The bulletin board is a place where GRAIN staff and others post their comments, suggestions, hints and assessments of documents, places or events. Or just share information that we think is interesting.
Hanne Svarstad and Tor A. Benjaminsen | 19 June 2018 | land grabbing, climate crisis | Tanzania
Many are aware that global climate change is likely to hit poor people the hardest. Few, on the other hand, know that there are measures to mitigate climate change in the Global South that today are implemented to the detriment of poor people. Even fewer are aware of Norway’s central role.
Jeremie Gilbert | 18 June 2018 | corporations
Over the last few years, more and more corporations have used litigation as a tool to attack the credibility of human rights and environmental defenders. This phenomenon is part of what has been labelled, Strategic Litigation against Public Participation; more commonly referred to as SLAPP. SLAPP is increasingly used by corporations against individuals, or civil society organisations, which have criticised or made public allegations against the corporation’s actions, notably regarding allegations of environmental degradation or human rights abuses. It is not an entirely new strategy as the concept of SLAPP was conceptualised in the United-States during the 1970s, but we have recently experienced an exponential increase of SLAPPs used as a retaliatory mechanism against human rights and environmental defenders. The Business and Human Rights Resources, which is one of the leading international civil society organisations working on issues of corporate responsibilities for human rights violations, recently published a briefing on corporate legal accountability highlighting the amplitude of the phenomenon.
No to ProSavana Campaign | 13 June 2018 | land grabbing | Mozambique
The No to ProSavana Campaign has learned, in the report from the latest meeting on ProSavana chaired by the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security on April 4, that the governments of Mozambique, Brazil and Japan are moving to implement the ProSavana program in northern Mozambique, ignoring broad opposition by peasants, Mozambican men and women and civil society organizations, whether members of not of the No to ProSavana Campaign. The report clearly states that “It is necessary to move forward. We will not all think alike. Some do not want to, but it is necessary to move forward.”
Stefano Liberti | 12 June 2018 | land grabbing | Mozambique
In the Mozambican village of Nakarari, deep in the bush of the Mutuali district, 2,000km north of Maputo, 40 villagers were meeting under a mango tree; children played around them, jumping with excitement whenever a fruit dropped. The villagers were hoping that a popular movement centred on Nakarari had dealt a fatal blow to Africa’s biggest agro-industrial programme, ProSavana. A popular movement centred on a small farming village in northern Mozambique has, for the moment, halted an attempt to move to cash-crop monocultures mainly for export.
Organisations and networks of the civil society | 04 June 2018 | corporations | India
The US based Multinational Corporation (MNC) Walmart’s acquisition of Flipkart undermines India’s economic and digital sovereignty and the livelihood of millions in India. If the $ 16 billion deal goes through, two US companies (the other being Amazon) will dominate India’s e-retail sector. They will also own India’s key consumer and other economic data, making them our digital overlords, joining the ranks of Google and Facebook.
Emmet Livingstone | 27 May 2018 | corporations, laws & policies
European multinationals are aggressively pursuing one of milk’s few growth markets, where locals say they can’t compete. A good artible by Politico.
Bloomberg | 12 May 2018 | land grabbing | Brazil
Another Harvard University farmland investment in Brazil may go awry. The prosecutor’s office in the state of Bahia said it’s reviewing allegations that a company linked to Harvard’s endowment isn’t the rightful owner of land in the region, and it’s determining whether to sue to reclaim the titles.
Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) | 07 May 2018 | seeds & biodiversity
The GMO lobby is showing signs of desperation. Once again they are on the offensive with a major public relations push targeting East Africa, particularly Uganda, in an attempt to subvert African policy development towards their own narrow ends. Their immediate goal is to weaken national biosafety laws, thereby removing any barriers to their access to African markets for their contentious high-risk products. Specifically, they want to remove the ‘strict liability’ clauses and thereby avoid any responsibility; avoid having to pay compensation for any damage that they do; avoid labelling so that African people are prohibited from knowing if their food is genetically modified; and avoid any punishment that African laws can impose.
Anywaa Survival Organisation | 07 May 2018 | land grabbing | Ethiopia
The Anywaa Survival Organisation (ASO) is outraged by recent news reports that the Ethiopian government is providing a new lease of lands to disgraced land grabber Karuturi Global Ltd.
Charlotte Krinke, Inf'OGM | 02 May 2018 | seeds & biodiversity | Australia, Canada, New Zealand
In March 2018, the Canadian Ministry of Health authorized the marketing of the controversial Golden Rice, which is genetically modified to produce beta-carotene that the human body will transform into vitamin A. The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), the source of this application, declared that this Golden Rice was not meant for sale in Canada as of now. Is this a way of encouraging Asian countries to authorize it as well?
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