Who owns the land and its water? The phenomenon of water grabbing.

In last week’s blog I discussed the impact of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam at the local level. I talked about different power relations between the government and the locals and the lack of collaboration between the government and the locals which resulted in problems for the local citizens of the GERD area. In this week’s blog I am going to talk about another political issue when it comes to water accessibility: land and water grabbing, a phenomenon very present in Africa.

The concept of land grabbing is a well-known one in the case of Africa but talking about water grabbing is new to me. To proceed with this blog I therefore must define this concept. According to Duvail et al.

'Water grabbing applies to cases where established user-rights and public interest are disregarded by powerful actors who are able to take control of water resources for their own benefit, depriving local communities whose livelihoods depend on these resources and ecosystems’ (Duvail et al, 2012 p. 323).

The asymmetrical power relations that are visible in the above definition is completely in line with the rest of my blogs. Addressing cases in which people lack power and resources to access safe water. It once again highlights the difficulties people face when it comes to water accessibility and unequal power relations that cause inaccessibility to clean water.

Although land grabbing is an international phenomenon, Africa is mostly affected by it. 47% of all land grabbing cases occur in the continent. African countries that are amongst the countries with the highest rates of grabbed land are the DRC, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Cameroon and Mozambique. Countries that grab the most land are mainly located in the Middle-East, Southeast Asia, Europe and North America. These countries are all relatively wealthy but often struggle with sufficient water supply. The question is why is land grabbing happening? On an international level this is happening because of the rising food demand (partly caused by a growing population), dietary changes and the improvement and enlargement of biofuel production due to rising oil prices and recent changes in United States and European Union bioethanol policies. To meet these demands and changes, countries and companies acquire relatively cheap but productive agricultural land in different (African) countries (Rulli et al. 2012; Bues, A. and Theesfeld, I.2012; Rulli & D’Odorico, 2013). NGO’s are concerned that domestic farmers will be forced to leave the land they have farmed on for generations and will be replaced by foreign agribusinesses (Holmén, 2015).

Figure 1: map of global watergrabbing

Source

On the other hand, many African governments see this ‘land grab’ as a blessing. Since they lack the capacity and financial resources to invest in modernising their agricultural industry and infrastructure, they are happy with foreign businesses to do so for them. It almost seems irresistible not to accept this investment, since most African countries struggle with high poverty rates and a lack of financial capacity to boost the economy (Holmén, 2015).

The concept of land grabbing is unfortunately chosen. It implies illegal behaviour while in most cases it’s legal. Governments decide on the investments deal and therefore act like custodians. The government owns the land but can only lease the land to foreign businesses. Although the deals are largely legal, their legality needs qualifying. We could see land grabbing more like confiscation, this implies the process has both legal and government support and is therefore, to some extent, legitimate. This is the core of the land grabbing problem. African governments are still often contested by their citizens therefore the legal system is not accepted or applied everywhere. The government's influence to certain rural areas is still very limited. Land grabbing is therefore not only a battle between smallholders and foreign agricultural businesses, it’s also an ongoing battle between chiefs and states (Holmén, 2015).

The complexity of land and water grabbing makes it very hard to draw generalisations and conclusions about it. The phenomenon is prevalent in a lot of countries but strongly varies in terms of legality and process. Because African states still struggle with legality and ownership of land (and therefore the water connected to the land), it’s hard to label land grabbing as illegal. However, the consequences of this land grabbing are negative and threaten the livelihoods of many Africans. Local farmers have little to no power or voice in the deals governments make with foreign agricultural businesses. They have no legal rights when it comes to ownership of the land which makes them powerless in a legal point of view. The main point I want to make in this blog is that land grabbing is not as simple as is sounds, it has great legal challenges and involves asymmetrical power relations at the expense of smallholders. As long as local farmers have no legal rights when it comes to land ownership the land grabbing deals are legal and not to be seen as unfair and threatening for a big part of the African population. 

The question that arises to me after writing this blog is to what extent land grabbing is happening and affecting African smallholders in their livelihoods and water accessibility? Collected data is often unreliable and the impact of land deals varies in every single case. There seems to be no shared idea of the impact of land grabbing and the legality of this phenomenon amongst governments, agricultural businesses and scholars. Another question is whether international land grabbing is a bigger threat than land grabbing on a lower level (for example within states). Finally I want to emphasise the connection between land and water grabbing again. Land and water are interrelated and are not to be seen as two seperate entities. The confiscation of land automatically implies the water found on this land is confiscated as well. The water resources are always involved in the land grabbing as well. This makes land grabbing an important topic when it comes to water accesibility.