in much wider areas. These organisations are open to the countries of the region they control – “shore states” – as well as to those who have interests in their fi shing grounds. Some RFOs are purely consultative, but most of them have the capacity for establishing fi shing limitations, technical measures and control duties. The EU, represented by the Commission, palys an active role in six tuna fi shery organisations and in eleven other organisations.

The European context of the fi shing industry and Association Agreements in the fi shing sector

Sub-Saharan Africa contains three large fi shing areas indicated by the FAO 61: it therefore pre-sents a large wealth of fi shing resources that have historically been a source of food for the continent’s coastal populations, who have made the most of these resources on an artisan level

ensuring, on the one hand, the upkeep of the fi shing grounds and, on the other, feeding their families as well as supplying local markets with fi sh. It is furthermore estimated that the sub-sistence of 7.5 million people on the continent depends upon fi shing in inland waters 62.

For quite some time now, bilateral fi shing agree-ments between the EU and third-party countries have constituted an essential element of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), the European Union’s instrument for the control of fi shing and fi sh-farming. The reform of the CFP in 2002 in-troduced the “association” concept to underline The EU’s intention to support the development of the national fi shing sector in their associated countries with the aim of safeguarding their own economic interests. In fact, more than a quarter of the fi sh caught by European fi shing vessels actually comes from waters that do not belong to the EU. About 8% of EU catches (2004-2006) correspond to fi shing agreements with third-par-ty countries and 20% is fi shed in oceanic waters, mainly in grounds supervised by the so-called regional fi shing organisations 63.

The EU has two types of fi shing Agreements with other countries: on the one hand, the Fisheries Partnership Agreements (FPA), in which the EU concedes fi nancial and technical assistance in

The fi shing industry and fi sh-farming

FISHWORKERS SANT LOUIS, SENEGAL.


exchange for fi shing rights and, on the other, Northern Agreements for the joint control of shared populations.

For the purposes of this study the focus will be put on the FPAs because they are established with countries that do not belong to the EU. They are agreements sign with countries that have no interest in fi shing within EU waters but that could benefi t from its fi nancial and technical support for their attempts to develop their own national fi sheries sector, in exchange for fi shing rights for EU vessels.

An FPA consists of two main components: regu-lated access by EU fleets to resources that the national industry of the associate country can-not fully exploit and a fi nancial contribution by the EU, of which a large part (sometimes 100%) is aimed at supporting the associate country’s national fi sheries policy, fi ghting against rogue fi shing operations and reinforcing durable fi sh-ing methods within its EEZ (CFP, 2009). In this way the EU has signed more than 20 fi shing agreements with third-party countries. Fifteen of them are still valid in “developing” countries. The EU pays some 150 million Euros per year to have access to foreign fi shing grounds, particu-larly in West Africa 64.

There are FPAs that are specifi cally for tuna, of

which eleven have actually been signed bilater-ally. These agreements allow for the expansion of three tuna fi shing grounds from the North Atlantic and along the west coast of Africa and authorise EU fi shing boats to follow the migrat-ing tuna in their journey through African waters (Mauritania and Senegal) and the Indian Ocean. Tuna is a highly migratory species and the tuna FPAs enable European ships to obtain a licence through each agreement in order to pursue the tuna population from jurisdiction to jurisdiction without having to cease their activity. In most cases, the quota is established by the pertinent Regional Fishery Organisation 65.

There are also multi-species FPAs that have been signed with Greenland, Mauritania, Guinea-Bis-sau, Guinea and Morocco.

The most important agreement is currently with Mauritania, for a value of 86 million Euros per year. This figure corresponds to one-third of the country’s public budget. The agree-ment with Guinea-Bissau is also approximately equivalent to one-third of the nation’s public budget. In most agreements, the EU pays 90% of the access quota and the private boat own-ers only pay the remaining 10%. More than 50% of these agreements are used by owners of Spanish vessels 66.

64 http://ec.europa.eu/fi sheries/cfp/international/agreements/index_es.htm (Consulted on 20/09/2010)

65 For example, the CICAA for the Atlantic and the CAOI for the Indian Ocean.

66 http://www.naturskyddsforeningen.se/in-english/marine-ecosystems-and-fi sheries/eus-unsustainable-fi sheries-in-west-africa/ (Consulted on 10/10/2010)


EXPORTS OF SENEGALESE FISHING. ITALIAN COMPANY DESPAR.


Table 9: DATA REGARDING THE FPAS BETWEEN THE EU AND SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

Tuna: 25 purse seiners, 48 surface longliners, 11 rod fi shers

Tuna: 40 purse seiners, 17 surface longliners

Tuna: 25 purse seiners, 15 surface longliners

Tuna: 24 purse seiners, 16 surface longliners2,500 trb/month of fi sh and cephalo-pods; 1,500 trb/month of shrimp.

Tuna: 34 purse seiners, 14 surface longliners and 9 rod fi shers

4,400 trb/month of shrimp and 4,400 trb/month of fi sh and squid. Tuna: 23 purse seiners and 14 rod fi shers

Tuna: 43 purse seiners, 50 longliners (> 100 GT), 26 longliners (< 100 GT), 5 demersals

Tuna: 22 purse seiners, 22 surface longliners and rod fi shers. Various shellfi sh and demersal species

Tuna: 44 purse seiners, 45 longliners



Cape Verde Is.

Comores

Ivory Coast

Gabon

Guinea

Guinea-Bissau

Madagascar

Mauritania

Mozambique

São Tomé and Príncipe

Seychelles

2007-2010

2005-2011

2007-2013

2005-2011

2004-2008

2007-2011

2007-2012

2008-2012

2007-2011

2006-2010

2005-2011

5.000 tonnes

6.000 tonnes

7.000 tonnes

11.000 tonnes

...

...

13.300 tonnes

...

10.000 tonnes

8.500 tonnes

63.000 tonnes

385.000,00 €

390.000,00 €

595.000,00 €

860.000,00 €

3,400,000 € Can rise gradually to 3,995,000 €ac-cording to fi shing possibilities

7.500 .000 €

1.197.000,00 €

86,000,000 € (1st year)76,000,000 € (2nd year)73.000.000 € (3rd year)70,000,000 € (4th year)

900.000,00 €

663.000,00 €

5.355.000,00 €

Country Period Fishing possibilities Tonnage of reference (tuna, per year)

Total funding by the EU (per year)

Source: Fisheries Partnership Agreements. Informational fi le. (EU, 2008) 67

67 http://ec.europa.eu/fi sheries/documentation/publications/pcp2008_factsheets_en.pdf (Consulted on 20/10/2010)



The CFP policy’s economic instrument is the European Fisheries Fund (EFF), which has the intention of facilitating the application of meas-ures aimed at guaranteeing durable fi shing and the diversifi cation of economic activities in fi shing grounds. Its general budget is of 4,300 million Euros, of which Spain is the greatest ben-efi ciary, with 26% of the total budget (EU, 2008). This European Community aid is complemented by national assistance originating from the funds of each member state. Until 2006, the economic tool of the structural policy in the fi sheries sec-tor was the Financial Instrument of Fisheries Orientation (IFOP) 68, predecessor of the Euro-pean Fisheries Fund (EFF). Part of its budget was destined to creating mixed-capital companies that contribute to the over-exploitation of Sub-Saharan Africa’s fi shing resources. During this period, Spain was the country that benefi tted the most from the IFOP, obtaining 44% of the total budget.

In Spain, the creation of, and public support for, mixed-capital companies that work in third-party countries has been promoted by the Cluster of Fishing Companies in Third Companies (CEPPT). Its activities have concentrated mainly upon ob-taining public support for the creation of specifi c cooperation linked to fi shing and mixed-capital companies. At a European level, Spain continues to lead the creation of mixed companies.

During the 1990-1999 period, 152 corporate projects were concentrated throughout the Eu-ropean Union, 82 of which were promoted by Spanish companies (COFREPECHE, 2000). These benefi ted from a direct subsidy of 181,263,891 €, 61% of the total of European aid, thus positioning the Spanish fi sheries sector as the top receiver of public aid. Since 204, no further aid has been off ered for the creation of new mixed-capital companies; nonetheless this does not mean that they do not benefi t from public support. A macro-credit is being negotiated with the EIB, the EU bank that is responsible for fi nancing the EU’s overseas activities, for a total of 400 million Euros for the renovation of the fleet and installa-

tions overseas (SETEM, 2009).

During the negotiation of the FPAs, Spain is part of the sector of European countries that cares the least about African demands and about the risks that have been announced regarding these agreements. As part of the cluster of countries that makes up the EU (like the rest of the EU), it insists that the conditions for privatisation have already been attained and ratifi ed by the nation-al parliaments of the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, so that this way foreign investment can take place upon a solid fi nancial base (Avendaño, 2006). In view of this hope of foreign investment, the IMF, the WB and more recently the WTO, are exerting pressure at all levels on the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, threatening the survival of small and medium fi shing communities.

The privatising of fi shing resources brings about changes in fi shing laws in the countries in which new legal bodies exist or are created that provide the prior conditions necessary for the transferral of property rights in the name of the nation or states to third parties (national or foreign com-panies); creating new fi shing guidelines, usually by means of the Transferrable Individual Quotas (TIQ) system.

With regard to the current state of the negotia-tions of free trade agreements for fi shing, during 2004 the EU provided some new elements for the application of the CFP that was initiated in 2002. Since then, at bilateral level, fi shing agree-ments have been reached or prolonged with several countries in Sub-Saharan Africa such as South Africa, Cape Verde, the Comores, the Ivory Coast, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar and Mauritius, whilst at the same time negotiation di-rectives have been adopted for the signing of an agreement with Libya.


68 http://www.maec.es/es/MenuPpal/EspanayUE/Politicascomunitarias/Paginas/Polticas%20Comunitarias%2016.aspx

(Consulted on 27/09/1010)


Comparison of fi shing and fi sh-farming models

In the domain of maritime fishing and fish-farming in Sub-Saharan Africa, the main bone of contention lies between artisan fishing and fish-farming and the mechanised commercial foreign or mixed fleets that exploit the sea’s resource, and the large-scale fish farms. This conflict becomes even more complex since it general involves countries that do not dispose

of the resources necessary to establish their own commercial fishing fleets and that are pressured into selling their fishing rights to an-other country, often an industrialised one. For example, this is the case of the Spanish fishing industry (refer to the case studies), which op-erates in the waters of Mozambique, Senegal, Mauritania or South Africa.

Concept

Number of fi sherfolk

employed

Annual catch for human

consumption

Capital cost for each job

generated on the ships

Catch used for oils

or flours

Annual fuel consumption

Catch per ton of fuel

Fisherfolk for each

million dollars invested

in the ship

Catch discarded at sea

Approximately 1/2 million

Approximately 30 million tonnes

30.000 - 300.000

20-30 million tonnes


1 - 2 tonnes

5 - 30

8-20 million tonnes

More than 12 million


300 - 3.000

Almost none


4 - 8 tonnes

500 - 4.000

Very little

PESCA INDUSTRIAL PESCA ARTESANAL


Source: Pauly, 2006.


Small-scale artisan fi shing (maritime and conti-nental) is the most commonly practiced fi shing activity in Sub-Saharan Africa and has played a fundamental role in the local economy of the continent’s coastal countries. It is a form of fi sh-ing that generally uses traditional techniques with little technological development. It is usual-ly done in small groups with small budgets, using small vessels, usually sail-powered and without an engine and that are between 10 and 26 feet in length. To fi sh, they use dragnets, gillnets and longlines. They use small boats in coastal waters going no further than 12 nautical miles, within territorial waters, and harvest various species of fi sh, shellfi sh, molluscs and crustaceans. The sector is also made up of fi sh harvesters and divers. This type of fi shing can hardly compete with the industrial fi shing that is carried out by large foreign – mainly European – companies. It subsists in regions that are not very industrially developed and is mainly used for auto-consump-tion: only a small part reaches local markets.

This model of small-scale artisan fi shing is not as dependent on external supplies and is more respectful of the renovation cycles of the fi shing grounds. It is furthermore undertaken by means of the use of traditional know-how that has been

passed down from generation to generation and has, since ancestral times, characterised the economic activities of families living in coastal areas. It is a model that tends to include the most vulnerable sectors of society, which are pushed more and more towards the outskirts of the development model as a result of the poli-cies controlling access to natural resources and fi sheries management. Its main purpose is auto-consumption and the sale of surplus on local markets and it often constitutes one of the few forms of sustenance available to landless farm-ers, to the point of becoming the pre-established form of sustenance. In Senegal, for example, artisan fi shing has become more important in recent decades due to the arrival of new inhabit-ants on the coast.

In the FAO’s Fishing Technical Document Nº 481 (2007) 69, it is explicitly recognised that small-scale artisan fi shing in continental and coastal areas contributes to the mitigation of poverty food security, and is also resistant to fluctua-tions and to international crises.

In short, the artisan fi shing model clearly off ers a series of important comparative strengths com-pared to industrial fi shing, some of which are listed below:

Artisan fi shing and fi sh-farming

69 This document is a supplement to the Technical Guidelines for Responsible Fishing Nº 10, and it presents a wide range of practical examples and experiences from around the world that are linked to artisan fi shing.


FISHERMEN FIXING THEIR NETS, SANT LOUIS, SENEGAL.


• It is the primary source of food animals for the African population. Fish remains in the home, representing the base diet of coastal populations instead of being exported to for-eign countries such as Spain.

• It is a dynamic and highly adaptable sector that presents greater economic effi ciency than industrial fi shing (FAO, 2009).

• It represents the basis of the fi sheries sector in Sub-Saharan Africa as a creator of employ-ment; in Senegal, for example, it represents close to 89% of the market and employs al-most 600,000 persons (FAO, 2009).

• It is better equipped to widely exchange social and economic benefi ts by decentral-ising them and extending them out from a

geographic point of view (FAO, 2009) and by generating commercial flow at local level that is controlled by the fi sherfolk themselves.

• Artisan fi shing is founded upon a tradition and a way of life that go back over several generations, thus representing an important contribution to the cultural heritage of Afri-can peoples.

• The importance of artisan fi shing is growing because it is being used more and more as a means of supplying the local processing in-dustry.

• It produces less negative eff ects upon the environment due to the use of smaller boats with less capacity.

• It is considered as an alternative source to the sea’s fi shery resources that can partly al-leviate their reduction and shortage.

• It is a source of supplies for the local pro-cessing industries, above all during the biological pause.

• It creates employment and income possibili-ties at local level.

• It represents the production of fish in in-land areas, creating a diversification of farmers’ diets.

For its part, and according to FAO forecasts (2009), in 2015 fi sh farming will represent 41% of the world’s consumption of fi sh (compared to 27.4% in 2000). It has not been widely practiced by African populations. Nonetheless, its growth should not be underestimated since, as an artisan production model that is complementary to maritime and continental artisan fi shing, it off ers a series of advan-tages that are described as follows:

Women play an important role in artisan fi shing and fi sh farming as workers in the artisan fi shing sector in Sub-Saharan Africa and as guarantors of household food security. They usually have a profound understanding and knowledge of the natural environment and of its resources. They take part in the process during and after the catch, in artisan as well as in commercial fi shing. Their work usually consists in weaving and re-pairing nets, baskets and traps, and putting bait on the fi shhooks. They rarely take part in com-mercial fi shing out to sea or in oceanic waters,

but instead take part in fi shing activities on small vessels and canoes in coastal or continental wa-ters, harvesting shellfi sh, molluscs and pearls, harvesting seaweed or placing nets and traps.

Women also play an important role in fi sh farm-ing, where they tend to take care of ponds, feeding and harvesting fi sh and collecting shrimp larvae and juvenile fi sh. Nonetheless, women’s most important function is artisan as well as in-dustrial fi shing takes place in the processing and sales stages (FAO, 2009).



Offi cially, industrial fi shing and artisan fi shing have well-defi ned exploitation zones, but these are not respected by either party. This occurs in Senegal and Mauritania, for example. Artisan fi shing has always taken place – and still does so – in the same areas where foreign companies operate, as in the case of the Spanish companies Pescamar, Pescanova and Krustamoz in the wa-ters of Beira and Quelimane (Mozambique). This can currently be observed on the beaches of both towns, as well as in the main fi shing areas in Sen-egal (by order of importance: Thies, Dakar, Saint Louis, Ziguinchor, Fatick, Louga and Kaolack) or in Mauritania (Nouakchott and Nouadhibou).

At Veterinarios Sin Fronteras we have often protested that the industrial fi shing model represents a direct threat to access to fi shing re-sources for African communities that carry out artisan fi shing and that cannot compete with the means deployed by large fi sheries corporations.

Industrial fi shing requires much more invest-ment capital, consumes more energy per tonne of catch and requires a lot less work per tonne of fi sh than artisan fi shing. Despite this, because it is mainly aimed at exports to European markets and therefore constitutes an important source of currencies and is a basic part of the reduction of trade defi cits, it has been privileged by many African governments (such as Senegal, for exam-ple) by means of its policies for the promotion of internationalisation and trade policies. Industrial fi shing uses much more advanced technology and makes use of deep-sea trawling, a type of fi shing that has very harmful eff ects upon the marine ecosystem. It also plays a very important part in the over-exploitation of the most econom-ically profi table species.

Within the FPAs, Spanish companies commercial

relations with Sub-Saharan Africa that are cen-tred on fi shing resources, mainly based upon the exploitation of fi shing grounds. The fi sh is then sold and processed, most of the time in Spain.

In Mozambique, according to data from the ICEX (updated on 08/2010 70), the fi sh and seafood sector is the primary sector that is imported by Spain, with 97,772,000 Euros, followed by the raw materials, semi-manufactured goods and intermediate products sector with 13,749,000 Euros. It is strange to note that amongst the sectors that are exported from Spain to Mozam-bique, one also fi nds that of fi sh and seafood, for a sum of 185,000 Euros, which illustrates the il-logical situations that arise from the outlook of the international markets and the import/export exuberance.

In Mauritania, the fi sh and seafood sector is also the primary sector that is imported by Spain 71, for a sum of 38,361,000 Euros. It is also the sec-ond sector that is imported from Ghana to Spain, for a sum of 4,887,000 Euros.

Between 1993 and 2004, direct Spanish invest-ment in Namibia exceeded 60 million Euros. Investments in this country are mainly focused on the fi sheries sector and consist of processing factories for the international sale of maritime products. Some of the companies that have been implanted in Namibia benefi tted from sup-port from the ICEX-CDI agreement 72 and from involvement by COFIDES (ICEX, 2010).

Industrial fi shing and fi sh farming

70 http://www.ofi cinascomerciales.es/icex/cda/controller/pageOfecomes/0,5310,5280449_5320986_5320988_0_MZ,00.html (Consulted on 10/11/ 2010)

71 http://www.ofi cinascomerciales.es/icex/cda/controller/pageOfecomes/0,5310,5280449_5320986_5320988_0_MR,00.html (Consulted on 10 /11/ 2010)

72 CDI is the EU’s aid programme for European SMEs for the creation of mixed-capital companies in developing countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.



Table 10: FISHERIES CASE STUDY: SENEGAL

The fi sheries sector plays a determining socio-economic role in Senegal because of its impor-tance in the GDP, as the primary source of foreign currency, as well as for generating employment and the important place of fi sh in the population’s diet. Some 600,000 people are employed in fi shing-related activities, which is 17% of the population, of which 100,000 are directly employed in the sector. Fishing acts as a means of subsistence, not only on an economic level as an income for families who work in the sector, but also as a source of food, estimated at an average of be-tween 26 and 30 kilos per inhabitant per year, a fi gure that rises in coastal areas.

The fi shing activity in Senegal consists of the following components:

• Artisan fi shing: this is the country’s most im-portant fi shing activity, in value as well as in volume. It is carried out in canoes throughout the seven maritime regions of the country: Dakar, Thies, Saint-Louis, Fatick, Ziguinchor, Louga and Kaolack.

• Industrial fi shing: this is undertaken by Sen-egalese and foreign boats (some of which are Spanish) in the context of fi sheries agree-ments with other countries, chartering by local companies and the creation of mixed-capital companies.

• Artisan and industrial fi sh farming: it is not yet very important, and is presented as an alternative source to maritime fi shing re-sources.

• The processing industry: the process of fi sh for export purposes is undergoing a recon-version process because of the excessive capacity of companies along with the lack of supplies of raw materials and the sector’s low level of competitiveness on foreign markets. There are also experiences of fi sh processing undertaken by women and that is aimed at local sales.




SPANISH COMPANIES REPRESENTING A THREAT

Senegal’s fi shing resources are mainly exploited by foreign companies. Spain was the fi rst coun-try to benefi t from permitted catch quota of demersal fi shing: in the case of coastal demersal trawlers with a quota of 47%, followed by Italy (37.5%) and Greece (15.5%) for a permitted total of 1,500 tonnes; for deep-sea demersal trawlers it obtained 100% (3,000 tonnes) of the accept-ed quota; for deep-sea demersal crustacean trawlers on which the catch is frozen, 91% (3,186 tonnes), with the remaining 9% going to Portugal.

As for tuna fi shing, Spain, France and Portugal shared the quota. In each case Spain obtained the largest amount of boats: 10 for stick fi shing tuna boats (France 6), 21 for freezing net tuna boats (18 for France) and 20 for surface longliners (3 for Portugal). In May 2005 there were 36 Spanish boats with fi shing licences in Senegal 73, out of a total of 152 foreign boats. For the purposes of this study various Spanish and mixed capital (Spanish-Senegalese) companies that fi sh in the country’s waters will be mentioned (emonet, 2006; ICEX, 2006):

Fishing:

Owners of fi shing vessels:

• SENEVISA: Fishing and a fish-processing facility, exporting frozen fish. The company is en-tirely Spanish.

• AGAC (ASOCIACIÓN DE GRANDES ATUNEROS CONGELADORES): An asso-ciation of 22 tuna-fishing boats flying the Spanish flag, seven of which have licences to fish in Senegalese waters.

• HISPANO SENEGALAISE DE PECHE, HISEPEC SA: Works exclusively with its Spanish clients.

• SISPA - STE IBERO-SENEGALAISE PECHE ATLANTIQUE: Social Capital: 200 million CFA Francs – Spanish capital: 49%. Sea-food fishing with four boats of 200 TRB each, with a catch level of some 500 tonnes per year. One hundred per cent of the catch is aimed at export to Spain.

73 A Spanish boat can fi sh in Senegalese waters under that country’s flag by complying with the following conditions: 51% of the social capital must be in Senegalese hands, the head offi ce and the accounts must be domiciled in Senegal, the boats must be bought and registered in Senegal and the General Manager or Director must be Senegalese, amongst other things.




WHAT THE THREAT CONSISTS OF AND WHO IS AFFECTED BY IT

For fi shing communities around the world, the globalisation promoted by neoliberal policies has meant a drastic reduction in the rights to access to fi shing resources, to traditional fi shing grounds and to territorial waters in coastal regions. Senegal’s fi shing resources are mainly being exploited by Spanish companies. This way, the benefi ts generated by the use of resources do not stay within the country of origin, but are instead exported to Spain to supply a growing amount of consumers, stripping the Senegalese population of their own fi shing resources and exhaust-ing the fi shing grounds. Spanish influence on Senegalese fi shing is not limited to the ownership of the vessels, whether they are controlled by Spanish companies or mixed-capital companies; Spanish agents also have a hand in illegal, unreported and unregulated fi shing (IUU), one of the main hurdles for the correct management of fi shing resources all over the world. IUU includes various types of illicit activities, such as fi shing out of season without licences, using prohibited fi shing methods, disregarding fi shing quotas, not reporting or giving false information about the weight and the species caught (SETEM, 2009).

EXPERIENCES OF ALTERNATIVE FOOD SOVEREIGNTY

AND ASSOCIATED FARMERS’ MOVEMENTS

Artisan fi shing is currently of particular importance for Senegal, because of the amount of food that it supplies as well as because of the population to which it provides work. Artisan fi shing represents a signifi cant portion of global catch of proximity and surface species (between 70% and 80% depending on the region) (FAO, 2008).

Artisan fi shing in itself represents an alternative model to that of industrial fi shing. In this sense, there is particular interest in the work done by fi sherfolk in Dakar and Saint-Louis (which are two of the country’s most important industrial ports, with the presence of Spanish companies), for organising traditional fi sherfolk into local and national networks, as well as the fi sh-processing experiences by organised groups of women linked to these networks. The agents involved in these experiences are the “Conseil National Interprofessionnel de la Pêche Artisanale au Séné-gal” (National Inter-professional Council for Artisan Fishing in Senegal), the “Young Fishermen’s Association of Saint-Louis”, and organised women’s groups associated to both collectives, re-sponsible for the processing and sales of fi sh in local markets in Dakar and Saint-Louis.

For its part, industrial fi shing aims to provide an answer to growing food requirements, with the corresponding eff ects that this practice repre-sents for the environment, since it undermines the mangroves of the African coast, replacing their original biodiversity with pools for the farm-ing of prawns and other fi sh, and the abusive use

of chemicals that end up by polluting the water and the ground, as well as for African society (land occupation, integrated exports of produc-tion, etc.).

Nigeria is the leading country in the region of Sub-Saharan Africa (FAO, 2009), with a regis-tered production of 85,000 tonnes of catfi sh,



tilapia and other freshwater fi sh.

The Jumbo Prawn (Penaeus monodon) is being successful in Madagascar and he Eucheuma seaweed is successful in the United Republic of Tanzania, whilst the production of less wide-spread species such as the abalone (Haliotis) is on the rise in South Africa.

Fish farming has been presented as a response to the over-exploitation of marine resources in Sub-Saharan Africa and the foreign fi shing industry is using it more and more to increase worldwide fi sh production (as occurs with the panga in Mo-zambique). Nevertheless, the new industrial fi sh farming methods used in Sub-Saharan Africa are very technical and are based on intensive pro-duction and large concentrations of fi sh fed with artifi cial feeds, chemical additives and antibiotics in order to increase productive “effi ciency”. Such methods require a large investment of capital that often excludes the poorest people. It is gen-erally foreign companies that buy large expanses of coastal areas (or river- and lake shores), de-stroying mangroves, displacing the population and setting up shrimp farms (in Mozambique and Mauritania, for example), polluting the wa-ter, in order to obtain a product that will mainly be exported to, and consumed in, the EU so that, although these new methods are usually encour-aged in order to reduce starvation, in practice this kind of farming is very rarely benefi cial to the population, going against its FS and its FSov.

As far as fi shing is concerned, it is necessary to undertake a participative reorientation of the use of Sub-Saharan Africa’s marine resources and ecosystems. This calls for an integrated fi sheries development policy that strategically protects the artisan fi shing sector. Spain plays a funda-mental role in the exploitation of Sub-Saharan Africa’s fi sheries resources. At Veterinarios Sin Fronteras we consider that it is particularly serious that the Spanish government should bow to Spanish corporate interests instead of heeding principles of social justice and equal-ity. The Spanish government should encourage participation in the creation of participative management plans, the application of the pre-cautionary criterion, energy effi ciency, the use of selective fi shing equipment and methods as well as ensuring that respecting the social, cultural and labour rights is incorporated to the certifi ca-tion processes for national fi sheries production.

Over-investment in fi shing should also be eliminated. The current situation of acute over-investment in the fi shing fleet and in industrial facilities is an attack on the stability of marine resources, the sources of employment and the coastal communities. The international com-munity and also the Spanish government should progress towards the eff ective reduction of the fleet, avoiding exporting the industrial surplus to areas and fi shing grounds with less control un-der the cover of flags of convenience.



Within the context of the expansion of the agro-industrial production model and the free market economic system, Africa currently represents an attractive territory in which corporate interests have a large scope for development.

Industrial agriculture is the form of agriculture that fi ts into a market economy that simplifi es the power of the obtained product and reduces it to the rank of a mere “means”. The end product becomes a means for obtaining profi t, regardless of whether it is represented by a packet of seeds, chemical fertilisers tomatoes or cosmetics.

This detracts from the concept of agriculture as an art, thus turning the soil into a factory pro-ducing food that is harvested industrially and is in stark contrast with the concept of agriculture that predominates in most African countries, where productive activity is still interpreted in its original sense, in other words, as a process that is necessary to ensure the feeding of the fam-ily (Martínez, 2008). Considering the process of producing food as a means of obtaining profi ts and not as a basic right results in the commer-cialisation of the productive process, putting the peoples’ FS and FSov on the back burner or even marginalising it.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, it is mainly a form of ex-tensive agriculture that is practiced, organised around the family farm. In this type of productive organisation, the mobilisation of the workforce made up of family members, as well as of all of the family’s assets, is essential, thus the name “family agriculture”. These operative systems

provide Africa with almost all of its agricultural production. In all of these cases it is a form of family agriculture that is not very dependent on external supplies (fuel for engines, pesticides, fertilisers), in which the workforce is distrib-uted throughout the family unit, and that is not particularly linked to the fluctuations of prices on the international market. It also tends to be environmentally friendly, since it depends funda-mentally upon nature in order to be productive.

It is a kind of agriculture whose primary aim is to nourish the families and not to obtain economic benefi ts, and even less for export. Therefore, the products obtained in this way will always be used fi rst to cover the needs of the family group and, subsequently, those of the local area. It is only once these needs have been met that they will enter the regional or national sales chain for ag-ricultural products.

In contrast, the industrial agriculture model, with its productive system founded on single-crop farming for exports, generates considerable de-pendency on external supplies and on the price fluctuations imposed by the international mar-ket and has a tendency to transform farmers into farm labourers, provoking rural migration towards cities. These people who used to be farmers stop growing their own food and start to become dependent on products off ered on the market and on the fluctuation of their prices. With the constant rise and fall of prices and the search for profi ts, the production of private com-panies cannot in any way guarantee the FSov of Sub-Saharan Africa’s rural populations.

Agricultural Production




Sub-Saharan Africa is currently undergoing a re-colonisation of its territory, but this time the colonisation is not being carried out by states, but instead by the interests of private capital, backed up, in most cases, by their countries’ governments. The exploitation of the majority of its natural resources is being done by foreign companies for whom the wellbeing of the African populations is not the primary concern.

This deviation in the use and benefi t of the re-sources themselves, that go from representing the survival of African peoples to representing a marketable element with which to trade and gen-erate wealth, has a direct eff ect on the FSov of African families by putting them in a position of dependency and vulnerability with regard to for-

eign private interests.

In this sense, the policies undertaken by the vari-ous countries in the world are generally aimed at favouring the expansion of the current economic model. Therefore, the series of regulations that determine political, commercial and economic ties at international level do nothing more than perpetuate the roles of leadership, power, domi-nation and subordination, once again placing each of the countries that take part in the pro-cess in its historical position of “rich” or “poor” in a practically fi xed way (all of the regulation system blocks change).

Under cover of an apparent concern for poverty, inequality and the need for development in Afri-ca (a concern that appears in offi cial documents, from the Africa Plan to those derived from the constitution of the WTO, for example), the po-litical spectrum favours the expansion of this economic model and the entry and establishing of companies that for the most part come from wealthy countries.

In Africa, the NEPAD, approved in 2001, rep-resents the vision and the strategic concept adopted by African leaders to fi ght against pov-erty and “underdevelopment” throughout the continent. In theory, the strategy is aimed at resolving the major challenges with which the African continent is currently faced. Amongst its priorities is that of introducing political reforms and increasing investment in various sectors such as agriculture, the refi nement of human resources, with particular attention being paid to health, education, science and technology, the construction and improvement of infra-structures, the diversifi cation of production and exports, particularly for agribusiness, factories, mining and tourism, the intensifi cation of trade between African countries and greater access to the markets of more advanced countries for its exports, etc. (Crush and Williams, 2004).

It has come forth as a response to the need for cooperation and agreement amongst govern-

Political context


NEUMANN KAFEE GRUPPE COMPANY FACILITIES, UGANDA.


ments, the private sector and other civil society institutions; and as a means of integration of all African nations into a global economy and policy. Within the context of NEPAD, the FS of African families has been identifi ed as one of the fi rst issues to resolve, for which reason it is deemed necessary to modify, textually, the “inadequate agricultural system” in order to have a suffi cient-ly abundant agricultural production to be able to supply the population of the entire continent. It is not based upon traditional production, sales and consumption methods, but instead places the Western agrarian system as the example to be followed to progress along the path to devel-opment: “Developed countries will have to assist Africa in the development of its agricultural abili-ties” (NEPAD, 2001).

It attempts to force a convergence between a vision of development based on innovation and openness towards the international market, and a tradition that is fi rmly rooted in African fi elds. This is apparent, for example, in the explicit in-tention to strengthen the biotechnology industry with the intention – according to textual claims – “of enriching biodiversity”, as well as “introduc-ing innovative techniques and new technologies into the agricultural sector” with the objective of “developing indigenous know-how and increas-ing agricultural production”. It also paves the way for the entry of private capital, seen as being an essential component for the long-term main-tenance of the African economic structure.

As far as NEPAD is concerned, the objective ful-fi lled by agriculture in Africa (which is generally speaking a subsistence agriculture whose pri-ority is feeding families) should be expanded to envisage a form of production that is market-ori-ented and that enables Africa to play a relevant role in the international commercial flow of high-level raw materials and manufactured goods. In this sense, the function of private capital and of companies is fundamental and because of this, according to NEPAD, African governments should cut back as much as possible on restric-tions to economic activity and investments and favour corporate activity in Africa.

To ensure the fulfi lment of these goals, specifi c

actions at internal level have been specifi ed such as increasing security for the supplying of water for agriculture, promoting agrarian reform that is necessary to facilitate the development of agri-culture and providing credits that fund agrarian activities.

On an international level, there is a call for the creation of new partnerships that favour the de-velopment of agricultural products and access to the international market. NEPAD considers that it is fundamental for the continent’s economic development that fi nancial institutions such as the WB, the FMI, the African Development Bank, UNSECO, the FAO and other multilateral donor agencies should participate in projects “that generate the economic structure”, thus being open to the vision and ways of doing things of these organisations.

For their part, the international spectrum and the United Nations give fi rm backing to NEPAD as a context for confronting poverty and “under-development” throughout the African continent. The various funds, programmes, bodies and de-partments of the United Nations system actively promote the priorities of NEPAD and the MDGs in their respective domains of experience 74. The WTO supports the main goals of NEPAD in the domain of trade, particularly by means of the ac-tivities of its technical assistance programmes linked to trade for African countries.

This network of commercial, corporate and political relations that interconnects African countries, international bodies and wealthy countries is built upon a foundation of interests that are in many cases conflicting and that at-tempts to maintain an apparent equilibrium between the social concerns and the economic interests of each of the agents. A very telling ex-ample of this is the Plan REVA in Senegal (Retour vers l’Agriculture).

Senegal is a country with a markedly agricultural economy. Although this sector provides les than 10% of the national GDP, it is the primary source of employment, covering 72% of the active pop-ulation. Agricultural products represent about 8% of total exports and play a primordial role in



feeding the population. According to the FAO’s estimations, Senegal’s arable surface exceeds 3,800,000 Ha, of which two-thirds are currently used for this purpose. The main farming areas are to be found in the deltas and valleys of the Senegal, Gambia and Casamance rivers, and the main crops are peanuts, millet, sorghum and rice (ICEX, 2006).

In this context, the REVA Plan originally came about as an idea of president Wade as a strategy to maintain the Senegalese population by means of promoting the productive capacity of the rural environment. It aims for the implantation of inte-grated emerging poles 75 as the starting-point for their conversion into poles of development and the promotion of private initiative within the agri-business sector in its widest sense (horticulture, forestry, fi sh farming, artisan crafts, etc.).

The Senegalese government, which shares this concern, has often referred to the intention to achieve food security by means of strategies such as the Special Programme for the Devel-opment of Rice farming, a part of REVA with the goal of a production of 500,000 tonnes of rice for 2010 and self-suffi ciency for 2015. The means to achieve this would be the provision of 3,000 pumping units, the promotion of rice-growing centres (Valleys, Deltas, Fatik, South) and the re-habilitation of existing infrastructures.

In this case the Spanish government, as one of the prime target countries for Senegalese migrants, decided to give its support to the REVA Plan in

2006 with a State Monetary Subsidy for the ex-ecution of “an emerging agricultural centre” that would act as a prototype for future farms that would benefi t from a reimbursable concession of funds for an amount of 10 million Euros charged to the Development Aid Fund. This support from Spain via DAF funds to Spanish companies such as the Basque company INKOA S.L. 77 or the pub-lic company TRAGSA is reflected in the text of the “Plan REVA puesta en marcha de los polos emergentes integrados en cooperation con el reino español”, drafted in July 2007.

The exploitation of the “emerging agricultural centre of Djilakh” has become the guiding exam-ple to create a durable rural development policy in Senegal that would go beyond the encourage-ment of alternatives to migration and be able to position the agricultural sector as a decisive element for the creation of wealth and growth that is established Accelerated Growth Strategy (SCA) and the Strategy Document for the Reduc-tion of Poverty (DSRP II), approved by the IMF and the WB for Senegal (Olivié, 2007).

Empero, the powerful conglomerate that con-sists of the Senegalese government, the foreign company INKOA S.L. and the Spanish govern-ment, represents a serious threat for traditional rural agriculture in Senegal and in consequence to the population’s FSov as it suff ers the dis-placement of its traditional production systems in favour of productive systems that do not do much for the food security of African families.

74 http://157.150.195.10/spanish/africa/osaa/systemsupport.html (Consulted on 03/11/2010)75 Grandes explotaciones diver-sifi cadas del sector primario en las que se conjuga las actividades tradicionales con las nuevas. Se dividen en polos emergentes integrados tipo “excelence” agrícolas y acuícolas, polos emergentes tipo “granja moderna”, polos de emergentes tipo mixto “agro-piscícolas”, polos emergentes tipo “agro-pastoral”. (REVA 2006)

75 Large diversifi ed farms in the primary sector that combine traditional activities with new ones. They are divided into integrated emerging agricultural and fi sh-farming centres of the “excellence” type, emerging centres of the “modern farm” type, emerging centers f the mixed “agriculture & fi sh-farming” type and emerging centres of the “agricultural herding” type.

76 The following centres are observed: the “large producers” type for innovation in non-traditional crops such as biofuels, small family farms implanted throughout the country via NGOs or other associates, micro-gardens and hydropnic crops in rural areas and the promotion of micro-gardens in schools (REVA, 206).

77 http://www.inkoa.es/ (Consulted on 01/09/2010)



The energy requirements of the wealthy coun-tries’ consumer societies is increasing at the same time as the world’s oil reserves are falling. This is forcing the investment sector to move its capital towards other forms of energy produc-tion in order to meet the growing demand of consumer societies in the North. In view of this outlook the intensive production of agro-fuels appears as a plausible alternative.

Since large expanses of land are required to meet

such a demand, the poor countries of Sub-Saha-ran Africa (such as the Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Mali, Madagascar or Mozambique) that have cheap land and labour represent an eco-nomically interesting option for the investing conglomerate, which is mainly made up of North-ern companies.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the crops mainly used for the production of agro-fuels are:

Agro-fuels

As can be seen, for the most part, agro-fuels are nothing more than a new purpose for crops that already exist. Indeed this is where the novelty lies: in changing the purpose for which the land

is used: land that was once used to grow food is now used to meet the energy demands of indus-trialised societies.

According to FAO data (2009) on land assig-nation in fi ve countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (Ethiopia, Ghana, Madagascar, Mali and Sudan), there exists documentary evidence that con-fi rms that the use of 2.4 million hectares of land has been modifi ed in this respect since 2004, with considerable areas reserved for the produc-tion of agro-fuels in Ethiopia, Madagascar and Ghana.

In its data, the International Food Policy Research Institute estimates that 20 million hectares of

• For the production of ethanol: sugar cane (grown in various parts of Africa as an export crop, with important industries in South Africa, Mozambique and Malawi); corn (one of the most im-portant crops in Nigeria, where it covers 60% of farmlands, originally used as food for people and livestock); sorghum (a native grain of Africa, grown as a food source, although its high sugar content makes it ideal for the production of ethanol); and cassava (a root that is grown as a source of food; Shell and the Nigerian government are currently studying varieties that have been genetically modifi ed in order to increase their productivity as an agro-fuel).

• For the production of biodiesel: the oil-palm (native of West Africa, it produces seeds and fruit from which one can extract oil); castor (a plant that is native to East Africa; its oil is used for me-dicinal purposes around the world but it can be used to produce biodiesel when refi ned) 78; and jatropha (a marginal crop that does not have any application as a food).

78 http://www.castoroil.in/uses/fuel/castor_oil_fuel.html (Consulted on 05/10/2010)

79 http://www.ifpri.org/ (Consulted on 03/12/2010)

JATROPHA, MOZAMBIQUE.



land worldwide have been sold since 2006. Of these, some 9 million hectares have been pur-chased in Africa, of which almost fi ve million hectares have been devoted to the production of agro-fuels, particularly jatropha, oil-palm and sorghum.

Although it is true that it is mainly private com-panies, mostly from the EU 80, that are behind the business related to agro-fuel plantations in Sub-Saharan Africa, the land is also being acquired by national governments, often via state companies and private investment.

In general, foreign investment in agro-fuels is usually welcomed by the governments of host countries, on the premise that it will generate employment in rural areas and boost the region’s economic development. Fifteen African coun-tries (Benin, Ghana, Senegal and Mali amongst others) signed a Treaty in July 2006 by means of which they established the Pan-African Non-Petroleum Producers’ Association (PANPP) with the primary aim of promoting the produc-tion of agro-fuels on the African continent. This organisation has been called the “Green OPEC” (Friends of the Earth, 2010).

Table 11: AGRO-FUELS CASE STUDY: MOZAMBIQUE

In the case of Mozambique, since mid-2007 the government has been attempting to convince farmers to convert their crops to jatropha crops as a fi rst step towards a highly-publicised green revolution. That same year the government gave national and foreign companies the right to exploit this type of crop on fi ve million hectares, almost one-seventh of the country’s land sur-face that is offi cially defi ned as “farmland”. In this way, the Mozambiquan government is actively promoting the intensive plantation of jatropha and oil plants, insisting upon the benefi ts and advantages that these crops can bring to the country. The National Policy and Strategy on biofu-els, approved by the Cabinet on 24th March 2009, was published in the Bulletin of the Republic on 21st May 2009. The Strategy is a tool that concentrates specifi cally upon the promotion of the production of ethanol (sugar cane and sorghum) and biodiesel (jatropha and coconut) for the production of liquid fuels that are primarily used in transport, as well as for other energetic purposes whose main purpose is exportation. According to this document, the development of biofuels in Mozambique will be based on:

Foreign governments favour the activity of their companies in Mozambique, since the raw materi-als obtained will be, for the most part, imported and used to cover the needs of their populations. For example, the Brazilian fi rm Petrobras signed a contract with Brazilian president Lula and with George W. Bush to facilitate and extend the production and sale of agro-fuels 81.

• The production of biofuels is an essential activity for the private sector, a sector that can be developed via public/private associations.

• The encouragement of international cooperation by means of the strengthening of the links that exist amongst institutions.

• The strengthening of the Kyoto Protocol and of mechanisms and tools that encourage the rapid development of the production and use of biofuels, in order to contribute towards an eff ective reduction of greenhouse gases.

80 China is the exception to this rule, with state-owned companies that dispose of more than 2.8 million hectares of land for planting oil-palms in the Repulic of the Congo. Source: “Land grabbing” by foreign investors in developing countries, IFPRI, 2009, http://www.ifpri.org/publication/land-grabbing-foreign-investors-developing-countries

81 http://www.wrm.org.uy/temas/Agrocombustibles/Manifi esto_Quito.html (Consulted on 15/06/2010)




SPANISH COMPANIES THAT REPRESENT A THREAT

There are a great many companies that have agro-fuel plantations in Mozambique, ranging from the national company Pretromoc to oil companies that are beginning to specialise in the produc-tion of ethanol and biodiesel, like the aforementioned Petrobras. Other companies on this long list are: ESV Bio Africa Lda (based in <Ukraine/UK), Energem Biofuels Limited (Canada), Enerterra (Portugal), MocamGalp (Portugal), Sun Biofuels (UK) and AVIAM (Italy). Concerning Petrobras, the oil company created a subsidiary company in 2008 in order to take care of the biofuel pro-duction projects, called PETROBRAS COMBUSTIVEL. The company’s activities are focused on the production of biodiesel, ethanol sand second-generation biofuels. It currently operates in 21 countries, amongst which is Mozambique. There is an association between Petrobras and Petromoc to operate jointly on the biofuels market in Mozambique, in the Province of Manica. Then-president Guebuza visited Brazil in 2007 to meet his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the president of Petrobras, José Sergio Gabrielli de Azevedo, and both governments signed an agreement in the fi eld of energy. Before signing this agreement, Petrobras was already present in the business in Mozambique with the Empresa Nacional de Hidrocarbonetos (ENH), a national oil company, since 2006. An agreement memorandum was singed for the occasion re-garding the exploration for oil and natural gas and also for research in and production of biofuels in Mozambiquan territory. The company is also associated to the Malaysian company Petronas to work on exploration in the estuary of the Zambezi River in Mozambique 82. Regarding the Bra-zilian company’s ties to Spain, the BBVA bank holds 3.7% of Petrobras shares, which makes it a direct participant in its activities in this sense.

Within this context, the Spanish company Infi nita Renovables 83, an affi liate of the Isolux Corsan group, has acquired 150,000 hectares of land in Mozambique 84 to grow oil-producing cereal crops that will be destined for its processing plants in Spain. As the group has announced, it will invest 170 million Euros and, with the raw materials, will be able to cover 30% of the needs of its plants in Ferrol and Castellón. In Mozambique, Infi nita will be planting an experimental crop, jatropha, which is an oleaginous tropical plant that was mainly grown in Mexico until now. The company is aiming for production fi gures of up to 4,000 kilogrammes per year per hectare. In Mozambique, the investment will be of some 200 million dollars. Infi nita Renovable shareholders include the Isolux Corsan group (70%), in charge of engineering, building and maintaining the production facilities, Santander Investment S.A. (5%) and Solar de Lukategi Sociedad Limitada (25%).

Furthermore, the Spanish company Aurantia S.L. 85 is investing in the intensive production of oil palms in the Congo and already has experience in the biodiesel industry in Mozambique, Senegal and Guinea 86.

82 www.petrobras.com (Consulted on 10/07/2010)

83 http://www.infi nitarenovables.es/ (Consulted on 11/07/2010)

84 http://www.biodisol.com/biocombustibles/infi nita-renovables-compra-tierras-en-argentina-y-mozambique-para-cultivar oleaginosas/ Article published on 7th November 2007 (Consulted on 10/10/2010)

85 http://www.aurantia.es/ (Consulted on 11/07/2010)

86 http://news.mongabay.com/bioenergy/2007/03/spanish-company-aurantia-to-invest-in.html (Consulted on 23/08/2010)




THE NATURE OF THE THREAT AND WHOM IT AFFECTS

The green revolution announced by Guebusa does not represent a de facto support for small-scale agriculture but is, rather, yet another imposition demanded by the contingencies of the world marketplace and presented as a panacea for the people of Mozambique. “It is perhaps not the same Green Revolution that ruined India and Mexico in the Sixties since formally the govern-ment is against the invasion by agro-toxins. But we are very vigilant because, once again, we are being asked from overseas to implement this policy” 87, says Diamantino Nhampossa from the UNAC.

The threat aff ects farmers in Mozambique who watch as their land (in Mozambique land own-ership is communal), which has traditionally been worked according to the family agriculture model aimed at the production of the food that is necessary to feed the family, is sold off by the government (in other words, privatised) to foreign companies – in many cases, Spanish – for the intensive production of agro-fuels that will be exported to Northern countries.

87 http://viacampesinaafrica.blogspot.com/2008_12_01_archive.html (Consulted on 10/06/2010)

88 http://www.cultesa.com/ (Consulted on 05/07/2010)

Spanish companies de not play a leading role in the production of agro-fuels in Sub-Saharan Afri-ca when compared to the role of companies from other EU countries such as Germany or the Unit-ed Kingdom. Their discreet presence is mainly due to the fact that historically speaking, Spain does not have such close ties to the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa (except for Equatorial Guin-ea) as do France or the United Kingdom with the countries that used to be their colonies.

Nonetheless, at Veterinarios Sin Fronteras we ex-press our concern over the fact that actions that try to incentivise Spanish private investment in this respect are being developed.

In Senegal, for example, within the context of the aforementioned REVA Plan and linked to the production of agro-fuels, there is a collabora-tion agreement with the Regional government of the Canary Islands. This focuses on scientifi c cooperation, which in Senegal is represented by the Institut Sénégalais de Recherche Agricole (ISRA – Senegalese Institute for Agricultural Research), for the selection of high-output veg-etable matter, the optimisation of in-vitro and

traditional germination techniques, the execu-tion of joint research projects and other training initiatives that may be necessary. Within eight years, the Regional Council has committed to sowing 321,000 hectares of jatropha in Senegal, with the intention of producing agro-fuels (Ber-mejo and Ribero, 2008). The Cultesa 88 company, with participation from the island government, has committed to this.

The following table presents a summary of the agro-fuel plantations that have been identifi ed in Sub-Saharan Africa and the companies involved, which are for the most part foreign. According to the information consulted when establishing this report, Spain is present in Senegal, Mozambique and the Congo.



Table 12: COMPANIES INVESTING IN AGRO-FUELS BY COUNTRY

ANGOLA

CAMEROON

D.R. OF THE

CONGO

CONGO

BRAZZAVILLE

ETIOPÍA

· The government assigned 500,000 hectares of land to the production of agro-fuels.

· Biocom (an association of the Brazilian Odebrecht company, the Angolan Damer company and Sonangol, the state-run oil company in Angola) began sowing 30,000 hectares of sugar cane in 2009.

· The Portuguese fi rm Quifel Recursos Naturales also has plans to sow sunflowers, soya and jat-ropha in the southern province of Cunene.

· The Portuguese company, Gleinol, also began cultivating 700 hectares for the production of bio-diesel; this fi gure would have risen to 13,000 hectares in 2009. Sonangol, Angola’s state-run oil company, and the Italian concern ENI, have plans to expand the oil palm plantations for the pro-duction of biofuels in the province of Kwanza in northern Angola.

· SOCAPALM, which used to be state-run and is now partially owned by the French Bolloré group, announced plans to increase its production of palm oil. SOCAPALM has plantations on the coast, in the southern and central regions of Cameroon and signed a contract for a 60-year lease of 58,000 hectares in 2000. Bolloré owns the plantation in Safacam, which has 8,800 hectares.

· The Democratic Republic of the Congo has undergone one of the most important evolutions as far as agro-fuel plantations are concerned.

· In July of 2009, the chines company ZTE Company Ltd. announced plans to establish a million hectares of oil palms.

· The Italian energy company ENI has also announced a 70,000 hectare plantation of oil palms.

· Aurantia S.L. (Spain). The dimensions of the plantation are unspecifi ed. African Palm*.

Ethiopia has earmarked around 1.6 million hectares of land for investors who are ready to develop commercial exploitation and, in July 2009, 8,240 foreign and local investors received licences for the commercial production of agro-fuels. To date, the government has handed over more than 300,000 hectares for energy crops, but negotiations aimed at massively increasing this fi gure are under way.

· National Biodiesel (an Ethiopian company with 80% of stock owned by Sun Biofuels, from the UK).

Sun Biofuels (UK), with 5,000 hectares, of which 1,000 Ha are sown with jatropha.

· Amabasel Jatropha project (Ethiopia), with 20,000 Ha of jatropha.

· Jatropha Biofuels Agro Industry (Ethiopia), with 100,000 Ha of jatropha.

· IDC Investment (Denmark/Ethiopia), with 15,000 Ha of jatropha.

· Jemal Ibrahim (Ethiopia), with 7.8 ha of castor.

· B DFC (Brazil) with 18,00 Ha (at least) of sugar cane and sweet beans.

· Flora EcoPower (Denmark/UK), with 56,000 Ha sown and a further 200,000 Ha conceded for the sowing of castor and jatropha.

· Petro Palm Corporation (USA/Austria), 50,000 Ha of castor and jatropha.

· VATIC International Business (India/Ethiopia), with 20,000 Ha.

· Global Energy (Israel), 2,700 Ha of castor.

Country Companies with investments in agro-fuels in the country



Tabla 12: EMPRESAS CON INVERSIONES EN AGROCOMBUSTIBLES POR PAÍSES

GHANA

KENYA

MADAGASCAR

MOZAMBIQUE

NIGERIA

SIERRA LEONA

SENEGAL

TANZANIA

· Agroils (Italy), 10,000 Ha of jatropha, with the concession of rights for a further 105,000 Ha.· Galten Global Alternative Energy (Israel), 1,000 Ha of jatropha out of a total of 100,000 Ha.· Gold Star Farms (Ghana), 14,000 Ha of jatropha.· Jatropha Africa (UK/Ghana), rights for exploiting 120,000 Ha of jatropha.· Biofuel Africa (Norway), 27,000 Ha, only 660 hectares producing jatropha and other crops.· ScanFuel (Norway), 400,000 Ha of jatropha (60% for agro-fuels.· Kimminic Corporation (Canada), 13,000 Ha of jatropha.

· In 2007 the Japanese company Biwako Bio Laboratory announced plans to establish 30,000 hectares of jatropha that would increase to 100,000 Ha over the next ten years.· The Belgian company HG Consulting has obtained funding from the Ngima Project for exploiting sugar cane on 42,000 Ha of land.· The Canadian company Bedford Biofuels has obtained 160,000 Ha for growing jatropha, with the possibility of obtaining a further 200,000 Ha.

· In Madagascar the British company GEM Biofuels has signed up for more than 490,000 hectares of land, of which only 55,700 Ha have been sown to date (January 2010), with jatropha.

· D1 Oils (United Kingdom), 5,348 Ha of jatropha.· Energem Resources (Canada) has rights for 60,000 Ha, and is in negotiations for more than 60,000 Ha in other provinces; it has already sown 2,000 Ha of jatropha.· SGC Energia (Portugal), 20,000 Ha of jatropha. · Elaion Ag (Germany), 1,000 Ha of jatropha.· Galp Energia (Portugal), 5,000 Ha of jatropha.· Sun Biofuels (United Kingdom), 6,000 Ha of jatropha, with the intention of a further 15,000 Ha.· Avian (Italy), 10,000 Ha of jatropha.· Viridesco (United Kingdom), 10,000 Ha of jatropha.· Infi nita Renovables (Spain), 150,000 Ha of jatropha**.· Aurantia (Spain), no further information*.

NNPC (Nigeria) have several plantations in the country. It has two sugar cane plantations, one of more than 200 square kilometres and another of 20,000 Ha. It has a further two yucca plantations, one of 10,000 Ha and the other of 30,000 Ha. Finally it has a sugar cane and yucca plantation of 20,000 Ha.· Kwara Casplex Limited (Nigeria), with 15,000 Ha of yucca.· Global Biofuels Limited (Nigeria). Two plantations of sweet sorghum, one of 11,000 Ha and the other of 30,000 Ha.

· Four plantations under the control of unidentifi ed Chinese companies: one of sugar cane with 5,000 Ha; another one of corn, with 2,000 Ha; one with sweet potato, of 1,500 Ha; and one with fi gs and yucca, of 2,000 Ha.· Addax Bioenergy (Switzerland), 26,000 Ha of sugar cane.

· Cultesa (Spain), with the participation of the Regional Council of the Canary Islands: 321,000 Ha of jatropha.· Aurantia (Spain), no further information*.

There are almost 40 foreign-owned companies, including the British companies Sun Biofuels (that obtained 8,000 Ha of “degraded” woodlands in which to grow jatropha) and D1 Oils, which have invested in the expansion of agro-fuels in Tanzania.

País Empresas con inversiones en agrocombustibles en el país

Source: drafted internally according to data obtained from Friends of the Earth (2010).

*http://news.mongabay.com/bioenergy/2007/03/spanish-company-aurantia-to-invest-in.html (Consulted on 23/08/2010)** http://www.biodisol.com/biocombustibles/infi nita-renovables-compra-tierras-en-argentina-y-mozambique-para-cultivar oleaginosas/



• The loss of access to water and to land by small-scale farmers

In Ghana, development agencies have pointed out that the propagation of jatropha is pushing small-scale farmers – particularly women farmers – away from their land. Valuable sources of food such as the karate tree have been felled to make way for the plantations 89.

In Nigeria, the farming communities are being confronted with a resettlement programme af-ter the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) requisitioned 200 square kilometres of land to grow sugar cane destined for the production of ethanol. Until then, the land had been used for small-scale agriculture to grow food (Friends of the Earth, 2010).

In Tanzania, thousands of people involved in the production of rice and corn were obliged to abandon their lands in the Usangu plains in 2009, or have been threatened with eviction because of the implantation of sugar cane plantations in various parts of the country, giving rise to ex-tensive conflicts. Similar situations have occurred throughout the country against jatropha and sunflower plantations. The farmers’ protests have led the Tanzanian government to reconsider its stance regarding agro-fuel plantations in the country 90.

• Increased food prices

The rivalry for land use that is represented by the agro-fuel plantations against the growing of basic foods such as yucca or sweet Sorghum is causing the land factor price to rise. Research by the WB (Mitchell, 2008) found that the use for agro-fuel production of crops that had been traditionally used as a food source is a factor that is closely linked to the rising food prices.

• Employment of farmers

The intensive farming of sugar cane, oil palms, jatropha, corn or any other crop for the production of ethanol or biodiesel is a new way of doing away with the control of local farmers and communi-ties over their own productive activity, often stripping them of their traditional crops under cover of the promise of substantial profi ts. This leaves them at the mercy of the programmed whims of the international market, turns the farmers into paid workers and covertly privatises the land, which in some countries such as Mozambique is communally owned, according to the Ley de florestas e fauna bravía (Flora and Wildlife Act, 2002).

• The replacement of human labour by machinery

It is not even possible to affi rm that the large agro-fuel plantations generate as many jobs as promised by the governments and companies involved. In fact, most of the agro-fuel crops re-quire little labour. Various studies have demonstrated that one permanent job is created for every 100 hectares of agro-fuel crops. In most cases the work is highly mechanised and the employment levels are even lower. In the sugar cane industry, a harvesting machine can do the work of 100 persons (Ustulin and Severo, 2001).

• Changing the use of the land and environmental degradation

Seventy per cent of Mozambique is covered by forests and woodlands (DNTF, 2007), under the canopy of which foods that are the sustenance of Mozambiquan families have been grown using

The corporate activity undertaken in Africa in the domain of agro-fuels generates a series of social, economic and environmental consequences on the continent. These are described below:

89 http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/docs/ (Consulted on 23/08/2010)

90 http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/-/2558/667648/-/qy9vngz/-/. (Consulted on 20/08/2010)



traditional techniques. Most of the large-scale agricultural projects replace the natural vegeta-tion in one way or another. The loss of this vegetation would have important consequences for climate change. In this way, the use of large stretches of land for the production of agro-fuels on the African continent represents a series of negative impacts upon nature, which could include deforestation and the elimination of natural habitats, soil degradation and water pollution as a result of the over-use of chemical products (pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilisers) and the exhaustion of hydraulic resources due to the excessive use of water for the irrigation of the plantations.

In Cameroon, the expansion of oil palm plantations is replacing native forests in the Congo basin, exaggerating the levels of deforestation in the country. The government of Cameroon has been supporting the production of palm oil since the Sixties via state-run companies such as SOCA-PALM, which has been partially privatised since then (Friends of the Earth, 2010).

The government of Benin has proposed the conversion of between 300 and 400 thousand hec-tares of wetlands to promote the production of oil palms in the southern part of the country, with the corresponding destruction that this would represent for the biodiversity of these wetlands (African Biodiversity Network, 2007).

In Nigeria, plans for the large sugar cane plantations in Gombé State have awoken concerns about the use of pesticides (Salihu, 2008).

• Farming them is detrimental to the families’ FS

Continuing with the example of Mozambique, if one takes into account that about 87% of the Mozambiquan population is engaged in subsistence farming and that they produce 75% of the food that they consume (Martínez, 2008), the main concerns arise when one considers that the plan for encouraging the maintenance of small-scale farmers is to sow large amounts of jatropha on farmland once used for growing food. These concerns are made worse by the fact that these farmers usually have very poor connections to markets and have diffi culties for storage, com-munication and information.

All of these elements mean that it is very diffi cult for them to benefi t from these kinds of commercial crops (LVC, 2009).

At Veterinarios Sin Fronteras we consider that with regard to the production of agro-fuels, the Spanish government should withdraw its support to companies that establish agro-fuel plantations in countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. It should above all reject the political goals that increase demand for agro-fuels.



In the context of NEPAD and of the current eco-nomic system (founded upon the opening of markets and the flexibility of trade relations), the traditional form of agriculture to be found in Sub-Saharan Africa as described in the previous paragraph is being replaced by a model of inten-sive agriculture based on single crops.

The changing of the productive system and the impacts that this change entails for the Food Sov-ereignty of African populations occurs because the original meaning of agriculture, which was to supply the family group, is being changed. This will be under analysis throughout this section.

Family and subsistence farming are character-ised by the fact that they are highly diversifi ed forms of agriculture that are integrated into natural cycles and based upon the sowing of traditional varieties that are specifi cally adapted to the conditions in the area. Dependent for the most part upon labour from the family group, it constitutes a very effi cient productive model as long as the objective of production is that of guaranteeing suffi cient and adequate food for the families in the immediate entourage.

Nevertheless, if agriculture intends to respond to the growing needs of the international market and to the interests of investment capital, an in-tensive production system that is embedded in the logic of price-cutting and maximum benefi ts is required in order to provide products that are competitive on the international marketplace regardless of the quality of the end product and – more important still – of the social or environ-mental eff ects that their production may have entailed.

The goal of this type of agriculture is production, mainly for exportation, and it is in this situa-tion that foreign companies that enter Africa in search of cheap land and labour operate. It can also be undertaken by African national produc-ers’ groups that have opted for an international market-oriented production model, convinced that this way they will rapidly increase their

wealth whilst contributing to the development of their countries. In any of these two cases, the products are generally directly exported to and manufactured in the home countries of the investing company, or simply in purchasing countries, without the local population having a share of the benefi ts entailed by their produc-tion.

The danger of this is that, whilst Sub-Saharan Af-rica stands out as one of the main producers of raw materials in the world, just a handful of com-panies are cornering this market at global level, maintaining control of the processes and prices throughout the production chain. Therefore, the farmers who used to be involved in diversifi ed subsistence farming are now working on planta-tions run by foreign companies, in a dependent and vulnerable position against the fluctuations of the international market and the pressures from companies involved in the international trade game.

Spanish companies, as in the case of the produc-tion of agro-fuels and for the same reasons, do not have a very great presence in Sub-Saharan Africa in comparison to those of other EU or over-seas countries. In this sense it should be pointed out that Africa is currently a relatively “virgin”

The production of food products for exporting


BILLBOARD ON JATROPHA PLANTATION COMPANY SUN BIOFUELS.MOZAMBIQUE.


territory, unlike other continents (such as, for example, Latin America and the cases of Brazil and Argentina with the production of genetically-modifi ed soya as animal fodder), in which large companies are starting to implant themselves.

Nonetheless, the Spanish government and companies have begun a trend by favouring an industrial type of agriculture in all of their offi cial

plans (suggesting that this will alleviate poverty in Africa). This is apparent in documents such as the Africa Plan, the ICEX’s support for investment projects for intensive agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa, the involvement in cooperation projects that favour export-oriented agriculture as a means of economic encouragement, etc. All of this has been extensively developed throughout this document.

Table 13: SOME EXAMPLES OF COMPANIES THAT DOMINATE THE RAW MATERIALS

MARKET AROUND THE WORLD.

COCOA: Four companies (Barry Callebaut from Switzerland, Hosta from Germany and Cargill and Arthur Daniel Midland (ADM) from the US) control the worldwide cocoa market. Half of the world’s production of chocolate, which is mainly consumed in Europe, is in the hands of just six manufacturers that currently fi ght against the large retail chains for the slightest profi t margins that can be obtained from cocoa products. African cocoa farmers and their governments have practically no influence over the establishing of prices, even when the ever-greater proportion of the milling is being done on their territory.

COFFEE: Four companies (NK from Germany, Volcafe from Switzerland, the Swiss/Spanish company Ecom and the French company Dreyfus) control 40% of the worldwide coff ee market. These companies supply a roasting industry that is even more concentrated: the Swiss company Nestlé, along with the three American companies Kraft, Procter & Gamble and Sara Lee, control 45% of the processing.

BANANAS: Five companies (Dole, Chiquita and Del Monte from the United States, Eyff es from Ireland and Noboa from Ecuador) control 80% of the banana industry.

FISHING: In the fi shing industry, heavily subsidised European transnational companies such as Pescanova (Spain) pocket most of the benefi ts.

FRUIT & VEGETABLES: Even Kenya’s export fruit and vegetables, which are an industry that is often presented as being a successful local enterprise, are in the hands of no more than fi ve large companies (amongst which is Sunrise Ltd, which is controlled by the family of the Shah of Iran, and Homegrown Kenya, which now belongs to Flamingo Holdings from the UK).

Source: bilterals.org, BIOTHAI and GRAIN, 2008. Adapted by Martínez Frías, 2010.



Another example of this is, once again, the aforementioned REVA Plan from Senegal, which clearly shows the way in which the implantation of the agri-business model is taking place in the African countryside; in some cases by means of specifi c political programmes conducted in close collaboration with foreign governments and companies.

Other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa in which Spanish companies are present are, amongst

others, Ghana, Tanzania and Uganda. All of these

cases are developed in the fi les that appear

throughout this chapter.

In the same way as the impacts produced by

agro-fuel plantations have been indicated, some

of the consequences on African life that are

entailed by the industrial agriculture done by

Spanish companies involved in the exportation

of raw materials are listed below:

• Traditional cereal crops, which provide food for families, are tending to disappear in fa-vour of imposed commercial crops such as melons, pumpkins or tomatoes. Traditional seeds and varieties are also being done away with in favour of commercial varieties and modifi ed seeds (Mignane, 2010, per-sonal communication). This is eliminating the diversity of crops that has traditionally characterised African subsistence farming, being replaced by single crops. This pro-duces a gradual dilapidation of the soil, and increases farmers’ vulnerability, since they end up depending fundamentally upon the sales of a single product. It also leaves farm-ers more exposed to climate change, blights or illnesses. The diversifi cation of crops was a means of ensuring a minimal production if a devastating event hit a specifi c variety or species. Specialisation in a single product puts the whole harvest at risk.

• Rural young persons are turned into farm labourers instead of becoming farmers working with the rest of their family groups. This reduces farmers’ ability to intervene in decisions about what to grow, how to grow it and for whom to grow it.

• The acquisition of land by these intensive production centres can, in the long run, cause instability and conflict in the FS of populations and families that take part in these systems. Land that could be used to grow crops for the inhabitants of the area is used for crops that will be directly exported. When they are placed at the mercy of inter-national markets, of price fluctuations and of the tyranny of the export model, the vulner-ability of farmers increases.

• It increases rural migration and immigra-tion, problems that activities such as those derived from the REVA Plan were initially de-signed to circumscribe.

• Moreover, intensive production entails irre-versible damage to the soil and water due to the excessive use of chemical products (fer-tilisers, pesticides and herbicides) and to the disregard for biological cycles that renew the nutrients in the ground.



As mentioned in chapter 2, land-grabbing has once again put the issue of land and of the cor-rect distribution of its tenure on the political, scientifi c and social agendas. Land, being a fi -nite resource for agriculture, must be managed as a benefi t to society. LVC defends the democ-ratisation of its tenure and use; it defends true, integrated and participative agrarian reform that ensures the right for all people to work the land and that democratises its tenure, giving priority to family collective and cooperative types of ag-riculture (LVC, 2009).

Land is a productive resource that is essential for the subsistence of the local population and without which it is impossible to ensure access

to food. Without any available land the people who work in the agricultural sector cannot pro-duce food, build their homes or meet their needs based on social, cultural and religious values and practices; as the United Nations Special Rappor-teur, Olivier de Schutter, puts it, “access to land and to the security of its tenure are essential to ensure not only the exercising of the right to food but also that of other human rights, includ-ing the right to employment (for farmers without land) and the right to housing” (UN, 2010). Be-cause of this, access to land and to other natural resources, as well as the associated security of its tenure, have an important eff ect for develop-ment (Palmer et al, 2009).

Land grabbing

During the 2007-2008 food crisis, in which food prices rose sharply and restrictions were increased for the exportation of basic crops by the exporting countries, there was a prolifera-tion of the acquisition of farmland in developing countries by other countries that was partially motivated by the need to ensure their food se-curity, by externalising their own productions. High oil prices over the same period increased the private sector’s interest in energy crops (and the land on which they are grown) and helped to promote interest in the reception of agricultural investments to reduce the cost of food imported to developing countries (Smaller and Mann, 209; Cotula et al, 2009). In conjunction with the fi -nancial crisis, this surge in the investment in raw materials and basic products for food dramati-cally increased interest in agricultural land as a potential investment, particularly in Sub-Saha-ran Africa (World Bank, 2010).

The target of these investments are countries that have abundant land with farming potential, as well as those whose land ownership regime is regulated by a less extensive legal context according to which the legitimate owners of farmland are more at threat of being the target of foreign investments that arise from the acqui-sition of extensive amounts of land. Speculation is another driving force for the search for new investment sources that are aimed at land acqui-sition, in which it is hoped that the value of the land and the price of food will increase, leading to benefi t margins. Moreover, the political reforms in some African countries has made invest-ment a more attractive prospect, particularly by means of a growing number of investment trea-ties, the reform of land legislation, banks, tax and customs duties (Cotula et al, 2009). Some investment banks have created agricultural investment funds such as BlackRock (United States), Deutsche Bank (Germany), Goldman

Interests and motivations for land grabbing




Sachs (United States) and Knight Frank (United Kingdom) (Smaller and Mann, 2009), that can draw benefi t from the positive eff ects of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). Other factors, which aff ect countries such as China, like high demo-graphic growth, the degradation of ecosystems or climate change – droughts or a change in the rain cycle – can means that once fertile land is

now of no use for agriculture, for which reason governments decide to invest in land in other countries. For all of these factors, one can en-visage fi erce competition for land resources to supply food, energy and fi bres, as well as it has been warned that international land investments can become an important factor in the change of the use of land in the globalised South (ibidem).

According to information from the WB (World Bank, 2010), in less than a year they detected that 42 million hectares of land around the world had been under scrutiny from investors, of which more than 75% (32 million hectares) were to be found in Sub-Saharan Africa. Nonetheless, other research (Friis and Reenberg, 2010) puts into question between 51 and 63 million hectares (a surface area equivalent to France) on the African continent alone and, by the fi rst quarter of 2010, the volume of land treaties accounted for was of 177 off ers in 27 countries in Africa (ibidem).

The main international investors are the Persian Gulf states, China and South Korea, but never-theless the European Union is also implicated in the acquisition of land in Africa. Six European countries (in decreasing order: Italy, Norway, Germany, Denmark, the United Kingdom and France) are amongst the most important inves-tors in terms of FDI in agricultural deeds (Graham et al, 2010). Even though Spain is not amongst the most important investors, one should not underestimate its activity regarding land-grab-bing in view of possible investment forecasts and their consequences for local populations and their environments. Amongst the main receivers of investments one fi nds Ethiopia, Mozambique, Uganda and Madagascar, Sudan, Mali and the Democratic Republic of the Congo; one can high-light Uganda, with more than 14% of its surface area currently under negotiation, Mozambique, with more than21%, and the Democratic Re-public of the Congo with more than 48% of its

farmland (ibidem). Almost two-and-a-half million hectares (not counting transactions for amounts of land of less than 1,000 Ha) in Ethiopia, Ghana, Madagascar, Sudan and Mali were assigned to foreign interests between 2004 and 2009, with a growing trend towards the increased size of the estates acquired (for example, more than 450,000 hectares for an agro-fuel project in Madagascar; 150,000 hectares for a livestock project in Ethiopia and an irrigation project of 100,000 hectares in Mali) (Cotula et al, 2009).

As for Sub-Saharan Africa, according to cases recorded by the Global Land Project (Friis and Reenberg, 2010), amongst the land assignations there are cases such as that of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in which the Canadian company MagIndustries invested in 68,000 hec-tares of eucalyptus plantations. In Mali, the Libyan company, Malibya, intends to acquire 100,000 Ha for food production, mainly rice and wheat; the South African and Chinese gov-ernments intend to acquire 55,000 Ha for the production of sugar cane.

In Uganda, the Chines company Heibei Company intends to sign for 40,500 Ha of battery fowls, livestock and the production of corn, rice and wheat; In Ghana agreements have been signed with seven private investors (Norway, Brazil, the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, China and the United Kingdom) for 55,000 Ha for the produc-tion of jatropha aimed at agro-fuels and, for the same purpose in this country, according to the NGO Friends of the Earth Europe (2010), the Ital-

Land-grabbing in Sub-Saharan Africa



ian company Agroils has acquired the farming rights for 150,000 Ha and the Israeli company Galten Global Alternative energy is renting 100,000 Ha.

In Mozambique, one can highlight the acquisi-tion of land for the production of agro-fuels (see table 20). With regard to the production of food and exports, one can highlight the agreement for 10,000,000 Ha with the South African company Agri SA for corn, soya, poultry and dairy prod-ucts (Friis and Reenberg, 2009).

As far as Spanish companies are concerned, the most obvious cases are to be found in Ghana, where the García Carrión company has reached

an agreement with the Ghanaian government for the planting of 10,000 hectares of pineap-ple whose processed product would be aimed at EC markets 91 (Friends of the Earth Europe, 2010). In Mozambique, the Spanish company In-fi nita Renovables, an affi liate of the Isolux Corsan group, has purchased 150,000 hectares of land on which to grow oleaginous cereals that will be destined for its production facilities in Spain (see the case study in the “Agro-fuels” section of this report) and in Senegal, the national government adjudicated 80,000 Ha to the businessman Raúl Barroso for the development of a tourism project consisting of the creation of a wildlife park and its associated tourist resort 92.

91 Public information about this can be found in the article written by Vidal Maté, “Españoles que cultivan fuera”, published in the El País newspaper on 4th April 2009. http://www.elpais.com/articulo/economia/global/Espanoles/cultivan/fuera/elpepueconeg/20091004elpnegeco_4/Tes

92 Information obtained from th research for VSF’s campaign in Africa. Further information in “Agir pour les DESC”: http://www.agirpourlesdesc.org/francais/comment-faire-respecter-les-desc/agir-aupres-des-multinationales/article/accaparement-des-terres-au-senegal (Consulted on 24/10/2010 and from the Jane Goodall Institute, 2008)

JATROPHA MONOCULTURE FOR EXPORTATION, MOZAMBIQUE.



The goal of these land acquisition or long-term rent contracts is not to promote durable and fair development for the aff ected populations, but is instead aimed directly towards agri-business. What is at stake is the production of commer-cial crops for the world market with a view to high economic turnover for investors (Graham et al, 2010). This vision diff ers radically from the encouragement of rural agriculture that is envi-ronmentally and socially durable, in which the production of food is designed to sustain the community.

In Africa, just like in other continents with de-veloping countries, durable agriculture, with relatively few investments, with appropriate available technology that is adapted to the envi-ronmental and cultural conditions of the areas in which it is implemented, can achieve a suffi cient-ly high output to ensure a supply of food (Pretty, 1999; UNCTAD, 2008) to local markets.

In order to develop this type of agriculture it is necessary to ensure the preservation of natural resources and equal access to them. Land, water and seeds are resources that must be accessible and protected for use and management by rural farmers and communities. The implementation of local markets in which farmers can sell their produce in a way that establishes a fair com-mercial relationship between consumers and farmers is also a condition of a local and equi-table food system that is focused on the FSov of people.

Large-scale investment in land denotes an ag-ricultural development model that focuses on farms with a large investment in external tech-nology, that are highly mechanised and that have an important density of capital. These farms are articulated around large-scale chains of supply and sales. This agricultural model rewards large-scale producers (or owners), since their powerful position with regard to the market favours them and places their production within the domain of merchandise (for exports, for example) and not that of food (as occurs with rural agriculture).

The design of public policies can tip the scales towards one or other of the agricultural devel-opment models. In fact, most of these policies discriminate against rural and indigenous agri-culture, and agro-ecological systems (Graham et al, 2010), in favour of the public support ob-tained by forms of agriculture that have a high potential for destruction and pollution, with sub-sidies for technology, favouring the abandon of agriculture to small- and medium-scale farmers, concentrating production in a few hands (this is the case of the CAP).

Policies that lead to the freeing of agricultural trade worsen the abandon of family agriculture, with direct consequences upon the food supply of these communities. As explained in the re-port “Advancing African Agriculture (AAA): The Impact of Europe’s Policies and Practices on Af-rican Agriculture and Food Security” (Graham et al, 2010), certain policies are encouraging land-grabbing regardless of whether or not this is their direct objective. In some ways the EU’s en-ergy policies can promote investment overseas in agro-fuels. An example of this is European Directive 2009/28EC (April 2009), which estab-lishes minima for renewable energy sources to be achieved by 2020, in which agro-fuels must be the main fuel for transport, thus opening up a secure market for associated crops.

These policies can be an encouragement for investment since they introduce support meas-ures such as the reduction of fuel taxes, tax incentives, etc. (ibidem). At the same time, the food and fi nancial crises are another means of justifi cation for land-grabbing. This can be so as to ensure the production of food by externalis-ing national production to land acquired in third countries or in order to generate incomes by ac-quiring land as an “investment fund” on the part of private fi nancial institutions.

Although 90% of land investment originates in the private sector (Cotula and Vermeulen, 2009), it is necessary to have a favourable politi-cal and regulatory context in order to carry them

Agricultural models and political contexts



out. Land-related policies, investment protection regimes and trade policies are political contex-tual factors that can influence land-grabbing phenomena (Graham et al, 2010).

Investment protection regimes are agreements amongst countries that are designed to facilitate investments, mainly within the fi nancially weak-est country, and which establish legal guarantees and ensure a certain stability for investments. Government diplomacy plays an important part in them, as well as the promotion of FDI that, in the case of Spain, is done by the ICEX. In 2007, the Spanish government signed an APPRI with the Republic of Senegal in which amongst other investments, the following were specifi -cally included: “(…) d) industrial and intellectual property rights; technical procedures, technical knowledge (know-how) and trade funds; e) the rights to carry out certain economic and com-mercial activities given by law or in virtue of a contract or a concession, including concessions for prospecting, growing, extracting or exploiting natural resources” and protects them from be-ing subjected to nationalisation or expropriation (Article 5 of the APPRI). This agreement paves the way for Spanish investment in Senegalese territory (land, agro-fuels, export products, etc.) although, even though it encourages reciprocal investment, according to the offi ce of the Sec-retary of State for Trade 93 there are no records of the existence of Senegalese companies that have been implanted in Spain.

In 2008 the Economic and Commercial Bureau of the Spanish embassy in Dakar published the document “El Mercado de la Agroquímica en Senegal” (Arranz, 2008), regarding the study of the agricultural raw materials market in Senegal (seeds, fertilisers and pesticides). This docu-ment promotes and guides the investments that Spanish companies would like to make, identify-ing that Senegalese programmes for production incentives such as the Great Agricultural Off en-sive for Food and Plenty 94 (known by its French acronym, GOANA) off er “fi scal exonerations to companies that wish to establish themselves

and whose activity will contribute towards agri-cultural development” (ibidem); this initiative is aimed at increasing the country’s agricultural production for the national and export markets, implementing an industrial production model (agro-fuels, cotton, fruit and vegetables, etc.).

Spanish investment in Senegalese agriculture focuses on “contre-saison” (off -season) agricul-ture for export purposes, in which two companies spearhead Spanish investment: Promegal, dedi-cated to the production of melons on an estate in Mbour, and Versen, a company with joint Spanish and Senegalese stock with plantations in Kirène and Bayar that produce watermelons, melons, peppers and pumpkins, amongst other products (Arranz, 2008). Plantations of jatropha and other oleaginous plants used for the production of bio-diesel constitute a sector that is of great interest to the Spanish corporate sector, according to the ICEX.

These regulatory contexts can provide a favour-able situation for large-scale land investment. Normally, these FDI promotion agreements do not take into account Human Rights when imple-menting investments and, of course, do not even mention Farmers’ Rights – expressed in the In-ternational Treaty on International Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) – or the Right to Food.

Farmers that can be displaced from their land because of these foreign investment projects are in an extremely unequal balance of power and do not have any room for negotiation in these agreements in which national and inter-national organisations impose their clauses and interests. Bilateral investment treaties extend the legal power of investors, reduce the political space of governments and undermine the power of local communities (Graham et al, 2010).

With the intention of creating a more favourable environment for the development of agriculture in Africa, the EU launched the aforementioned “Advancing African Agriculture” (EU, 2007) communiqué in order to articulate national and international cooperation concerning Africa’s

93 http://www.ofi cinascomerciales.es/icex/cda/controller/pageOfecomes/0,5310,5280449_5299371_5296234_0_SN,00.html (Consulted on 29/ 10/ 2010)



agricultural development. As emphasised by the aforementioned report, even though the AAA acknowledges that agriculture plays a crucial role in poverty relief – something that is essen-tial for achieving the MDOs and that is a means of subsistence for the majority of poor popula-

tions in Africa – it does not go any further into the role of family agriculture and small-scale farmers, nor does it address the protection of access to resources and to the means that are necessary to ensure that its agricultural models last over time.

94 http://goana-senegal.org/ (Consulted on 27/10/2010)

95 http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/development/sectoral_development_policies/r13014_en.htm



There are a great many rural communities in Sub-Saharan Africa and most of the population are small-scale farmers with food production systems that address basic local needs. To en-sure their supply of food, that of their families and that of entire communities, they depend upon access to natural resources and to means of production, whether for the production of their own food or for obtaining money with which to buy it. The land ownership regime in countries in Sub-Saharan Africa tends to be founded on state ownership and the people who make use of the land do not usually have the deeds to the land that they work.

Given this legal uncertainty, farmers cannot present the necessary legal recourse if they are evicted from the land that they use and work on when, for example, investment capitalists acquire the land with the connivance of the gov-ernments (UN, 2009). Furthermore, much of

this land is considered by investors to be “under-used”, “unused” or “unoccupied”, which means that the services that this land provides to the local population is disregarded when it becomes a mercantile object.

Herding, forestry the harvesting of woodland fruit or medicinal plants, access to water sourc-es or the extraction of resources such as timber are essential elements for the subsistence and reproduction of rural communities and the land that these activities take place on are not fallow but instead play a fundamental role in integrated agricultural, forestry and herding systems (Gra-ham et al, 2010; UN, 2009); This takes on greater signifi cance if one takes into account that these types of arid lands make up almost half of the land surface of Sub-Saharan Africa and that some 60 million people living in Sub-Saharan Africa are involved in agriculture and herding, or just herding (UN, 2009).

The large amounts of land that are acquired and that are fi nally used for the production of food, export products of for energy crops (agro-fuels) entail an industrial agriculture model based on single crops, the implementation of a technologi-cal package and mechanisation.

As this report has shown, this industrial model implies the industrial appropriation of natural re-sources and the degradation of natural systems. Some of the consequences can be identifi ed in the pollution of the soil and water through the use of agricultural chemicals (fertilisers, pesti-cides and herbicides), the exhaustion of water resources due to changing uses of irrigation wa-ter according to the type of crop (high water use for crops such as jatropha) and the degradation of the soil due to non-durable agricultural prac-tices, amongst other things. The consequences of the loss of biodiversity and of local varieties due to the introduction of single crops – con-sidered as being the greatest expression of the simplifi cation and homogenisation of biodiversi-ty – and to the introduction of modern varieties, as well as the loss of traditional know-how linked

The eff ects of land-grabbing


FAMILY DISPLACED BY AGRIBUSINESS, MUBENDE. UGANDA.


to the management of this biodiversity, are ana-lysed in a separate paragraph in this report since they are a further threat to Food Sovereignty: the loss of local varieties that are adapted to the regions, cultures and techniques endangers the populations’ FSov and RF.

Local social and economic systems are also influ-enced by land-grabbing. Although the states tend to have a positive view of the implementation of foreign investment as a source of development and creation of employment, mainly in rural ar-eas in this case, one should not forget that this employment should translate into improved liv-ing conditions. A large part of these jobs are not stable, have bad work conditions and are under-paid. The transformation of traditional systems into technical systems entails a reduction of the demand for rural labour as well as endangering people’s health due to poisoning from agricul-tural chemicals (Graham et al, 2010).

Foreign land investment represents yet another rival in the fi ght for means of production and land access rights. Local populations that may be evicted from their territories might not con-sider that the land rights acquired by foreign

companies or governments via their purchase or long-term renting are legitimate. The displace-ment of a population linked to agriculture and herding for its survival can entail the risk of a famine. This tension over land tenure can lead to the eruption of violent conflicts (ibidem).

Moreover, many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have seen a growth in their dependence on food imports and food aid despite foreign investment in agricultural issues (ibidem). As pointed out in the report by the German NGO Welt Hunger Hilfe (von Oppeln and Schneider, 2009), agricultural investments do not usually focus upon off ering the local population eff ective participation in the benefi ts; what is more, it warns that “states that depend upon food imports hand over more and more land to foreign investors whilst at the same time not guaranteeing improved incomes and food security to their own populations”. The handing over of this land represents a reduction of national productive capacity and the loss of control over resources and the production of food, putting this control in the hands of trans-national companies, thus increasing the lack of autonomy and of FSov.



Governments accepted the obligation to promote the execution of the RF in the PIDESC in 1966. The member states of the FAO also adopted the DV in support of the progressive execution of this right in the context of national FS (FAO, 2005), which describes the states’ obligations regard-ing access to resources and assets, including land: “States should undertake agrarian reforms well as the reform of policies in keeping with their obligations towards human rights and of conformity with the rule of law in order to ensure an effi cient and equitable access to land and reinforce growth in favour of the poor. Particu-lar attention should be paid to nomadic herders and indigenous peoples and their relationship with natural resources” (Directive 8.1.). “States should adopt measures so that the members of vulnerable groups can have access to economic opportunities and resources that enable them to take part in the economy fully and in equal condi-tions” (Directive 8.2.).

The PIDESC and the PIDCP also acknowledge the right to free choice, defi ned as being the right of all peoples to freely dispose of their natural as-sets and resources, and disposes that under no circumstances may a people be deprived of its means of subsistence (Article 1), amongst which is the land upon which they live and grow crops, herd livestock or from which they extract basic resources.

These are obligations and commitments for the international community and, as Olivier de Schutter explains (2010), “they are based on a diagnosis of famine that establishes its origins in the violation of human rights and not in the mere lack of technology or capital”.

The peoples’ Right to Food is directly threatened by land-grabbing. The appropriation of land de-nies the communities who have little land access to land that they could make a better alterna-tive use of. Once this land has been grabbed by foreigners, African national authorities will fi nd it diffi cult to return the foreign investment by means of evictions, in favour of the local produc-

tion of food by and for local communities.

Bilateral and multilateral trade agreements, as well as the various international trade regula-tions, can hinder the governments’ fulfi lment of the right to food and their facilitating the population’s access to resources and avoid land-grabbing by foreign countries (Graham et al, 2010).

Foreign land investments sharpen rivalry be-tween persons who practice family agriculture and those who practice large-scale agriculture. This generates extreme inequality. The concen-tration of a large amount of land in the hands of a minority goes against the execution of the Right to Food because it limits access to the land that is necessary to obtain sustenance.

It is very important for states to take steps to avoid this phenomenon. Olivier de Schutter (2010) observes hat “if necessary measures are not adopted to promote the viability of small-scale agriculture and communal land rights are not acknowledged and institutionalised, this pro-cess could turn into an unacceptable agrarian counter-reform, in other words, in the re-concen-tration of land ownership”.

The measures should be in keeping with poli-cies aimed at the populations’ FS, which not only take into account parameters such as produc-tion or means of production, but that also have an integrated vision of the fairest change to the agrarian model. The proposal by LVC and pro-FS social movements in this respect favours an integrated agrarian reform that is managed ac-cording to agro-ecological management criteria, conducting a transition that incorporates techni-cal, agronomic, environmental, socioeconomic, cultural and political aspects.

The states’ intervention in agreements with investors – whether public or private – that lead to large-scale land acquisition or renting violates the right to food by means of the dep-rival of resources, causing food insecurity and dependence on the markets, or by means of

Land-grabbing and the Right to Food



economic deprival due to the relocation of small-scale farmers away from their livelihoods.

According to the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, the states are obliged to “avoid harm-ing peoples’ ad communities’ ability to feed themselves when this ability exists (respect) and to avoid interference by others – particu-larly by private agents such as companies – with

this ability (protection)” (UN, 2009). Therefore, states that sell or rent out their land and, par-ticularly because of their advantageous position in these transactions, the states of origin of the private investors, are obliged to regulate these investors’ behaviour and the nature of the invest-ments themselves so that they do not interfere or threaten the local populations’ right to food.

BILLBOARD ON MILLET AND SUNFLOWER PLANTATION COMPANY SUN BIOFUELS. MOZAMBIQUE.



LVC considers that seeds are the fourth essen-tial and basic resource for agriculture along with land, water and air; seeds are a prior requisite for durable production. The loss of agricultural biodiversity is one of the main environmental threats to the production of food. “Biodiversity must be a basis for guaranteeing food security as a fundamental, basic and non-negotiable right of people” (LVC, 2001).

Biodiversity provides agriculture with a series of benefi ts without which current environmen-tal and social problems would be accentuated. It should be known that it plays a fundamental role in (i) productivity, because as it contains a wide rang of genes it results in a greater variety of food products for the world population and for other species; (ii) adaptability, since this variety of characteristics and genes contributes towards the resistance of agricultural biosystems and to the ability to recover from adverse environ-mental conditions: a high degree of adaptability ensures agricultural production and off ers evolu-tionary possibilities in view of the climate change issue; and in (iii) maintaining the functions of the agricultural ecosystems – and adjacent areas –

by decomposing organic matter and regulating the nutrient cycle in order to maintain the fertil-ity of the soil, interactions within and between species that give rise to a greater complexity of the system and to synergetic connections, the resistance of species to illnesses and pest control, pollenating for the fertilisation of crops and woodland species and the preservation of a dynamic agricultural biodiversity. By encourag-ing these functions, the result is an increased availability of nutrients, better use of water and energy, a reduction of the need for external supplies (chemical fertilisers, pesticides, herbi-cides, fossil fuels, etc.), an improvement of the soil structure and natural pest control.

Traditional farming systems base their agricul-tural reproduction on the use and management of traditional, native or or local varieties. In order to incorporate genetic variability to the agricul-tural ecosystems that they manage, farmers dispose of their own technology for rural im-provement and for the use and preservation of Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agricul-ture (PGRFA).

This variability is a source of new crop options and of resistance to adverse factors, as well as a means of maintaining the ecosytemic balance and a legacy of security for the food supply and wellbeing of future generations. Farmers use lo-cal varieties mainly because these are very well adapted to local conditions and are, in such con-ditions, productive and stable. Moreover, using these varieties off ers some advantages as they are selected on the basis of food diversity and are better adapted to low-input farming.

An important point is that they provide farmers with autonomy, since they regain control over part of their crops. They are the result of a co-evolu-tionary process that is made up of two selection processes: natural selection derived from envi-ronmental factors and cultural selection derived from the specifi c cultivation techniques, tastes and needs of rural communities.

Genetic erosion and the loss of biodiversity


FRUITS IN LOCAL MARKET. MOZAMBIQUE.



There is scientifi c and social consensus regard-ing the serious loss of crop biodiversity aimed at food and agriculture. The industrialisation pro-cess of agriculture and, therefore, of food, is the main historic process of biological reductionism (ETC Group, 2009). Genetic erosion, defi ned as the loss of agricultural biodiversity or as the ge-netic simplifi cation of crops (Soriano, 2004), is very worrying, since more than 75% of the ge-netic diversity of crops has been lost during the 20th century (Pretty, 1995). The causes of this loss of agricultural diversity is linked to the pro-cesses for the appropriation of natural resources and to the industrialisation of agriculture.

The FAO points out that the primary cause of genetic erosion is the substitution of native vari-eties by others of an industrial origin due to the development of industrial and commercial agri-culture. This evaluation by the FAO is present in the 1996 report on the Condition of Plant Genetic Resources in the World as well as in a second, more recent report (FAO, 2009), which indicates that the trend is continuing and that the “eff orts” made to stem this erosion have not been suf-fi cient. In the United States alone “95 per cent of cabbage varieties, 91 per cent of corn, 95 per cent of peas and 91 per cent of tomatoes have ceased to exist” (FAO, 1996). This substitu-tion entails a prior process of transferring from seeds that have been selected and improved by the farming communities – with high productive levels according to environmental conditions – to the profi t-oriented chemical agriculture industry. This phenomenon of the appropria-tion of resources, which has come to be known as bio-piracy, is based – with the complicity of international and governmental bodies – upon “intellectual property rights” without taking into account the farmers’ rights as set out in the In-ternational Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA).

The countries have detected other, more or less influential causes that aff ect genetic erosion. On the one had there is a series of causes linked

to the industrial agriculture model, such as the changes of agricultural systems, levelling, ex-cessive herding, the elimination of traditional agricultural practices like leaving land fallow, ill-nesses, pests and weeds, the over-exploitation of species and general environmental degradation. On the other hand they highlight political and so-cial causes, such as demographic pressure, civil unrest and related legislation and policies. The latter has not been given the importance that it deserves in its links to genetic degradation, al-though in recent years more attention has been paid to it du to complaints for the appropriation of natural resources by means of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Prop-erty Rights (TRIPS) and other legal tools.

Loss of agricultural diversity


AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS, ASSOCIATION JUNE 16TH, MANICA PROVINCE, MOZAMBIQUE.


With regard to genetic erosion, the situation in Sub-Saharan Africa follows worldwide premises. Mali is a country in which the value of the PGRFAs is primarily linked to agricultural production for local consumption and the production of food for markets. The main crops are millet, rice and sor-ghum in native varieties that are characterised by a large interspecifi c diversity aimed at various uses. The role of Malian producers in the domes-tication of these species and in the evolution of native cereals explains this great interspecifi c diversity of crops. This diversity is invaluable for the future improvement of crops.

In its National Report on the Condition of Plant Genetic Resources (Sidibe, 2008), it underlines the following factors that have a part in the loss of crop varieties: (i) the introduction and spread-ing of certain crops; it has been observed that 60% of local sorghum varieties have disap-peared in the past 20 years as a result of the spreading of cotton farming, the development of the corn crop and the saturation of agricultural space, (ii) the introduction of new varieties; the introduction of a new and improved variety of sorghum has brought about the disappearance of three local varieties, (iii) drought, which af-fects long-cycle rice and sorghum varieties and (iv) migration; the hypothesis of the loss of local know-how concerning varieties due to rural mi-gration is maintained.

In the case of Burkina Faso the main factors of genetic erosion are desertifi cation, extensive ag-riculture practices, the over-exploitation of non timber-yielding products, excessive tree-felling

(Compaore and Kabore, 2008). In Senegal there are 14 important agricultural and woodland species that are of great importance for food and agriculture and that have been declared to be under threat of immediate extinction (Fall, 2008). In Uganda, it has been acknowledged that traditional agricultural systems tend to de-liberately include genetic diversity in order to maintain systems in a low-risk situation as far as environmental stress is concerned, thus many underused crops such as yam are maintained by farmers in order to guarantee food security (PGRC and NARO, 2008).

Nevertheless, the Ugandan authorities have acknowledged the loss of habitat and the deg-radation of the soil, non-durable crops and over-exploitation, as well as a preference for ex-otic crops or introduced commercial varieties as the causes for the loss of local varieties.

Successive conflicts over a thirty-year period in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have had serious consequences on the agricul-tural sector: this has led to the increased imports of essential products and a drop in export crops, leaving the rural population in a very vulnerable position. The large-scale farms have been aban-doned during the conflicts and it is the traditional family farms that have survived in rural as well as in suburban areas; rural women assume the majority of agricultural tasks and are consid-ered to be the guarantors of FS. There has been a signifi cant loss of old varieties due to the war, to the lack of international technical coopera-tion, to the loss of gene pools, to the stoppage of development and research programmes and to the diffi culties experienced by the state-run seed research, expansion and multiplication centres.

In its analysis of the condition of plant genetic resources (DRC, 2009), the DRC emphasises the risk of the disappearance of adapted local varie-ties because of the introduction and cultivation of exotic seeds. Humanitarian aid programmes have often ignored local varieties, instead pro-moting the importing of foreign varieties due to emergency activities against famine.

In southern Ghana, corn, yucca and plantain are


CHIMOIO TRADITIONAL MARKET SELLER, MOZAMBIQUE.


the basic crops whilst in the north, sorghum, millet, yams and rice are the most important crops from a food security point of view. Ghana’s commercial crops are mainly cocoa, palm oil, pineapple, and cotton. Native varieties of Bam-bara peanuts, peanuts, malanga, cola and millet are under threat of extinction. As in most of the countries, there are no exact fi gures with which to quantify genetic erosion, but despite this it I acknowledged that this degradation is very wide-spread throughout the country.

Amongst the stakeholders in PGRFAs in Gha-na, there is a general consensus regarding the causes of this erosion: the substitution of local varieties, deforestation, pests, weeds and dis-ease, demographic pressure and changes to agrarian systems, in this order (Bennet-Lartey and Oteng-Yeboah, 2008). Improved varieties of cowpea have substituted the Bambara peanut, or the Kersting peanut – originally from the Afri-can veldt – which means that there is not only a threat of losing varieties but also of losing crops.

In Kenya, reports indicate that over the last dec-ade a large amount of genetic erosion has taken place mainly because of the substitution of lo-cal varieties and other socioeconomic factors (Wambugu and Muthamia, 2009). The Kenyan seed system includes public sector agencies, private companies and multinationals. The seed sector was liberalised in 1996 and there are cur-rently more than 40 registered seed companies. Corn ahs the greatest diversity of modern varie-ties, followed in decreasing order by tea, beans and chrysanthemums. Even though the diversity of modern varieties in most crops is on the rise, that of traditional varieties is declining. Accord-

ing to its report on the condition of PGRFAs, the diversity of plant genetic resources in Kenya has bee decreasing due to genetic erosion caused by biotic and abiotic factors. These factors include: droughts, desertifi cation, demographic pressure on the land, changes in the use of soils, changes in feeding habits and over-exploitation. In these areas, migration in search of arable land is caus-ing untold damage to existing diversity in places where genetic erosion is aggravated by desertifi -cation. In recent years, the country has suff ered serious droughts that have had negative impacts on the survival of plant genetic resources. The increased dependence on food aid in these re-gions, due to factors such as drought and other natural disasters, has also given rise to a reduc-tion of crop diversity.

The rise of genetic erosion can also be attrib-uted to policies that greatly advocate in favour of high-output crops, which has encouraged the displacement of traditional crop varieties. For example, githigu, a local variety of corn that used to be very popular in the centre of Kenya, has dis-appeared from the agricultural system in the last decade. The dismantling of traditional systems for the management of natural resources, with its corresponding loss of local plant varieties and of associated cultural knowledge, can also be a cause of erosion.

Although in these countries the regression of agrodiversity is acknowledged by the popula-tions and institutions, most of them suff er from the lack of resources with which to carry out pre-cise inventories and monitoring that give clearer visibility to degrading processes.



Genetic erosion goes hand-in-hand with genetic vulnerability and a uniformity of populations that depletes productivity and undermines the ability to resist diseases and pests, which translates into a relative increase in the use of external raw materials, mainly chemicals, that re potentially toxic for water, animals and plants.

The problem of genetic vulnerability originates in a loss of combinations of alleles in a given time and geographic location, in other words there is a loss of genetic matter concentrated on native varieties of cultivated species. This erosion has dangerously restricted the genetic stock that is available for natural selection and for selection by farmers and plant improvers

(Esquinas-Alcázar, 2007). The loss of genomic combinations in turn entails the loss of adapt-ability to environmental and evolutionary changes (co-evolution), which is an important quality in a climate change context.

The consequences of the reduction of biodiver-sity, linked to the expansion of single crops are particularly visible in the domain of agricultural pest control, demonstrating the instability of agro-ecosystems in pest issues (Altieri, 1992), due to a breakdown in ecosystemic functions such as population regulation. The simplifica-tion of the genetic structure of crops increases the vulnerability of agricultural crops in the matter of the resistance to diseases.

According to Toledo and Barrera-Bassols (2008), not only is it possible to measure industrial agriculture’s destruction of agro-ecosystems and their natural diversity, but it also goes hand-in-hand with the destruction of traditional memory and of cultural diversity. Bi-ocultural memory is of particular interest with regard to the knowledge associated to local varieties; this traditional know-how is of great value in order to understand how and why lo-cal varieties are grown (Ibancos and Rodríguez, 2010), and is an element for the preservation of biodiversity and diversity in agricultural and livestock uses. The displacement of rural communities due to social and economic phe-nomena linked to the agri-business system in a globalised context can be another cause of ge-netic erosion. In turn, technological instability of modified seed systems has gone hand-in-hand with a change in knowledge systems. Therefore, local knowledge was substituted by technolo-gies derived from the application of Mendelian genetics – and currently of genetic engineering – as a preface to the launching of rural modern-ising programmes (Soriano, 2007).

Implications of the loss of biodiversity and genetic erosion


YUCCA PLANTS IN FAMILY PLOT, UGANDA.


Within the agro-food chain and industrialisation processes, seeds paly a central role due to their intrinsic ability for reproduction. Seeds have a dual character: it is a food product as well as a means of production (Kloppenburg, 1988). This double characteristics what makes it a biologi-cal hurdle for the accumulation of capital (Shiva, 1997) given that when it is being sown, not only is it ensuring a supply of food but also the repro-duction of means of production: it is a connection between the biological and social dimensions.

The seed’s natural characteristic of being able to reproduce can become a biological barrier for its trade; this is the challenge that industry by means of various technologies, must face in order to be able to maintain the production and distribution of the fi rst link of the agro-food chain. There are two ways to achieve this: a tech-nical way and a social one (Kloppenburg, 1988). With hybridisation technology one can achieve the fi ssion of the identity of the seed as a prod-uct and as a means of production.

The result of this technology is subject to com-mercial secrecy that means that hybrid seeds are a “proprietary” product. Farmers who use hybrid seeds must return to the market every year to obtain them; they only have value as a food (grain), not as a means of production (seed). The schism between grain and seed is an opportunity for accumulating capital and the seed, as a reproductive medium, becomes a merchandise. This will entail obtaining a legal context that institutionally protects the interests of seed companies with regard to the privileges over the obtaining and sales of the seeds.

Furthermore, considering plants as objects that can be patented off ers seed companies opportunities for making greater profi ts on the market. Genetic material is reassessed thanks to the technological investments (that translate into money and time), but this investment is not valued when it is done generation after genera-

tion by farmers (Shiva, 1997). The possibility of accumulating capital by means of seeds as mer-chandise is such that they have been acquired by transnational petrochemical and pharmaceu-tical companies that have important interests in agricultural chemicals and that are highly committed to biotechnology sales in the food in-dustry sector (Kloppenburg, 1988).

A corporate concentration process has been established that is doing away with hundreds of local companies and that has left seed pro-duction under the control of a handful of large transnational corporations (Mooney, 2002). Ac-cording to the ETC Group (2008), the ten largest

Seed policies, multinationals and intellectual property


RICE SALES, CHIMOIO MARKET, MOZAMBIQUE.


seed companies in the world represent 67% of the world market for patented seeds and the largest seed company in the world, Monsanto, alone represents 23% of this market; the three largest companies (Monsanto, DuPont and Syn-genta) represent 47% of the market, including 65%of the corn seed market and more than half of the patented soya seed market.

It is this concentration, linked to the introduction of intellectual property rights, that can result in the excessively high prices of agricultural sup-plies (UN, 2009). The oligopolistic structure of the market supply means that people without economic resources who are involved in agri-culture can be prevented from having access to productive resources such as seeds, making them less aff ordable for the poorest populations (ibidem).

The creation of a commercial seed production sector alongside farms and, more recently the creation of a biotechnology sector has meant that there has been a rise in the demand from geneticists and biotechnology inventors for the protection of their rights. The intellectual prop-erty systems are coercive legal tools that use governments to regulate the economic benefi ts derived from the use of genetic resources (Sori-ano, 2007).

The TRIPS Agreements have obliged all the WTO’s member countries to implement and reinforce intellectual property rights on plant varieties, and places the rights of plant improv-ers above the rights of people who work in the agricultural sector (ibidem); the TRIPS Agree-ment demands that all WTO members should patent vegetal achievements, thus giving the owner of the rights a 20-year monopoly over any kind of use of the patented invention. Peo-ple who sow patented seeds do not have any rights over these seeds. They are considered to possess a licence for a patented product and are often obliged to sign agreements in which they commit to not preserving, re-sowing or ex-changing the seeds that they have bought from the patent holders (UN, 2009). Apart from the patents, there exist other forms of protection by ownership for seeds aimed at recognising

the rights of plant improvers.

The context for these protections is the Inter-national Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants, established by the Interna-tional Union for the Protection of New Kinds of Plants (UPOV). This Convention protects the rights of the developer as long as the plant va-riety that has been produced is new, diff erent, homogenous and stable. Due to the requisite of homogeneity and stability, the Convention of the UPOV does not allow the protection of farmers’ varieties, which are intrinsically unstable and are in a state of permanent evolution.

In view of this legal outlook and out of concern for the risk entailed by the appropriation of genetic resources without the consent of the agricultural sector and of the communities that have pro-duced them, the international community has drafted two documents in order to preserve

VEGETABLES AND LEGUMES SALES, CHIMOIO MARKET, MOZAMBIQUE.



biodiversity: the Convention on Biological Diver-

sity (CBD) and the ITPGRFA. In the case of the

CBD the application of some of its points gener-

ates conflicts with the TRIPS Agreement, mainly

those concerning the guarantee of the origin of

the basic genetic base for the new plant variety,

in other words, where this material comes from

and the facilitation of information about the

source and about how the requisites for the ac-

cess to and distribution of the benefi ts imposed

upon the country of origin have been fulfi lled.

The ITPGRFA creates a multilateral system to

facilitate access to plant genetic resources and

establishes an international fund for the distri-

bution of benefi ts, which is a depository for part

of the benefi ts generated by the sales of patent-

protected seeds that have been developed from

genetic material obtained via the multilateral

system created by the Treaty itself. This way, it

aims to share out the benefi ts derived from ob-

taining, selling and use of the seeds in a fair and

equitable manner amongst the countries. It is the

fi rst international document that jointly appreci-

ates and sets out the preservation eff orts and

the Farmer’s Rights (Article 9): “The Contract-

ing Parties acknowledge the great contribution

that has been made, and that continues to be

made, by local and indigenous communities and

farmers from all the regions of the world, partic-

ularly those in the places of origin and diversity

of cultivated plants, for the conservation and

the development of plant genetic resources that

constitute the basis for food and agricultural

production all over the world”.

The Treaty encourages the protection and pro-

motion of the Farmer’s Right, more specifi cally,

as expressed in the Treaty:

Spain is one of the countries that have ratifi ed the Treaty and this commits it to its fulfi lment. Out of all the African countries that interest us in this study, only Mozambique is not linked in any way with the Treaty; Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, the D.R. of the Congo and Mauritania adhere to it and Madagascar, Mali, Senegal and Burkina Faso have ratifi ed the Treaty.

Although it has a nationally committing nature, the acceptance by the states of the value of plant genetic resources must be seen from an interna-tional and global viewpoint, in the same way as a multilateral Treaty is upheld. It is therefore crucial that this important step in the acknowledgement of the Farmer’s Rights should not be subjected to the immobility of national regulations and that its legal bond should be made eff ective. Without this commitment and responsibility on the part of the states (Spain as well as the states of Sub-Saharan Africa that concern us) farmers’ rights can be totally or partially restricted, once again leaving them without protection and opening up the possibility of not having access to some of the plant genetic resources that they have pre-served and improved throughout history.

Public policies have supported the expansion of commercial seeds by means of subsidies for supplies and the diff usion of selected seeds. On many occasions the only way for farmers to have access to a credit is to accept the whole techno-logical package. Since the local and traditional

a) the protection of traditional knowledge that is of interest for plant genetic re-sources for food and agriculture;

b) the right to participate equitably in the distribution of the benefi ts derived from the use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture; and

c) the right to participate in the adoption of decisions at national level concerning issues relating to the preservation and durable use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture.



varieties used by farmers in their seed systems are not included in the registers of authorised varieties, they are not often included in govern-ment seed distribution programmes. The end result is a progressive marginalisation or disap-pearance of local varieties that are replaced by high-output varieties.

In view of all of this, it can be stated that inter-national policies, legislation regulations and agreements and intellectual property rights have a greater influence than is acknowledged in the genetic degradation process and its con-sequences on rural agriculture and in FSov, endangering peoples’ Right to Food. It is there-fore important to demand that farmers’ rights should not be a commercial issue and that they should not be addressed from the context of the WTO and that governments have the duty to develop legal contexts that guarantee the preservation of biodiversity, farmers’ rights and durable livelihoods.

A few initiatives have attempted to halt this ten-dency. In 1988, the African Union Organisation approved a model Law on the protection of the rights of local communities, farmers and devel-opers for the regulation of access to biological resources. This model law recovered the urgen-cy of the debate and public participation in the regulation of access to biodiversity in order to

ensure the continuation of Africa’s wellbeing as well as the preservation of its means of produc-tion and its biological wealth.

This urgency is due to the fact that various forc-es in world trade are attempting to ensure their monopoly and control over African biodiversity, local knowledge and markets by means of multi-lateral and bilateral trade agreements, which are intrinsically unfair (Ekpere, 2000). This model law acknowledges the Farmer’s Rights and in-cludes, amongst other things, the protection of traditional knowledge linked to the genetic resources of plants and animals and the right to the preservation, use, exchange and sale of seeds and traditional propagation matter.

The actions of Spain in foreign policy, foreign trade and IDE promotion issues in countries in Sub-Saharan Africa can be very harmful for na-tional and local initiatives for the preservation of diversity and the genetic resources for food and agriculture. In the bilateral accords, like the TRIPS, priority is given to policies for the protection of intellectual property and the con-cessions for prospection, growing, extraction or exploitation of natural resources, without the specifi cation of a vision of respect and protec-tion for the preservation of biodiversity and the Farmer’s Rights.



Informal Seed Systems and their importance in achieving Food Sovereignty

Informal seed circuits and networks are impor-tant sources of seeds for small-scale farmers, particularly in Africa. In the northern part of Mali, the local market is the main source of pea-nut seeds for people working in agriculture and their own production provides most of the seeds – more than 80% - of the main crops (sorghum, millet, sesame, okra) (Sperling et al, 2010). In Uganda, more and more farmers are obtaining bean seeds via these networks (David and Sper-ling, 1999).

In periods of political instability (civil conflicts, for example) or in conditions of environmental stress (large periods of drought, floods, etc.), the informal seed networks and markets can be a key element for upholding plant genetic security. The markets off er flexibility to farmers enabling them to choose crops and varieties immediately, responding to changes in economic conditions and production (McGuire and Sperling, 2008). Specialised seed markets have also been iden-tifi ed; in the Douentza area in Mali, a group of villages produces a variety of medium-maturity millet that is adapted to the more arid parts of the region (Sperling et al, 2010). This specialisation ensures the security of the seeds, particularly during times of crisis. The maintenance of the local informal networks and markets is a basic premise for the conservation of native and tradi-tional varieties.

These informal systems for the circulation of seeds could be threatened by the disappear-ance of family and small-scale agriculture – a key source of seeds – due to the fact that it is displaced by the progression of industrial ag-riculture. Other threats are the marketing of industrially improved varieties and humanitarian aid. The mass distribution of commercial varie-ties by means of humanitarian aid systems and emergency seed assistance can be a motive for the collapse of these informal systems. The correct functioning of these seed systems can

become an encouragement for the introduction of genetically improved or manipulated varieties within the farming communities.

Farmers’ movements are not ignorant of this problem and their rhetoric and practices in-cludes the reassessment and recovery of local varieties. In 2003, Senegalese farmers came together and decided to create the Senegalese Association of Rural Seed Producers (ASPSP in its French acronym), in order to defend, valuate and distribute rural seeds of local varieties, be-ing aware of the great value of these resources for rural agriculture and FSov (CNOP, 2007). The members of this network produce local varieties and transmit their technical know-how for pres-ervation and production to other people who work in agriculture. The organisation of biodiver-sity fairs enables the promotion of the exchange of seeds and know-how. These local and regional exchanges enable rural communities to recover varieties that had been lost in their areas.

CORN, MOZAMBIQUE.



Crop varieties and livestock breeds are an im-portant component of the biological diversity of the agricultural ecosystem. Their presence and relative abundance has not been estab-lished spontaneously but instead require their introduction and upkeep by rural communities (Soriano, 2007). To do this, farmers have a de-gree of control over genetic resources that is greater than upon any other aspect of the agrar-ian system. The preservation and reproduction of genetic resources on estates is entirely in their hands. This means that their control is even more conditioned by economic and social fac-tors than the rest of the agricultural ecosystem’s biological diversity (ibidem).

Genetic diversity plays a critical role in the in-crease of durable production and nutritional diversity. Food production and, by extension, FS and FSov depend upon the preservation ac-cess and good use of agricultural biodiversity and of genetic resources. We have already seen that, with the loss of biodiversity in natural and agricultural systems there is a parallel loss of

services in the ecosystems; not only is there the threat of the loss of food and raw materials such as fi bres, but also the loss of resistance to natu-ral risks and environmental change (Nellemann et al, 2009).

The degradation of agrodiversity and the loss of traditional varieties endanger the right to food. In areas such as Sub-Saharan Africa, where farmers who practice family and subsistence agriculture have limited access to markets, agri-cultural chemical packages are expensive, there is a lack of infrastructures for irrigation, a low availability of credit and dependence on a few multinational suppliers, the informal seed sys-tems and the preservation, exchange and sale of native seeds are a guarantee of FS and FSov. It is therefore necessary to restore control and social management of genetic resources, applying ad-equate policies that are within the context of the Right to Food and FSov.

In view of this threatening outlook in Sub-Saharan Africa of the preservation of genetic resources for food and agriculture that are ba-sic and fundamental to ensure stable FSov for African populations, Spain must heed the commitments assumed by the signing and rati-fi cation of the ITPGRFA with an international outlook aimed at not endangering the rights of farmers in the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. It must acknowledge the rights of these farm-ers and encourage this recognition in its foreign policies by incorporating the preservation and durable use of plant genetic resources that en-sure food for the populations within its bilateral and multilateral agreements.

In any case it must avoid speculative activities and must avoid that corporate activities, wheth-er linked to the farming and livestock sector or to other sectors restrict Farmers’ Rights and undermine the genetic heritage of the countries and their populations.

Genetic Sovereignty as a primordial element for Food Sovereignty




One of the main concerns regarding the threats studied in this chapter lies in the lack of effi -cient means of protection for food sovereignty. Therefore the current situation is recuperating a concept that is not very recent but that has not yet been suffi ciently developed to be eff ective: we are referring to the extraterritorial obligation or duty of the states regarding their actions and those of their citizens (including transnational companies) in third states.

Until now the study has been limited to the per-spective of human rights. As we shall see, this is due to the fact that its conceptual development comes fundamentally from international human rights agencies.

Nonetheless, at Veterinarios Sin Fronteras we believe that an analysis of the extraterritorial re-sponsibility of states limited to a perspective of human rights is insuffi cient. In the organisation, we maintain that the debate about this concept should be opened up. We think that, due to the complexity and diversity of the factors involved (investments, international cooperation and trade, etc.), the debate should be taken up to a “political” level in order to address the real caus-es that make it possible to violate peoples’ food sovereignty. Without the existence of a context of Food Sovereignty it is impossible for the Right to Food to be fully and eff ectively exercised. This regulatory concept would naturally include the transnational companies under its jurisdiction and with the considerations that we will explain below.

Let us see. Why do we consider the phenomena studied (land-grabbing, water-grabbing, agri-cultural investment, etc.) as “threats”? Simply because they can harm – and indeed do harm – food sovereignty and the human right to food.

This leads us to transfer the focus of the analysis onto the agents that are involved in this dynamic and that therefore become potential subjects of the violation of human and other rights.

What happens is that globalisation and so-called “open regionalism” have blurred – or at least have changed – the traditional geographic boundaries and concept of “subjects of law” of the classic human rights protection mechanisms. In other words, the attribution of the responsibility for vi-olations of rights and food sovereignty is not only that of the state in whose jurisdiction this occurs but instead makes it more and more necessary to consider new dynamics and subjects that are responsible for these violations: northern gov-ernments, intergovernmental organisations and transnational companies. With regard to the lat-ter, it is not at all suffi cient for them to commit to interpreting international law and voluntarily applying it as they see fi t, but instead they must compulsorily submit to it, there must be a clear responsibility of the state in which these com-panies have their head offi ce (extraterritorial responsibility) and that the right to food is vio-lated when the food sovereignty of a population, region or country is violated. We are not situating transnational companies but states at the heart of rights-based legal petitions.

As for the role of transnational companies, the data provided by the UNDP almost ten years ago is very revealing. They already warned that trans-national companies can have massive eff ects o human rights: with their employment prac-tices, their environmental impact, the support that they give to corrupt regimes or the policy changes that they defend. “The 200 largest companies control a quarter of the worlds pro-duction assets. Many transnational companies have incomes that vastly exceed the incomes of

The extraterritorial responsibility of the states and transnational companies

as a transversal element of the threats to African food sovereignty



the governments of the countries in which they operate. According to the United Nations Confer-ence on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), 29 of the 100 largest economic bodies in the world are transnational companies. Concentration has created enormous transnational companies that monopolise the food chain, from production, trade and creation, to sales and retail, which reduces the options of farmers and consumers. Just ten companies (amongst which are Aventis, Monsanto, Pioneer and Syngenta) control a third of the world seed market, which is worth 23,000 million US dollars and 80% of the world pesticide market, which is worth 28,000 million US dol-lars. Monsanto alone controls 91% of the world market for genetically modifi ed seeds. Another ten companies, amongst which is Cargill, con-trol 57% of the total sales of the main retailers in the world and its incomes represent 37% of the incomes received by the 100 main companies in the food and drinks sector. In South Africa, Monsanto controls the entire national market for genetically modifi ed seeds, 60% of the hybrid corn market and 90% of the wheat market” 96.

In short, the role played by companies is not a small one and, as we have been able to analyse in this chapter, it is clearly growing. On the other hand, there is no adequate regulatory context aimed at states and that defi nes and stakes out their responsibilities. What have been developed are some declarations and directives (that are unsatisfactory, as we shall see) that have been approved by intra-governmental organs that reg-ulate the activities of transnational companies.

The most important instruments in this sense are possibly the OECD Directives for multina-tional companies and the Tripartite Declaration of Principles on Multinational Companies and the Social Policy of the World Trade Organisa-tion (WTO) of 1997, that are applied to States and multinational companies. According to the WTO’s Tripartite Declaration, multinational com-panies “should respect the sovereign rights of states, observe the national regulations, duly take into account local practices and respect ap-

plicable international regulations”.

At Veterinarios Sin Fronteras we nonetheless consider that a legal context for this issue would only be effi cient if it acknowledged the “state” as a subject of law. It is the states that allow and even promote the overseas activities of transna-tional companies. As the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler, says, in his report of 9th February 2004, it is the states who should supervise and regulate the activities of their transnational companies in order to guarantee that they do not violate the right to food.

This leads us to analyse the geographic limit of this responsibility, given that it is clearer that the measures adopted by a government can have a negative influence on the food sover-eignty of people who live in other countries 97. The delimitation or extent of the extraterritorial responsibility of states has been one of the most important aspects of the evolution of their char-acterisation from the viewpoint of human rights. In the international governance spaces there is an important consensus regarding the fact that the private investors’ home states must regulate the behaviour of these investors overseas.

Nonetheless, in order for it to be complete, this regulation should include three pillars: respect-ing, protecting and making good the right to food and, above all, food sovereignty. As we have already mentioned, this is a prior requisite for the right, not the other way round. We therefore consider that the development made by the Spe-cial Rapporteur upon this tripartite typology of extraterritorial duty is entirely applicable to our food sovereignty-based approach 98.

In this way, the duty of “respect” entails a nega-tive obligation that means that the governments must abstain from undertaking certain activi-ties that have negative eff ects upon the right to food (and Food Sovereignty as a prior condition to this right), whether these activities take place in their own countries or in third states. It also includes the duty to abstain from making cer-tain decisions within international or regional organisations that could give rise to violations of

96 UNPD Human Development Report, 2002.

97 Report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, 24th January 2005, E/CN.4/2005/47, paragraphs 39 and 40.



the right to food and food sovereignty in other countries.

The extraterritorial obligation to “protect” means that the states guarantee that third parties sub-jected to their jurisdiction (such as their own citizens or transnational companies) do not vio-late the right to food, and we therefore consider that they should protect the food sovereignty of the population living in other countries as a prior requisite to the execution of this right. With the growing monopolistic control exercised by trans-national companies over all the links of the food chain, from production trade and processing, to sales and retail, as well as over most of the con-cessions for supplying water at a global level, it is more and more diffi cult for the least powerful national governments to regulate the activities of transnational companies operating on their territory.

Finally, governments also have the duty to “pro-mote” the execution of the right to food (and therefore of food sovereignty) in their territory and also in other countries 99. We can therefore appreciate the considerable evolution that has been undergone by the creation of the concept of the extraterritorial responsibility of states, although there is still more to be done than has been done.

The fi rst discussions on the extraterritorial re-sponsibility of states dealt with civil and political rights, despite the fact that these rights contain explicit territorial and jurisdictional limitations. Later, the debate focused on economic, social and cultural rights, more specifi cally upon the right to food. In this sense, not only a few interna-tional agencies but also several non-government organisations (such as FIAN and Amnesty Inter-national, amongst others) made important and valuable contributions to the debate.

As we have already explained, at Veterinarios Sin Fronteras we believe that the debate concerning the regulation of obligations and the three as-

pects of extraterritorial responsibility (respect, protection and promotion) should not only cover, but go beyond the analysis focused on the right to food, extending to other areas that may af-fect Food Sovereignty such as cooperation, investment, trade, economic and association agreements, amongst others.

The issue’s complexity and the factors that con-stitute it make it essential to put the focus of the debate on the political sphere that, of course, includes legal or judiciary dimensions. In other words it is essential to dispose of internation-ally and regionally binding legal instruments that regulate aspects that may have an impact upon food sovereignty.

In this sense, the analysis of the threats to Afri-can food sovereignty conducted in this chapter demonstrates that any legal instrument that aims to stake out and acknowledge the extrater-ritorial duty and responsibility of states must, as well as being obligatory (and not merely volun-tary), at least include the following issues: direct foreign investment, intellectual property, agri-

98 The extraterritorial duties of the states extend to cases in which they act as part of an international organisation (such as the United Nations or the European Union) in which they act collectively. In this sense, the Maastricht Directives on the Violations of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1997) insists upon the importance that “…States should use their influence to ensure that th programmes and policies in which they participate do not give rise to violations”.

99 See the Report of the Spacial Rapporteur on the right to food, 24th January 2005, E/CN.4/2005/47, paragraphs 47 to 59.


LAND PROPERTY TITLE. UGANDA.


culture, trade, services and Offi cial Development Assistance (ODA).

In short, the Spanish government, in interna-tional (FAO) and regional (in this case, the EU) spaces it takes part in, should encourage and promote the creation of binding legal tools of this nature. These instruments must recognise

the extraterritorial duties and responsibilities of states to ensure that the citizens and com-panies of the signatory states, as well as third parties that are subject to their jurisdiction – including transnational companies – do not violate the right to food or threaten the food sovereignty of populations.

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With this report, which is the foundation of the “Aquí vive gente” (“People live here”) campaign, at Veterinarios Sin Fronteras we proposed to contribute towards clarifying the diff erence that exists between the three concepts (the right to food, food security and food sovereignty), which are closely interrelated but that also have very diff erent contents. Moreover, in the organisa-tion we have analysed and express our concern regarding the political and legal tools as well as the areas in which the threat to African food sov-ereignty is evident.

We believe that the three cases that we have de-veloped in these pages illustrate a widespread and transversal problem in Africa: European and Spanish companies are grabbing the natural resources from African farming and fi shing com-munities, who use them to produce the food they eat.

These practices do not occur “just so”; as we have seen and demonstrated, they are generally promoted by European governments – including Spain – that promote in Africa a productive mod-el that they do not want – or cannot – deploy in their own countries: a model that is environmen-tally harmful, that feeds part of the population by

leaving another part without food.

At Veterinarios Sin Fronteras we are worried to observe that the Spanish government, by pro-moting its companies’ investments in Africa, is part of the problem of poverty and not part of its solution. Therefore, on the basis of this research, we have established a series of recommenda-tions aimed at the Minister of the Environment and Rural and Maritime environment and to the European Commissioner for Agriculture and Ru-ral Development that, if they were to be fulfi lled, would help to reverse the current situation.

In particular, at Veterinarios Sin Fronteras we insist upon recovering a little-used – albeit far from new – concept that is transversal to the four threats to African food sovereignty identifi ed in this research (land-grabbing, water-grabbing, agro-industrial production and genetic erosion): that of the extraterritorial responsibility of states for their actions or for those that their compa-nies carry out in third countries.

At the organisation, we demand that states should assume their legal duty, which is recog-nised by international tools, of fi ghting against poverty and preventing their companies from generating famine.

Conclusions


Recommendations

Veterinarios Sin Fronteras recommends:

• To ensure that the countries that receive public sector funds by means of the world agriculture and food security programme should maintain a signifi cant consultation with those that are the most aff ected by food security. One way of achieving this is to continue working with representatives of non-government organisations for the WPAFS but also to follow the structure of the Civil Society mechanism for the Committee on World Food Security that identifi es impor-tant points for regions and constituencies and that gives a voice to those that are the worst hit by food insecurity.

• Supporting the new CFS to ensure that it extends its potential as a central political organisation to the making of decisions on issues of food security within the system of the United Nations. This translates into ministerial participation (Ministry of the Environment and of the Rural and Marine Environment) in CFS-related processes, including the annual sessions and activity periods, as a member country and also as part of the European Union. The funding for the Civil Society Mechanism (CSM) will sup-port this transparent and inclusive potential of the CFS and will guarantee that the voice of those that are worst hit by food insecurity is heard.

• At national level, creating a mechanism for the participation of civil society that en-sures stable and continued communications between the government and the civil soci-ety organisations during the period between sessions of the CFS. Given the nature of the issues to be addressed, this mechanism should be articulated within the Ministry for the Environment and the Rural and Marine Environment.

To avoid past mistakes, it is important to pay close attention to the structural causes of food insecurity and to work on them. Politi-cal negotiations and the solutions proposed to achieve food security mainly emphasise the increased production of food, whereas evidence indicates that the problems that hinder the achievement of food security are not the lack of food, but instead the issues of the distribution, market access, security and infrastructure (particularly the control of residues after the harvest).

For the world governance of food security:

Veterinarios Sin Fronteras urges the Minister for the Environment and the Rural and Maritime Environment:


• Declare a large-scale moratorium on land acquisition (rent and purchase) by private companies and foreign states due to the threat to local food security, as well as the problems of conflicts, eviction and dis-placement derived from large-scale land investment.

• Guaranteeing that the CFS undertakes an open and inclusive debate on the kinds of investment that will support the agro-eco-logical production of food. Everything should be done to include all food producers, pay-ing particular attention to the needs of young persons and women.

• Requesting that the states fulfi l the com-mitments taken in the fi nal Declaration of the CIRADR regarding the secure access to, and control of, land and natural resources by small-scale producers and suppliers of food, authentic agrarian reform and durable rural development policies.

• Demanding that the CFS should not ap-prove the IAR because these principles are not sufficient to regulate private invest-ments. Instead, what are needed are laws that can be applied at national and interna-tional level and public order regulations in all land-related investments, including the extraterritorial dispositions of the duties of the states to regulate companies and en-sure that they take their responsibility for their operations overseas.

• Urge the governments and the CFS to sup-port the development of the FAO Directives for the tenure of land and natural resources, as well as the Series of minimum principles for agrarian investments of the Special Rap-porteur on the right to food.

Concerning the Principles and Directives for the Large-Scale Acquisition and Renting of Land 100

Veterinarios Sin Fronteras urges the Minister for the Environment and the Rural and Marine Environ-ments, and the European Commissioner for Agriculture and the Rural Development of the European Union to:

100 It should be pointed out that these recommendations are in keeping with those that were developed in the consultation with SCOs before the 36th CFS Meeting, which included members of the CPI, La Vía Campesina, the International council on Indian Treaties, FIAN, the Coalition of Asian Rural Women and PROPAC. These recommendations were presented to the CFS round table on land issues.

101 The recommendation is in keeping with FoodSovCap (the European Movement for food Sovereignty). The following organi-sations developed the European Declaration on foods that was signed by: Fe Africa Europa and network of justice (AEFJN) Be; Afrika Europa Netwekr, the Netherlands; Friends of the Earth Spain; ASEED Europe, the Nethelands; Asocaizione Rurale Italana, Italy; Attac Austria; ATTAC SPAIN, Spain; ATTAC France; the Autrian Platform for Food Sovereignty, Austria; COAG, Spain; the Eco Ruralis Association, Romania; the European Coordination Via Campesina, Europe; Comida y Agua Europa; Friends of the Earth, Cyprus; Friends of the Earth, Europe; FUEGA/Orgnisation of Belgian farmers, Be; GIET, Groupe International d’Etudes Transdisciplinaires, France; Vredeseilanden, Belgium; MIJARC, Europe; Nederlandse Melkveehouders Vakbond, the Netherlands; the Norwgian union of farmers and small producers, Norway; NOUSUD Espala, Spain; Supermacht, the Netherlands; Wervel, Be; XminY Fondo de Solidaridad, the Netherlands.

RECOMMENDATIONS


• Promote within the FAO’s Food Security Council and within the General Direction of Agriculture and Development of the European Commission the launching of a legally bind-ing international regulation that is necessary for the acknowledgement of the extraterrito-rial duties of the member states of the FAO and of the European Union in order to guar-antee that their own citizens and companies, as well as third parties that are subjected to their jurisdiction, including transnational companies, do not violate the right to food of other countries. This regulation should guarantee that all policies, including foreign investment, Public Aid for Development, ag-riculture and trade preserve and strengthen the ability of African rural communities to produce their own food.

• Guaranteeing that the Communiqué “A stra-tegic context for the European Union to assist developing countries to confront problems derived from food security” (COM (2010) 127 fi nal) is fully applied throughout all European policies and practices.

• Undertaking the regulation of agricultural markets with tools such as the control of public off er and the control of imports of agricultural products, in order to guarantee that farmers have expenses covered and stable prices directly from the market, at the same time guaranteeing that food prices are aff ordable for consumers 101. Nonethe-less, there should be mechanisms to ensure the equitable distribution of the quota and to avoid transfers of quotas or means to ac-quire quotas that would concentrate these in the richest exploitations.

• Reducing the direct payments to the payment of the diff erence of the average community production costs and the main production costs of agricultural exploitations in the least favoured areas, as well as of important pub-lic assets provided by the farmers.

• Continuing to work upon the harmonisa-tion of development and aid policies in all the member states whilst at the same time supporting development projects launched by the same countries that involve a large participation of social agents and that apply pressure to obtain durable results. The re-form of the CAP should pay careful attention to the repercussions in African agriculture and food security.

• Continuing to support the World Food Se-curity Committee as the main forum for discussion and the formulation of world-wide policies concerning food security. They should ensure that development policies should be adapted to and support the princi-ples of food sovereignty.

• In the domains that in which she is compe-tent, and in which she exercises or should exercise Spanish representation, the Min-ister for the Environment and the Rural and Marine Environment should promote and en-courage the fulfi lment of the aforementioned recommendations.

Concerning Food Sovereignty and the European Union

Veterinarios Sin Fronteras urges the European Commissioner for Agriculture and the Rural Development of the European Union to:

RECOMMENDATIONS


• Revise the fulfi lment of the agreements signed in fi shing issues, respecting the renovation cycles of the fi shing grounds, the distances established from the coast, etc.

• Comply with the international commitments. Particularly:

> Ratify the United nations Agreement on Fishing on the High Seas of 1995, as well as the applica-tion of chapter 17 of the Agenda 21 of the United Nations of 1992, referring to the preservation of seas and oceans as well as the rights of coastal communities and artisan fi shing and the pre-eminence of the FAO as an international debating organ instead of the World Trade Organisation, the WTO.

• Carrying out Durability Impact Studies (DIS) on the actions undertaken by Spanish companies in the agrarian sector and by the investment projects controlled by means of the ICEX. These DIS should be aimed at the potential economic, social and environmental impacts of these invest-ments. As fi r the methodology of the DIS, the so-called Copenhagen Model used in the reports commissioned by the Trade Delegate of the European Union in the context of the “Dialogues with Civil Society” could be used.

Concerning fi shing

Concerning Agricultural Investment

Veterinarios Sin Fronteras urges the Minister for the Environment and the Rural and Marine Environ-ment to:

Veterinarios Sin Fronteras urges the Minister for the Environment and the Rural and Marine Environ-ment to:

RECOMMENDATIONS



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