{UAH} FROM AMURU TO KALANGALA!

South needs stringent controls to stop families losing their land and livelihoods

 John Muylisa (centre) with his family and with representatives from local NGO Kadingo. Photograph: Friends of the Earth

Samuel Lowe

Friday 13 March 2015 14.13 GMTLast modified on Friday 13 March 201515.06 GMT

• S world is still feeling the impact of a financial crisis that came about because politicians believed that financiers and business, if left to compete in an environment free of government interference, will deliver optimal outcomes for themselves and society as a whole.

You would think we would have learned our lesson by now. In fact companies operating in the global south and their financiers are still freely allowed to police themselves.

The weaknesses of such an approach are nowhere more evident than on the luscious green island of Kalangala, situated in the heart of Lake Victoria, Uganda.As reported in the Guardian last week, a farming community is in the process of taking a consortium of palm oil giants to court: they claim they have been evicted from their land with little or no compensation.

Financed by the Uganda government, the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development (Ifad), and run as a joint venture between palm oil giants Wilmar and the Kenyan company Bidco, the project was agreed on as a means of creating jobs and growth on the island, as well as to reduce Uganda's dependence on palm oil imports.

While no one is denying there have been some gains on the island, it has become increasingly evident that those most vulnerable have lost out.

When I was in Kalangala recently, John Muyiisa, one of the lead community plaintiffs in the case, told me, "When I lost that land, I not only lost my livelihood, I also lost my pension and a secured income for my children and grandchildren. I did all I could to get the land back – I even went to the office of the president of Uganda." But to no avail.

The community's decision to take the matter to court is made all the more interesting by the fact that one of the co-owners of the project, Wilmar, has a clear, voluntary, No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation Policy.

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It is not as if Wilmar has not been given adequate time to address the issue. Following a Friends of the Earth and NAPE/Friends of the Earth Uganda report in 2013 the issue has been discussed in the Dutch and European parliaments and brought to the attention of Wilmar's international financiers – including many European and US banks. Additionally Friends of the Earth groups from the EU, US, Indonesia and Uganda met with Wilmar in 2014 to outline their concerns in person.

Yet, to-date, John and the community claim that they still have not received adequate compensation. A spokeswoman for Wilmar has said: "No one had been evicted for the Opul project. Where it was not possible for the occupants to leave the land in question, the specific area was set aside and no oil palm development took place. We believe we have developed one of the best oil palm plantations in Africa in Kalangala and the local people have benefited tremendously from the project."

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We are not suggesting Wilmar and its partners are embroiled in a conspiracy of malicious intent, rather that cases such as this in Kalangala are the inevitable result of conflicted priorities.

For any large business the first order priority will always be to turn a profit and make money. This requirement to profit will almost inevitably result in the needs of affected communities being treated as a lesser concern, however much the business concerned likes to think otherwise. When it comes to self-regulation and voluntary mechanisms it is nearly always a case of mitigation after the fact with the company asking; "how do we make it hurt less". Very rarely is it a case of "we shouldn't do that," or "we should stop what we are doing immediately".

John's story is by no means unique to Uganda. From Indonesia to Nigeria and Paraguay to Malaysia Friends of the Earth groups work with communities who have had their land taken to pave the way for 'development' projects.

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Here in the west we cannot shirk our responsibility; much of this global expansion of palm oil and agriculture is driven by developed-world consumption and financed both directly and indirectly by our investors, banks and pension funds. US and EU financiers have a total of €371m of shares and around €1bn of loans outstanding to Wilmar alone.

It is for this reason that here in Europe, Friends of the Earth are calling for strict regulation of banks, investors and pension funds that provide financial services to these palm oil, land and agricultural businesses operating in the global south. It has become increasingly evident that, despite many businesses and financiers having a sustainability policy in place, voluntary mechanisms have failed. Therefore we are calling on European institutions as well as national parliaments to install measures to regulate the financiers directly.

Laissez-faire has failed. It has failed us here in the west and it continues to fail communities across the globe. It's high time our rules and regulations were amended to reflect that.

Samuel Lowe is a campaigner at Friends of the Earth. Follow @SamuelMarcLowe on Twitter.

Tolerance is a stage in civilisation!

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