|
Rich Countries Once Used Gunboats to Seize Food.
Now They Use Trade Deals
The world's hungriest are the losers as an old colonialism
returns to govern relations between wealthy and poor nations
By George Monbiot
26/08/08 "The
Guardian" " -- -- In his book Late Victorian Holocausts, Mike
Davis tells the story of the famines that sucked the guts out of
India in the 1870s. The hunger began when a drought, caused by
El Niño, killed the crops on the Deccan plateau. As starvation
bit, the viceroy, Lord Lytton, oversaw the export to England of
a record 6.4m hundredweight of wheat. While Lytton lived in
imperial splendour and commissioned, among other extravagances,
"the most colossal and expensive meal in world history", between
12 million and 29 million people died. Only Stalin manufactured
a comparable hunger.
Now a new Lord Lytton is seeking to engineer another brutal food
grab. As Tony Blair's favoured courtier, Peter Mandelson often
created the impression that he would do anything to please his
master. Today he is the European trade commissioner. From his
sumptuous offices in Brussels and Strasbourg, he hopes to impose
a treaty that will permit Europe to snatch food from the mouths
of some of the world's poorest people.
Seventy per cent of the protein eaten by the people of Senegal
comes from fish. Traditionally cheaper than other animal
products, it sustains a population that ranks close to the
bottom of the human development index. One in six of the working
population is employed in the fishing industry; about two-thirds
of these workers are women. Over the past three decades, their
means of subsistence has started to collapse as other nations
have plundered Senegal's stocks.
The EU has two big fish problems. One is that, partly as a
result of its failure to manage them properly, its own fisheries
can no longer meet European demand. The other is that its
governments won't confront their fishing lobbies and
decommission all the surplus boats. The EU has tried to solve
both problems by sending its fishermen to west Africa. Since
1979 it has struck agreements with the government of Senegal,
granting our fleets access to its waters. As a result, Senegal's
marine ecosystem has started to go the same way as ours. Between
1994 and 2005, the weight of fish taken from the country's
waters fell from 95,000 tonnes to 45,000 tonnes. Muscled out by
European trawlers, the indigenous fishery is crumpling: the
number of boats run by local people has fallen by 48% since
1997.
In a recent report on this pillage, ActionAid shows that fishing
families that once ate three times a day are now eating only
once or twice. As the price of fish rises, their customers also
go hungry. The same thing has happened in all the west African
countries with which the EU has maintained fisheries agreements.
In return for wretched amounts of foreign exchange, their
primary source of protein has been looted.
The government of Senegal knows this, and in 2006 it refused to
renew its fishing agreement with the EU. But European fishermen
- mostly from Spain and France - have found ways round the ban.
They have been registering their boats as Senegalese, buying up
quotas from local fishermen and transferring catches at sea from
local boats. These practices mean that they can continue to take
the country's fish, and have no obligation to land them in
Senegal. Their profits are kept on ice until the catch arrives
in Europe.
Mandelson's office is trying to negotiate economic partnership
agreements with African countries. They were supposed to have
been concluded by the end of last year, but many countries,
including Senegal, have refused to sign. The agreements insist
that European companies have the right both to establish
themselves freely on African soil, and to receive national
treatment. This means that the host country is not allowed to
discriminate between its own businesses and European companies.
Senegal would be forbidden to ensure that its fish are used to
sustain its own industry and to feed its own people. The dodges
used by European trawlers would be legalised.
The UN's Economic Commission for Africa has described the EU's
negotiations as "not sufficiently inclusive". They suffer from a
"lack of transparency" and from the African countries' lack of
capacity to handle the legal complexities. ActionAid shows that
Mandelson's office has ignored these problems, raised the
pressure on reluctant countries and "moved ahead in the
negotiations at a pace much faster than the [African nations]
could handle". If these agreements are forced on west Africa,
Lord Mandelson will be responsible for another imperial famine.
This is one instance of the food colonialism that is again
coming to govern the relations between rich and poor counties.
As global food supplies tighten, rich consumers are pushed into
competition with the hungry. Last week the environmental group
WWF published a report on the UK's indirect consumption of
water, purchased in the form of food. We buy much of our rice
and cotton, for example, from the Indus valley, which contains
most of Pakistan's best farmland. To meet the demand for
exports, the valley's aquifers are being pumped out faster than
they can be recharged. At the same time, rain and snow in the
Himalayan headwaters have decreased, probably as a result of
climate change. In some places, salt and other crop poisons are
being drawn through the diminishing water table, knocking out
farmland for good. The crops we buy are, for the most part,
freely traded, but the unaccounted costs all accrue to Pakistan.
Now we learn that Middle Eastern countries, led by Saudi Arabia,
are securing their future food supplies by trying to buy land in
poorer nations. The Financial Times reports that Saudi Arabia
wants to set up a series of farms abroad, each of which could
exceed 100,000 hectares. Their produce would not be traded: it
would be shipped directly to the owners. The FT, which usually
agitates for the sale of everything, frets over "the nightmare
scenario of crops being transported out of fortified farms as
hungry locals look on". Through "secretive bilateral
agreements", the paper reports, "the investors hope to be able
to bypass any potential trade restriction that the host country
might impose during a crisis".
Both Ethiopia and Sudan have offered the oil states hundreds of
thousands of hectares. This is easy for the corrupt governments
of these countries: in Ethiopia the state claims to own most of
the land; in Sudan an envelope passed across the right desk
magically transforms other people's property into foreign
exchange. But 5.6 million Sudanese and 10 million Ethiopians are
currently in need of food aid. The deals their governments
propose can only exacerbate such famines.
None of this is to suggest that the poor nations should not sell
food to the rich. To escape from famine, countries must enhance
their purchasing power. This often means selling farm products,
and increasing their value by processing them locally. But there
is nothing fair about the deals I have described. Where once
they used gunboats and sepoys, the rich nations now use
chequebooks and lawyers to seize food from the hungry. The
scramble for resources has begun, but - in the short term, at
any rate - we will hardly notice. The rich world's governments
will protect themselves from the political cost of shortages,
even if it means that other people must starve.
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
Click on
"comments" below to read or post comments
Comment
Guidelines
Be succinct, constructive and
relevant to the story.
We encourage engaging, diverse and meaningful commentary.
Do not include personal information such as names, addresses,
phone numbers and emails. Comments falling outside our
guidelines – those including personal attacks and profanity –
are not permitted.
See our complete
Comment
Policy and use this link
to notify us if you have concerns about a
comment. We’ll promptly
review and remove any inappropriate postings.
Send Page To a Friend
In
accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this
material is distributed without profit to those
who have expressed a prior interest in receiving
the included information for research and
educational purposes. Information Clearing House
has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator
of this article nor is Information ClearingHouse
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
|
