NGOs

'Green grabs': The dark side of the green economy

14 years ago
Anthony Watts

From the Institute of Development Studies

‘Green’ market initiatives are increasing poverty; local ecosystem stewardship must be nurtured instead

‘Green grabbing’ – the rapidly-growing appropriation of land and resources in the name of ‘green ‘ biofuels, carbon offsetting schemes, conservation efforts and eco-tourism initiatives – is forcing people from their homelands and increasing poverty, new research has found.

Ecosystems being ‘asset-stripped’ for profit is likely to cause dispossession and further poverty amongst already-poor land and resource users, according to a set of 17 new research case studies from Africa, Asia and Latin America, published in a special issue of the Journal of Peasant Studies.

“Green grabs are the dark side of the green economy,” said Professor Melissa Leach, director of the ESRC STEPS Centre. “If market-based mechanisms are to contribute to sustainable development and the building of economies that are not only green but also fair, then fostering an agenda focused on distribution, equity and justice in green market arrangements is vital.”

This means including meaningful local engagement and consultation based on transparency, accountability and free, prior informed consent. Yet green markets cannot do it all. In the rush to repair a damaged nature through trading and offset schemes, the political-economic structures that caused the damage in the first place must not be neglected.

Responsibility for tackling unsustainable practices in wealthy industrialised settings should not be offloaded by financialising ecosystems in other parts of the world. And if sustainable development is genuinely to be pursued at Rio+20 and beyond, we need to recapture nature from the market’s grasp, nurturing and legitimising more interconnected human-ecological relationships and understandings, along with tried-and-tested forms of local ecosystem stewardship based on them.

Examples of green grabs include: in Guatemala, conservation agencies, ecotourism companies and the military are ‘protecting’ the Guatemalan Maya Biosphere Reserve as a ‘Maya-themed vacationland’, violently excluding local people. In Eastern and Southern Africa, businesses are revaluing soil systems and farming practices for ‘biochar’, dispossessing farmers and pastoralists from land and resources important for their livelihoods. Meanwhile evidence is mounting that some Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD and REDD+) schemes are dispossessing local forest users of vital resource access.

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ferd berple
June 16, 2012 7:37 am

Taxpayers are not a renewable resources. They exist in limited supply. Any program that relies on taxpayers is ultimately not sustainable, unless it generates a net benefit to the taxpayer.
Governments recognize this and are always trying to find justification to explain why they want an every expanding slice of your paycheck. “Green” is simply another reason to stick their hand in your wallet. To help you by helping themselves, thank you very much.
Government debt is the modern equivalent of legalized slavery. A person born into debt already has their future earnings confiscated without their knowledge or approval.
Except in dire circumstances, governments should never run deficits. They should run surpluses and accumulate wealth, which through careful investment should generate revenues to pay for government operations, reducing and eventually eliminating the need for taxes.
Instead, governments run deficits and borrow from international bankers, who instead accumulate the wealth. The officials that make these decisions work hand in glove with the international bankers to promote this system and prevent the passage of laws that would eliminate deficit spending.

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walterschneider
June 16, 2012 8:16 am

Gail Combs, Robin and the others who participated in the information exchange in this thread, many thanks to you.
Gail, your observation about ‘Hay Seeds’ and ‘Red Necks’ made my heart sing.
Questions were asked on how to end the drive to install global socialist governance. Few problems worth solving were ever successfully solved without understanding them thoroughly. It seems to me that one of the first steps to gaining that understanding would be to appreciate how far social evolution has systematically and deliberately deviated from the concern of the founding fathers of the U.S. to create a lasting republic based on individualism and property rights.
It may be worth your time to assess what Igor Shafarevich has to say about socialism as an all-pervasive ideology throughout history, in ‘The Socialist Phenomenon’; http://www.amazon.com/Socialist-Phenomenon-Igor-Schafrevich/dp/0895268779 (Regnery, 1982; out of print, but a version of the full text is accessible on-line, for free, at http://robertlstephens.com/essays/shafarevich/001SocialistPhenomenon.html )
Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn wrote the foreword to ‘The Socialist Phenomenon’, and that alone is worth reading: http://robertlstephens.com/essays/shafarevich/001SocialistPhenomenon.html#pagestart_vii
From that:

The doctrines of socialism seethe with contradictions, its theories are at constant odds with its practice, yet due to a powerful instinct–also laid bare by Shafarevich–these contradictions do not in the least hinder the unending propaganda of socialism. Indeed, no precise, distinct socialism even exists; instead there is only a vague, rosy notion of something noble and good, of equality, communal ownership, and justice: the advent of these things will bring instant euphoria and a social order beyond reproach….
….If one considers human history in its entirety, socialism can boast of a greater longevity and durability, of wider diffusion and of control over larger masses of people, than can contemporary Western civilization. It is therefore difficult to shake off gloomy presentiments when contemplating that maw into which–before the century is out–we may all plunge: that “Asiatic formation” which Marx hastened to circumvent in his classification, and before which contemporary Marxist thought stands baffled, having discerned its own hideous countenance
[viii]
in the mirror of the millennia. It could probably be said that the majority of states in the history of mankind have been “socialist.” But it is also true that these were in no sense periods or places of human happiness or creativity….

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Gail Combs
June 16, 2012 4:47 pm

thingadonta says:
June 15, 2012 at 6:37 pm
I work in one of the poorest areas on Earth in remote Indonesia, conducting mineral exploration and developing mining projects, and almost every week we have to deal with some or other green group who wants to stop every exploration and mining project they can….
_____________________________
As I mentioned above there seems to be a group of families interested in ruling the world. The last thing they are interested is allowing the “Great Unwashed” to use up the natural resources they want preserved for the use by THEIR descendants. They are very much FOR eugenics, population control, licenses to have babies…. They want to “cull the human herd” and restrict our use of Earth’s natural bounty. After all they do not NEED a lot of people to keep the world’s economy running and themselves in servants.

It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class—involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing—are not sustainable. A shift is necessary towards lifestyles less geared to environmentally damaging consumption patterns. ~ Maurice Strong (1992 Rio Earth Summit 11).

The target is the Middle Class who might actually rise in wealth and status to challenge our would be World Leaders if allowed a decent education and the oppurtunity to go into business for themselves. So we are condemned for “consuming” too much of the earth’s resources and restricted by regulations from reaching our potential. The third world poor are certainly not going to be allowed to join the wasteful “affluent middle class”
Obama’s Science Czar John Holdern his close colleagues Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich wrote textbooks in the 1970s. One of them was “EcoScience”
Direct quotes from Ecoscience (1977 )

…Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing [US] Constitution….
If a single mother really wished to keep her baby, she might be obliged to go through adoption proceedings and demonstrate her ability to support and care for it. Adoption proceedings probably should remain more difficult for single people than for married couples, in recognition of the relative difficulty of raising children alone. It would even be possible to require pregnant single women to marry or have abortions….
Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today…. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock…..
A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men….. http://zombietime.com/john_holdren/

Since Holdren’s textbook was written, the USDA has funded the development of a Spermicidal Corn. Epicyte developed the spermicidal GMO corn and has since been acquired by a privately owned Pittsboro North Carolina biotech company. link
Also since the book was written DNA samples are taken of babies born in hospitals without the parents permission.
USA:

The government has your baby’s DNA
It’s simple, the pediatrician answered: Newborn babies in the United States are routinely screened for a panel of genetic diseases. Since the testing is mandated by the government, it’s often done without the parents’ consent, according to Brad Therrell, director of the National Newborn Screening & Genetics Resource Center.
In many states, such as Florida, where Isabel was born, babies’ DNA is stored indefinitely, according to the resource center.

UK: DNA database created from babies’ blood samples – Millions of newborn babies have had their DNA stored by hospitals without the proper consent of their parents, it has been revealed.
A really weird new bill in Australia (March 2912) Australian children to be sterilized without parental consent under new eugenics law…
Ireland An unforeseen side-effect of the national screening programme has been the creation of a de-facto national DNA database. Unknown to the Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) and most parents the hospital’s policy is to keep all blood samples on file indefinitely…. In Australia police regularly seek access to baby blood samples to get DNA profiles to aid investigations …
Given the USA was sterilizing Native Americans and others without their consent into the 1970’s I really doubt Eugenics has actually gone away. It has certainly been part of the United Nations.

…the first Director-General of UNESCO, [was] Julian Huxley. In 1946, while Director-General of UNESCO, he wrote in UNESCO: Its Purposes and Philosophy

“It can both on its own account and in close relation with other U.N. agencies such as the F.A.O. and the World Health Organization, promote the international application of science to human welfare.“

What did Huxley have in mind for the international application of science to “human welfare”? In his 1947 book, Man in the Modern World, Huxley, while still Director-General, wrote:

“The lowest strata are reproducing too fast. Therefore… they must not have too easy access to relief or hospital treatment lest the removal of the last check on natural selection should make it too easy for children to be produced or to survive; ong unemployment should be a ground for sterilisation.“

http://fauxcapitalist.com/2010/06/28/the-world-health-organization-the-third-person-in-the-room-with-you-and-your-doctor/

More on Huxley

WIKI
Sir Julian Sorell Huxley FRS[1] (22 June 1887 – 14 February 1975) was an English evolutionary biologist, eugenicist and internationalist… the first Director of UNESCO, and a founding member of the World Wildlife Fund…. In 1959 he received a Special Award of the Lasker Foundation in the category Planned Parenthood – World Population. Huxley was a prominent member of the British Eugenics Society and its president from 1959–1962.

other Huxley link
Huxley was also a member of the Fabian Society and wrote papers for them: http://www.amazon.com/When-hostilities-cease-reconstruction-introduction/dp/B000L9MWEC
Any one who thinks the 2008 Food riots and the third world land grabs just “happened” by chance is Nuts. Here is a history of the planned destruction of US family farms since the 1940’s link

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Gail Combs
June 16, 2012 5:17 pm

ferd berple says:
June 16, 2012 at 7:37 am
Government debt is the modern equivalent of legalized slavery. A person born into debt already has their future earnings confiscated without their knowledge or approval….
Instead, governments run deficits and borrow from international bankers, who instead accumulate the wealth. The officials that make these decisions work hand in glove with the international bankers to promote this system and prevent the passage of laws that would eliminate deficit spending.
_______________________________________
Yes it is legalized slavery. Worse the bankers do not lend our governments “WEALTH” instead they create fiat bank notes out of Unicorn Farts and then tell the tax payer we OWE them principle and interest that MUST be paid through our labor.

Appendix E – Money Is Created by Banks Evidence Given by Graham Towers
Some of the most frank evidence on banking practices was given by Graham F. Towers, Governor of the Central Bank of Canada (from 1934 to 1955), before the Canadian Government’s Committee on Banking and Commerce, in 1939

Q. But there is no question about it that banks create the medium of exchange?
Mr. Towers: That is right. That is what they are for… That is the Banking business, just in the same way that a steel plant makes steel. (p. 287)
The manufacturing process consists of making a pen-and-ink or typewriter entry on a card in a book. That is all. (pp. 76 and 238)
Each and every time a bank makes a loan (or purchases securities), new bank credit is created — new deposits — brand new money. (pp. 113 and 238)
Broadly speaking, all new money comes out of a Bank in the form of loans.
As loans are debts, then under the present system all money is debt. (p. 459)
Q. When $1,000,000 worth of bonds is presented (by the government) to the bank, a million dollars of new money or the equivalent is created?
Mr. Towers: Yes.
Q. Is it a fact that a million dollars of new money is created?
Mr. Towers: That is right.
Q. Now, the same thing holds true when the municipality or the province goes to the bank?
Mr. Towers: Or an individual borrower.
Q. Or when a private person goes to a bank?
Mr. Towers: Yes.
Q. When I borrow $100 from the bank as a private citizen, the bank makes a bookkeeping entry, and there is a $100 increase in the deposits of that bank, in the total deposits of that bank?
Mr. Towers: Yes. (p. 238)
Q. Mr. Towers, when you allow the merchant banking system to issue bank deposits which, with the practice of using the cheques as we have it in vogue today, constitutes the medium of exchange upon which I think 95 per cent of our public and private business is transacted, you virtually allow the banks to issue an effective substitute for money, do you not?
Mr. Towers: The bank deposits are actual money in that sense, yes.
Q. In that sense they are actual money, but, as a matter of fact, they are not actual money but credit, bookkeeping accounts, which are used as a substitute for money?
Mr. Towers: Yes.
Q. Then we authorize the banks to issue a substitute for money?
Mr. Towers: Yes, I think that is a very fair statement of banking. (p. 285)
Q. 12 per cent of the money in use in Canada is issued by the Government through the Mint and the Bank of Canada, and 88 per cent is issued by the merchant banks of Canada on the reserves issued by the Bank of Canada?
Mr. Towers: Yes.
Q. But if the issue of currency and money is a high prerogative of government, then that high prerogative has been transferred to the extent of 88 per cent from the Government to the merchant banking system?
Mr. Towers: Yes. (p. 286)
Q. Will you tell me why a government with power to create money, should give that power away to a private monopoly, and then borrow that which parliament can create itself, back at interest, to the point of national bankruptcy?
Mr. Towers: If parliament wants to change the form of operating the banking system, then certainly that is within the power of parliament. (p. 394)

In other words the entire fractional reserve banking system is nothing but a quasi legalized FRAUD! When the USA had a “Banking Crisis” (too big to fail) in 2008 there actually was no real crisis because banks deal in about 95% profit when they make “Home loans” Actually since you have to pay points up front and place at least 10% down and the US banks are running on an effective zero reserve. It is more like a 99% profit. In other words the entire amount loaned is created on the spot. Since there is no actual “”Consideration” (“the thing exchanged”) which is an essential element of a contract, most bank loans are illegal and fraudulent contracts under US law but unfortunately the courts normally side with the bankers and not the people. SEE: Web of Debt: First National Bank of Montgomery vs. Daly (1969)

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Gail Combs
June 16, 2012 6:06 pm

walterschneider says: June 16, 2012 at 8:16 am
……Questions were asked on how to end the drive to install global socialist governance. Few problems worth solving were ever successfully solved without understanding them thoroughly. It seems to me that one of the first steps to gaining that understanding would be to appreciate how far social evolution has systematically and deliberately deviated from the concern of the founding fathers of the U.S. to create a lasting republic based on individualism and property rights.
It may be worth your time to assess what Igor Shafarevich has to say about socialism as an all-pervasive ideology throughout history……
_________________________________
Thank you for the link, I will check it out.
I some times wonder if Marx was paid to come up with his socialist “philosophy”. Capitalism, as practiced in the early days of the USA and in the UK during the Industrial Revolution was a threat to the established rulers of the world , and the international banking families because a man of industry and intelligence could “rise above his station.”
Much of the history of the USA is a story of the nation trying to get out from under the thumb of the bankers.

…When asked to explain this prosperity to leaders back in the motherland, Benjamin Franklin replied;

“That is simple. In the Colonies we issue our own money. It is called Colonial Script. We issue it in proper proportion to the demands of trade and industry to make the products pass easily from the producers to the consumers. In this manner, creating for ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power, and we have no interest to pay to no one”.

1764, the production of Colonial Script was made illegal by the Currency Act, passed into law in England (of course due to pressure from the Bank of England) prohibiting the Colonies from issuing their own money, ordering them to use only the money that was provided (in insufficient quantities) by the English bankers. Benjamin Franklin said,

“In one year, the conditions were so reversed that the era of prosperity ended, and a depression set in, to such an extent that the streets of the Colonies were filled with unemployed”.

The effect that the English bankers were having on the Colonies was by far the most significant reason for the Revolutionary War in 1775, in contrast to what is taught in our history books. Benjamin Franklin was clear about this;

“The colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been for the poverty caused by the bad influence of English bankers on the parliament which has caused, in the colonies, hatred of England and the revolutionary war”.

…James Garfield became President in 1881. With regard to the European bankers, he said:

“Whosoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce… And when you realise that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.”

http://1zipmont.wordpress.com/the-status-quo/the-founding-fathers-colonial-script-the-federal-reserve-and-the-national-debt/

The situation is very tangled but if you look you see the international banking families in the background. For example. Since the 1997 general election there have been around 200 Fabian MPs in the Commons, amongst whom number nearly the entire Cabinet, including Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Robin Cook, Jack Straw, David Blunkett and Clare Short.[1] and JP Morgan, the US investment bank which pays Mr Blair £2  million a year as a senior adviser
The school started by the Fabians, the London School of Economics. is worth looking into. WIKI
Also Caroll Quigley, Milner Round tables, Rhodes Scholars administered by the Rothschild’s link

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Myrrh
June 16, 2012 8:27 pm

Not only do the banks create money out of debt when someone goes to them for a loan, they can factor by ten and lend that out or create pyramid schemes by passing it on to other banks and of course, play real world monopoly with it by organising booms and busts to buy out the bankrupt owner’s property for peanuts.
There’s nothing wrong with ‘fiat’ money, before that the bankers used gold to corner the wealth of the world and in the US it produced the great land grab from the bankrupt farmers, when the bankers from the East took control – Wizard of Oz and all that. Gold itself a limited commodity so no good for expanding real trade and commerce, but even they couldn’t get enough of it and had to juggle it around, when taken off the gold standard around 40% of the notes were backed by actual gold, but only from the great theft from the US citizens. Gold is not the answer, it’s the same old problem.
Still, what has to recogonised is that whatever currency is used, it’s giving bankers control of it which does the damage. Get back to producing your own greenbacks, your old colonial scrip..
http://www.iamthewitness.com/books/Andrew.Carrington.Hitchcock/The.History.of.the.Money.Changers.htm
The 1913 100 year charter Ends this year – Don’t renew it..

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Myrrh
June 16, 2012 8:49 pm

..and ignore any schemes they might have in the pipe-line to distract you from this..

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tango
June 17, 2012 2:38 am

Gail Combs now you know what we are up against listen to sydneys 2GB radio in the morning 6am to 9am listen to Allan Jones and you will here all about our PM and how she is destroying australia with the carbon tax starting 07/01/2012 at $23 a ton the greens are behind this FRAUD we are marching on the 07/01/2012 we hate our GOVT

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walterschneider
June 17, 2012 2:55 am

Hmm… It scares me a bit to consider how someone like Obama could solve the federal debt problem by controlling how many greenbacks are being put into circulation — without authorization by anyone else.

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Myrrh
June 17, 2012 6:00 am

🙂 Yeah, but you’ll have to work out a proper system of checks and balances, the US Republic was not set up to be a totalitarian or democratic dictatorship … The power is vested in the people, not the government.
You still have a few months to create a sensible alternative before they distract and get their charter renewed.
One alternative suggested is the goverment gets out of currency control altogether, any exchange agreed between parties could be used and the government could just print the notes required for a general conversion as needed by the expansion of manufacturing and trade.
How does congress get a free ride on insider trading?

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