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The future of family farming is in our hands Updated for 2026

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Family farming is a hot topic this year. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations has declared 2014 the International Year of Family Farming. And last week, family farming was the focus of World Food Day 2014.

Of course there’s is no guarantee that a family farm is well-run or sustainable. But the best farms – those that best preserve traditional food and culture, contribute to balanced and culturally appropriate diets, maintain agricultural biodiversity and use natural resources sustainably – tend to be family farms.

That is, farms that are managed, worked and often (but certainly not always) owned by a family and its members.

This year’s focus on family farming is both wise and welcome. In both ‘developing’ and ‘developed’ countries it is the predominant mode of food production, and it is essential in providing both national and global food security.

The FAO has found that worldwide, family farms are responsible for at least 56% of agricultural production, and that family farmers are more productive per hectare than industrial monocultures – despite receiving lower subsidies and using fewer chemical and fossil fuel inputs. Check out this great infographic for more information

But around the world, fami8ly farming is under threat

However, the future of family farming, and therefore of food security, is under threat. A World Economic Forum document from 2012 warned of a future where the contribution of small-scale farmers to world food production will drop from 40% to 0% by 2030, and be replaced with large-scale industrial monocultures.

Such reports do not address the massive effects this change will have on the local economic and social structure in countries around the world.

There is no clear policy in place to deal with the millions of farmers who have already lost their livelihoods to land grabbing and the numbers will rise if more small-scale family farms are allowed to disappear.

The UK government is a case in point. It claims to support sustainable agricultural production – yet its trade policies and international aid programme benefit multinational corporations at the expense of smallholders.

These policies facilitate corporate land grabs, the criminalisation of local seed exchange allowing companies like Monsanto and Syngenta to dominate seed markets, and favour high-input industrial monocultures of non-food cash crops for export.

Such initiatives include the G8’s New Alliance on Food Security and Nutrition and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

Defra’s attack on small, sustainable farmers in the UK

Domestic policies that damage small-scale farming that have been pushed by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) include the cancellation of subsidies for any agricultural holding less than five hectares / 12 acres.

This immediately excludes a large number of smallholders, many of which can be extremely productive and profitable (as shown by research from the Ecological Land Cooperative showing a livelihood can be made on 10 acres or less).

At the same time Defra was lobbying against EU proposals to cap subsidy payments to large landowners at €300,000 per year.

“Defra policy is increasingly driven by the demands of big business and large landowners”, says Dan Taylor from the Land Workers’ Alliance (LWA), a national coalition of producers and member organisation of the international peasant farming movement La Via Campesina.

“We have seen clear examples of this with their recent decision to strip small farmers of entitlements to public support while at the same time refusing to limit payments to the country’s biggest industrial producers. As a referee for UK farming, Defra is not only short sighted but inherently biased.”

Food sovereignty

If we are really serious about the future of family farming we need food sovereignty – the ‘right of peoples to define their own food systems’ – to protect family farmers and reclaim control of the world’s food supply.

Food sovereignty puts the people who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of decisions around food policy and practice, rather than the markets and corporations that have come to dominate the global food system.

A policy environment that supports food sovereignty would include measures to support small-scale farmers that ensure access to markets for their produce, strengthen land tenure rights and improve access to appropriate new technologies that can increase production and build resilience.

It would also mean improving the transparency of the food chain to allow people to know more about where their food came from and how it was produced.

The Pig Pledge

Farms Not Factories is one organisation working to engage and empower consumers to put food sovereignty into practice.

The Pig Pledge campaign, launched last week by Farms Not Factories to coincide with World Food Day, targets consumer habits as a method of supporting real farming over intensive livestock production.

It is a call to collective action, which urges people to pledge to boycott meat from animal factories and instead support real (and mostly family) farms by buying only ethically produced, high welfare pork.

The campaign focuses on the pig industry to highlight injustices in the global food system – from the unfair advantages agribusiness has over small-scale producers, to the environmental, economic and social destruction caused by intensive animal factories and big agribusiness.

Supporting food sovereignty through buying meat from real farms, not animal factories, will enable producers to prioritise animal welfare and contribute to agricultural biodiversity and the sustainable use of natural resources.

By taking the Pig Pledge, informing ourselves about the true costs of intensive industrial farming and changing our shopping habits to support the principles of food sovereignty, consumers will be sending a clear message to government, big agribusiness and retailers:

“We want to take control of our food systems. The future of sustainable family farming is in our hands – we must support the food sovereignty movement in order to create a good policy environment in which family farming can prosper.”

 

 

Take the Pig Pledge: pigpledge.org/

Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/pigbusiness

Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/FarmsNotFactories

Holly Creighton-Hird is Campaigns Coordinator at Farms Not Factories, a nonprofit organisation working through filmmaking and campaigning to support the food sovereignty movement. She is currently working on the Pig Pledge, a new campaign exposing the true costs of meat from animal factories and inspiring people to make food choices that enable fairer food and farming systems. She also campaigns on food and access to land with Transition Heathrow and the Food Sovereignty Movement UK.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations has declared 2014 the International Year of Family Farming.

 




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Extreme Inequality Updated for 2026

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In January 2014 Oxfam revealed that the richest 85 people in the world had the same amount of wealth as the bottom half of the world’s population: over 3 billion people. This attracted global media interest. As usual, our claim was challenged, but not in the usual way. When Forbes magazine updated the data just a few months later, they found that we were wrong. It now took just the richest 69 people to equal the wealth of the poorest half!

The disparities between the rich and the poor are increasing. Just a few feet of wall in Rio separates the have-nots living in slums from the have-it-alls in the penthouse apartments next door. In the UK, newspaper articles on bankers’ billions sit alongside those documenting the rising number of people forced to rely on food banks.

Does this really matter? Some say that economic growth benefits and creates opportunities for all and that this must involve some getting richer than others; that attacking the very rich is an ideological position that helps no one. Oxfam’s interest is not about the rights and wrongs of wealth per se. It is about the fact that extreme inequality of wealth leads to extreme inequalities in all forms of power, policy and wellbeing, so that poor people do not benefit from improved health, education or opportunity, even in an economy that seems to be growing.

Over the last year there has been widespread recognition that increasing inequality of income and wealth cannot go on unabated. President Obama promised in his State of the Union address to tackle inequality of opportunity. Pope Francis tweeted to warn that inequality is “the root of social evil”. Even the global institutions with orthodox economic outlooks – including the IMF and the World Bank – have been warning of the dangers of inequality, and, in the case of the IMF’s Christine Lagarde, quoting Oxfam.

Leaders and institutions are beginning to challenge inequality head-on and people are paying attention to this debate. Not only was Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-first Century, about the link between rising inequality and wealth, a massive publishing success, but it also sparked a flood of soul-searching about the state of modern capitalism (see review page 58). That an economics tome of graphs and data can top best-seller lists on both sides of the Atlantic clearly demonstrates the resonance of this issue.

Why does this matter for development and wellbeing?
Over the last two decades we have seen impressive reductions in poverty and improvements in health, education and other key indicators in many of the poorest countries around the world. The rapid economic growth of emerging economies has seen many countries improve their prospects dramatically. While this is hugely encouraging, looking through the lens of simple averages masks the unequal fate of those left behind. A baby born into a rich family in prospering Nigeria will live a longer life with far greater opportunities than a baby born into a poor family.

Gender inequalities will exacerbate these discrepancies even further, with a boy likely to spend more than 10 years in school, compared to the three years of schooling that a girl can expect. These disparities are not just a phenomenon in developing countries. Here in the UK a child born in leafy Richmond, South West London can expect to live 15 years longer than one born in Tower Hamlets in the east of the city. That is a year of extra life for every mile covered as you travel across London.

Whilst the marginalised are falling behind, the elite are moving further ahead. In the US, the richest 10% have captured over 90% of economic growth since the recession, while the poor have got poorer. Money yields money and power.

This massive concentration of economic resources in the hands of a few people presents a significant threat to democracy and wider wellbeing. Those with money can use it to buy power and to set the rules, regulations and policies in their favour, creating a cycle of growing inequality and poverty and undermining opportunity.

Politicians and institutions that should represent citizens and keep inequality in check are instead being influenced by the rich and powerful, resulting in policies and actions that further widen the gap between rich and poor. Society becomes a vicious circle where wealth (income, assets and access to resources) and power (particularly political decision-making) are increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few, reinforcing the continued marginalisation and exclusion of the many. We saw this in the response to the financial crisis, with the banks and bankers bailed out whilst the poorest in society were left to suffer the costs of their risk-taking.

Everywhere I travel I see evidence of this. Women’s low status in society means that the issue of maternal health is neglected in budget allocations. The wives, sisters and daughters of the rich and powerful give birth safely in sparkling new private hospitals, so policymakers have very little incentive to care about the health-care provisions for the half of all women in sub-Saharan Africa who give birth in unsafe conditions without trained support.

It is clear that to eliminate poverty and achieve social justice we need to look beyond the country-level average and understand and address how resources, wealth, power and voice are distributed.

Breaking the cycle of inequality
We know change is possible when governments make the right choices and are accountable to the many, not the few. Countries like Bolivia and Brazil, for example, have in the last decade managed to grow their economies whilst making them more equal. Brazil has achieved this through targeted policies, including an increase in the minimum wage that has seen the poorest 10% receive an income growth above the national average, compared to the rich, who have had income growth below the average.

Bolivia has seen a much sharper fall in inequality, with its government introducing a range of new progressive spending programmes while, crucially, funding them by renegotiating the country’s oil and gas tax revenue. Conversely, robust growth in Zambia, averaging 4.6% between 2000 and 2006, was almost entirely captured by the richest 10%, who increased their share of the country’s wealth by more than 9% while poverty rates increased by almost 4%. When I visited Zambia last year for the first time in a decade, it had moved from low to middle income status. The economy had grown but there were actually more poor people.

Extreme inequality is not inevitable but is the result of policy choices. Different choices can reverse it: free public health services that help everyone while ensuring the poor are not left behind; decent wages that end working poverty; and progressive taxation so that the rich pay their fair share. Governments also need to ensure that there is space for people to have their voices heard to rebalance the power of political influence.

Whilst the Pope tweets and the World Bank blogs about inequality, and as new data raises even louder alarm bells, governments and policymakers around the world can choose to seize this opportunity and be leaders in challenging inequality and restoring social and economic justice. Governments everywhere must commit to a more progressive agenda for redistribution and for a fairer world. Power and special interests must not be allowed to push us to the alternative of being tipped irrevocably into a world that caters only for the privileged.

 

Mark Goldring is the Chief Executive of Oxfam GB. He will be speaking at the Resurgence & Ecologist Festival of Wellbeing on 11 October 2014 in London. For more information and bookings: Festival of Wellbeing bookings

 

 




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Tide turning against global coal industry Updated for 2026

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There are increasing signs of the demise of the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel, from a global oversupply to plummeting prices to China starting to clean up its polluted air.

Last week, the Carbon Tracker Initiative published an analysis – Carbon Supply Cost Curves: Evaluating Financial Risk to Coal Capital Expenditures – identifying major financial risks for investors in coal producers around the world.

The demand for thermal coal in China, the world’s largest emitter of toxic greenhouse gases, could peak as early as 2016, says the report.

The analysis also highlights $112 billion of future coal mine expansion and development that is excess to requirements under lower demand forecasts.

“In particular it shows that high cost new mines are not economic at today’s prices and are unlikely to generate returns for investors in the future”, said an accompanying media release.

“Companies most exposed to low coal demand are those developing new projects, focused on the export market … With new measures to cap coal use and restrict imports of low quality coal in China, it appears the tide is turning against the coal exporters.”

A gloomy outlook for prices, asset values

The analysis added that China’s desire to reduce imports will impact prices and asset values for export mines in the US, Australia, Indonesia and South Africa.

“King Coal is becoming King Canute, as the industry struggles to turn back the tide of reducing demand, falling prices and lower earnings”, said Anthony Hobley, CEO of Carbon Tracker Initiative.

A recent article in Mining Weekly also says the coal industry is indeed facing tough times.

The article noted Coal Association of Canada president Ann Marie Hann agreed that about half of the global coal output at current pricing was being produced at a loss.

“Until a global rebalance between demand and supply takes place and the global economy rebounds, the coal industry will unfortunately probably see some more bad news over the coming months”, Hann said.

The story added that the prices for thermal coal, which is used to generate electricity, had fallen in recent years from about $190 per tonne in mid-2008 to $75 per tonne this year.

Metallurgical coal (used to make steel) had dropped from a high of more than $300 per tonne in late 2011 to less than $120 per tonne.

Under attack from all sides

To perhaps make matters worse for the coal industry, it is being publicly attacked by the oil and gas sectors, which are trying to position themselves as cleaner fossil fuels.

According to the Responding to Climate Change website, a number of the world’s leading oil and gas companies voiced their concerns about climate change at last week’s UN Climate Summit, arguing they can offer a future coal cannot.

“One of our most important contributions is producing natural gas and replacing coal in electricity production”, Helge Lund, Statoil’s chief executive, was quoted as saying.

Kevin Washbrook, a director for Voters Taking Action on Climate Change, a Vancouver organization that has fought against a proposed new coal export facility at Fraser Surrey Docks, agrees the thermal coal sector is in decline.

“I think coal is in everyone’s sights these days because coal is climate change”, Washbrook told DeSmogBlog. “Coal has to be on the chopping block for sure.”

Washbrook added that the UN, the International Energy Agency, big banks and insurance companies are acknowledging that the vast majority of coal must stay in the ground if humankind is to avoid catastrophic, runaway climate change.

“We need to see this current downturn [in the thermal coal sector] for what it really is – our last good opportunity to leave coal behind and start the transition to emission-free energy sources.”

 

 

 

Chris Rose is a journalist for DeSmogBlog and other news outlets, and a communications consultant. Born in Vancouver, his interests include politics, history, demographics, the economy, the environment and energy-related issues.

This article was originally published on DeSmogBlog.

 

 




384881

Five ways to stop the world’s wildlife vanishing Updated for 2026

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Full marks to colleagues at the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London for the Living Planet Report 2014 and its headline message which one hopes ought to shock the world out of its complacency: a 52% decline of wildlife populations in the past 40 years.

Over the summer I re-read Fairfield Osborne’s 1948 classic Our Plundered Planet – the first mass-readership environmental book that detailed the scale of the damage humanity wrought on nature.

Faced with the figures in this report it is easy to slip into despondency and to blame others. But this would be a mistake. At the time, Osborne’s report must have been equally alarming, but the eclectic conservation movement of which he was part responded with confidence, hope and vision.

Their achievements were huge: the creation of a reserve network that forestalled the extinction of African creatures such as the elephant and rhino; the creation of a nature conservation agency, the International Union for Conservation of Nature) (IUCN) within the UN; and a raft of international wildlife agreements.

But what can we do now?

Today, conservation-minded people will probably be wondering what can be done to reverse wildlife declines.

For me the question is: how can today’s conservationists leave a wildlife legacy for the 21st century? I think there are five ways we can change conservation to better fit the circumstances we face.

1. Decentralise and diversify

The effort to ensure that nature conservation became a policy area of the UN necessitated developing a strong international conservation regime.

This has served us well, but the world has changed: centralised authority has given way to messy, networked governance organised across many levels.

If the Balinese want to restore Bali Starling populations in coconut plantations I say applaud their vision and learn from their innovation.

What matters is that wildlife populations flourish, not that some institutionalised notion of a ‘wild species’ gains global consensus. It is time to nurture diversity in conservation practice.

2. View wildlife as an asset

Since the 1990s conservation has become overly technocratic, with nature framed as a natural resource and stock of capital available for human economic development. Given human self-interest this just leads to arguments over who gets what share.

I suggest a better way to frame environmental policy is in terms of natural assets – places, attributes and processes that while representing forms of value to invest in, are also at risk of being eroded and must be protected.

We’ve done this before – think of great national parks where wildlife conservation, natural beautification and outdoor recreation combine for the benefit of wildlife, while also emphasising regional or national identity, health and cultural and economic worth.

3. Embrace re-wilding

Re-wilding is gaining traction. I see re-wilding as an opening, an opportunity for creative thinking and action that will affect the future.

A key theme is restoration of trophic levels – in which the missing large animals at the top of the food chain are reintroduced, allowing natural ecosystem processes to reassert themselves.

We might ask whether today’s reported declines in wildlife are a symptom of the ecosystem becoming more simple and, if so, whether re-wilding will lead to more abundant wildlife. Ecological intuition suggests the latter but in truth we don’t know.

In my view we need large-scale, publicly-financed re-wilding experiments to explore and develop new ways of rebuilding wildlife populations as an asset for society.

4. Harness new technologies

It’s clear that wildlife conservation is moving from being a data-poor to a data-rich science. The methods that underpin the Living Planet Report are state-of-the art, but even so we have yet to capture the analytical potential of ‘big data’.

Recent rapid developments in sensor technologies look set to bring about a step change in environmental research and monitoring.

In ten year’s time, I predict that the challenge for indexing the planet will shift from searching out and compiling data sets to working out how to deal with an environmental ‘data deluge’.

Despite this, wildlife conservation lacks a coherent vision and strategy. There are plenty of interesting technological innovations, but they are fragmented and individualistic in nature. We need leadership and investment to better harness them.

5. Re-engage the powerful

Like it or not, the wildlife conservation movement was at its most influential – as a policy and cultural imperative – when it was filled with active members drawn from the political, aristocratic, business, scientific, artistic and bureaucratic elites.

This was between 1890 and 1970. Over the past 40 years conservation organisations have become more professional, building close working relations with bureaucrats, but approaching other elites simply as sources of patronage, funds and publicity.

Conservation organisations must open-up, loosen their corporate structures and let leaders from other walks of life actively contribute their opinion, insight and influence to the cause.

But above all, keep caring

These are five starting points for discussion rather than prescriptions. Perhaps the greatest asset we have is the deep-rooted sense of concern for wildlife found across cultures, professions and classes.

It’s time to open up the discussion, to put forward new ideas for debate, and to ask others to suggest new and novel ways to save wildlife.

 

 

The report: Living Planet Report 2014.

Paul Jepson is Course Director, MSc Biodiversity, Conservation and Management at the University of Oxford. He does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Also on The Ecologist

 

The Conversation

 




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To save the world’s wildlife, first we must love it Updated for 2026

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While the picky might point out flaws in the methodology, I cannot help but be impressed that large organisations like WWF and ZSL are willing to come out with a grand gesture.

Their report, perhaps ironically entitled ‘Living Planet‘ states that in the last 40 years the planet has lost over 50% of its animals.

Now, they are referring to vertebrates – and also admit that we do not know quite how many there are of most things … but … still this is a breathtaking figure, for anyone who has not been paying attention.

Hedgehogs – down 37% in 10 years

For those that have been paying attention, this sort of decline is already well-known. I have been studying hedgehogs since the mid 1980s – and the anecdotal observations have consistently been of a decline in their numbers.

It was only in 2011 that we (I work with the British Hedgehog Preservation Society and the People’s Trust for Endangered Species) were in a position to get the research done to give us a concrete answer to the scale of the decline.

And when we updated it last year, even I, so deeply involved, was horrified. There has been a 37% decline in hedgehogs in Britain in the last ten years.

That is a faster rate of decline than that being experienced by tigers in the wild.

Extinction is the end of long period of attrition

What most interests me about this report is that it is looking at the numbers of animals themselves. Too often the attention is focussed on the demise of a species. But the moment of extinction is really rather trivial compared to the decades before.

Thom van Dooren described this well in his book, Flight Ways. The loss of the last of a species is nothing compared to the loss of the mass of individuals before that one, which is nothing compared to the loss of functionality within the ecosystem and which is topped off by the evolutionary loss – the millions of years and individuals that have gone in to creating that one, last creature.

All of this is being wiped out by our violence. Van Dooren describes it as a “violence that is often rendered invisible … by its slowness.”

How can we stop that violence? The first thing is to become aware that it is going on – and this report is a valuable step in that direction. But we need to look deeper than a simple awareness as that will tend to give us a false sense of security.

Somehow, this was not worth asking the Prime Minister about

We will look back to what we remember as the golden era of bountiful wildlife – which will be within our lifetime – and hope to recreate such a scene.

But that was already a disastrously denuded landscape. This is the idea of ‘shifting baselines’ that is beginning to get the attention it should. We need to be more ambitious.

As the news of this report broke on Tuesday morning, some attention was paid. But it was treated almost as a light item to insert alongside the real news of economy and fear. The Prime Minister was interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. I was not surprised that no mention of this report was made – but I still fumed.

Satish Kumar once said that it is a madness that we concentrate so much on the economy and so little on the ecology – both words stem from the same root – oikos, meaning home.

And ecology means the study of our home – economy, management. To have one without the other is absurd. Having one without the other is why we are suffering such catastrophic loss.

Appreciate the wonder of life – and act to save it

At times the realisation of the extent of loss leaves me gasping – and I do think that there is a need to engage in a form of grieving for what has gone.

But we also need to create change. And for that we need to embrace the rather unscientific notion of love. As Stephen Jay Gould said, “We will not fight to save what we do not love.”

But loving the vulnerable sets you up for grief, so we hold back, erect walls, and numb ourselves with quick fixes. But without taking that risk of falling in love we will always remain removed from the reality of the problem and will never find the solution.

We may be going to hell in a handcart, but we are doing so surrounded by an awe-inspiring world – surrounded by, as Darwin said, “endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful”.

And that includes the people – among whom I hope, so deeply, are already seeded the solutions which will pull us back from this brink.

 

 

The report: Living Planet Report 2014.

Hugh Warwick is an ecologist and author. For more information, articles etc, see his website: www.urchin.info.

Books by Hugh Warwick


Also on The Ecologist

 

 




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World Bank ‘failing to protect Kenya forest dwellers’ Updated for 2026

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A leaked copy of a World Bank investigation seen by The Guardian has accused the bank of failing to protect the rights of one of Kenya’s last groups of forest people, who are being evicted from their ancestral lands in the name of climate change and conservation.

Thousands of homes belonging to hunter-gatherer Sengwer people living in the Embobut forest in the Cherangani hills were burned down earlier this year by Kenya forest service guards who had been ordered to clear the forest as part of a carbon offset project that aimed to reduce emissions from deforestation.

The result has been that more than 1,000 people living near the town of Eldoret have been classed as squatters and forced to flee what they say has been government harassment, intimidation and arrest.

UN condemnation – but no change in policy

The evictions were condemned in February by the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples and the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination.

They also drew in the president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, who expressed alarm at what was described by 360 national and international civil society organisations and individuals as “cultural genocide”.

An Avaaz petition collected 950,000 names calling for the bank to urgently halt the “illegal” evictions.

Following a request by the Sengwer to assess the impact of the bank’s funding of the project, the bank’s inspection panel decided in May that it had violated safeguards in several areas. At the same time, the bank’s management decided to ignore most of the independent panel’s recommendations.

“Unfortunately, the World Bank’s own leaked management response to the report denies many of the findings, evidently sees little importance in the fact that violation of safeguard policies has occurred, and presents an inadequate action plan to be considered by the bank’s board. It simply proposes more training for forest service staff, and a meeting to examine what can be learnt”, said a spokesman for the UK-based Forest Peoples Programme.

“President Kim said the bank would not be bystanders, but only by taking seriously the many breaches of its own safeguards and approving the action plan requested by the Sengwer people themselves to overcome the human rights violations that these breaches have contributed to will the bank be able to demonstrate that the president has been true to his word”, said Peter Kitelo, a representative of Kenya’s Forest Indigenous Peoples Network.

World Bank directors to decide the Sengwer’s fate today

A final decision on the project is due today when the World Bank board meets in Washington under the chairmanship of Kim to decide on the bank’s response to the inspection panel report.

If the board decides to endorse the action plan, the evictions are certain to be completed. More than half the people evicted are thought to have returned to their lands.

“The eviction of such ancestral communities leaves the indigenous forests open to exploitation and destruction; whereas securing such communities rights to their lands and responsibility to continue traditional conservation practices, protects their forests”, said the Forest Peoples Programme.

 

 

John Vidal is Environment Editor for The Guardian.

This article was originally published by The Guardian and is reproduced with thanks via The Guardian Environment Network.

 

 




384721

World Bank ‘failing to protect Kenya forest dwellers’ Updated for 2026

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A leaked copy of a World Bank investigation seen by The Guardian has accused the bank of failing to protect the rights of one of Kenya’s last groups of forest people, who are being evicted from their ancestral lands in the name of climate change and conservation.

Thousands of homes belonging to hunter-gatherer Sengwer people living in the Embobut forest in the Cherangani hills were burned down earlier this year by Kenya forest service guards who had been ordered to clear the forest as part of a carbon offset project that aimed to reduce emissions from deforestation.

The result has been that more than 1,000 people living near the town of Eldoret have been classed as squatters and forced to flee what they say has been government harassment, intimidation and arrest.

UN condemnation – but no change in policy

The evictions were condemned in February by the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples and the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination.

They also drew in the president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, who expressed alarm at what was described by 360 national and international civil society organisations and individuals as “cultural genocide”.

An Avaaz petition collected 950,000 names calling for the bank to urgently halt the “illegal” evictions.

Following a request by the Sengwer to assess the impact of the bank’s funding of the project, the bank’s inspection panel decided in May that it had violated safeguards in several areas. At the same time, the bank’s management decided to ignore most of the independent panel’s recommendations.

“Unfortunately, the World Bank’s own leaked management response to the report denies many of the findings, evidently sees little importance in the fact that violation of safeguard policies has occurred, and presents an inadequate action plan to be considered by the bank’s board. It simply proposes more training for forest service staff, and a meeting to examine what can be learnt”, said a spokesman for the UK-based Forest Peoples Programme.

“President Kim said the bank would not be bystanders, but only by taking seriously the many breaches of its own safeguards and approving the action plan requested by the Sengwer people themselves to overcome the human rights violations that these breaches have contributed to will the bank be able to demonstrate that the president has been true to his word”, said Peter Kitelo, a representative of Kenya’s Forest Indigenous Peoples Network.

World Bank directors to decide the Sengwer’s fate today

A final decision on the project is due today when the World Bank board meets in Washington under the chairmanship of Kim to decide on the bank’s response to the inspection panel report.

If the board decides to endorse the action plan, the evictions are certain to be completed. More than half the people evicted are thought to have returned to their lands.

“The eviction of such ancestral communities leaves the indigenous forests open to exploitation and destruction; whereas securing such communities rights to their lands and responsibility to continue traditional conservation practices, protects their forests”, said the Forest Peoples Programme.

 

 

John Vidal is Environment Editor for The Guardian.

This article was originally published by The Guardian and is reproduced with thanks via The Guardian Environment Network.

 

 




384721

World Bank ‘failing to protect Kenya forest dwellers’ Updated for 2026

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A leaked copy of a World Bank investigation seen by The Guardian has accused the bank of failing to protect the rights of one of Kenya’s last groups of forest people, who are being evicted from their ancestral lands in the name of climate change and conservation.

Thousands of homes belonging to hunter-gatherer Sengwer people living in the Embobut forest in the Cherangani hills were burned down earlier this year by Kenya forest service guards who had been ordered to clear the forest as part of a carbon offset project that aimed to reduce emissions from deforestation.

The result has been that more than 1,000 people living near the town of Eldoret have been classed as squatters and forced to flee what they say has been government harassment, intimidation and arrest.

UN condemnation – but no change in policy

The evictions were condemned in February by the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples and the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination.

They also drew in the president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, who expressed alarm at what was described by 360 national and international civil society organisations and individuals as “cultural genocide”.

An Avaaz petition collected 950,000 names calling for the bank to urgently halt the “illegal” evictions.

Following a request by the Sengwer to assess the impact of the bank’s funding of the project, the bank’s inspection panel decided in May that it had violated safeguards in several areas. At the same time, the bank’s management decided to ignore most of the independent panel’s recommendations.

“Unfortunately, the World Bank’s own leaked management response to the report denies many of the findings, evidently sees little importance in the fact that violation of safeguard policies has occurred, and presents an inadequate action plan to be considered by the bank’s board. It simply proposes more training for forest service staff, and a meeting to examine what can be learnt”, said a spokesman for the UK-based Forest Peoples Programme.

“President Kim said the bank would not be bystanders, but only by taking seriously the many breaches of its own safeguards and approving the action plan requested by the Sengwer people themselves to overcome the human rights violations that these breaches have contributed to will the bank be able to demonstrate that the president has been true to his word”, said Peter Kitelo, a representative of Kenya’s Forest Indigenous Peoples Network.

World Bank directors to decide the Sengwer’s fate today

A final decision on the project is due today when the World Bank board meets in Washington under the chairmanship of Kim to decide on the bank’s response to the inspection panel report.

If the board decides to endorse the action plan, the evictions are certain to be completed. More than half the people evicted are thought to have returned to their lands.

“The eviction of such ancestral communities leaves the indigenous forests open to exploitation and destruction; whereas securing such communities rights to their lands and responsibility to continue traditional conservation practices, protects their forests”, said the Forest Peoples Programme.

 

 

John Vidal is Environment Editor for The Guardian.

This article was originally published by The Guardian and is reproduced with thanks via The Guardian Environment Network.

 

 




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World Bank ‘failing to protect Kenya forest dwellers’ Updated for 2026

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A leaked copy of a World Bank investigation seen by The Guardian has accused the bank of failing to protect the rights of one of Kenya’s last groups of forest people, who are being evicted from their ancestral lands in the name of climate change and conservation.

Thousands of homes belonging to hunter-gatherer Sengwer people living in the Embobut forest in the Cherangani hills were burned down earlier this year by Kenya forest service guards who had been ordered to clear the forest as part of a carbon offset project that aimed to reduce emissions from deforestation.

The result has been that more than 1,000 people living near the town of Eldoret have been classed as squatters and forced to flee what they say has been government harassment, intimidation and arrest.

UN condemnation – but no change in policy

The evictions were condemned in February by the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples and the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination.

They also drew in the president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, who expressed alarm at what was described by 360 national and international civil society organisations and individuals as “cultural genocide”.

An Avaaz petition collected 950,000 names calling for the bank to urgently halt the “illegal” evictions.

Following a request by the Sengwer to assess the impact of the bank’s funding of the project, the bank’s inspection panel decided in May that it had violated safeguards in several areas. At the same time, the bank’s management decided to ignore most of the independent panel’s recommendations.

“Unfortunately, the World Bank’s own leaked management response to the report denies many of the findings, evidently sees little importance in the fact that violation of safeguard policies has occurred, and presents an inadequate action plan to be considered by the bank’s board. It simply proposes more training for forest service staff, and a meeting to examine what can be learnt”, said a spokesman for the UK-based Forest Peoples Programme.

“President Kim said the bank would not be bystanders, but only by taking seriously the many breaches of its own safeguards and approving the action plan requested by the Sengwer people themselves to overcome the human rights violations that these breaches have contributed to will the bank be able to demonstrate that the president has been true to his word”, said Peter Kitelo, a representative of Kenya’s Forest Indigenous Peoples Network.

World Bank directors to decide the Sengwer’s fate today

A final decision on the project is due today when the World Bank board meets in Washington under the chairmanship of Kim to decide on the bank’s response to the inspection panel report.

If the board decides to endorse the action plan, the evictions are certain to be completed. More than half the people evicted are thought to have returned to their lands.

“The eviction of such ancestral communities leaves the indigenous forests open to exploitation and destruction; whereas securing such communities rights to their lands and responsibility to continue traditional conservation practices, protects their forests”, said the Forest Peoples Programme.

 

 

John Vidal is Environment Editor for The Guardian.

This article was originally published by The Guardian and is reproduced with thanks via The Guardian Environment Network.

 

 




384721

World Bank ‘failing to protect Kenya forest dwellers’ Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




A leaked copy of a World Bank investigation seen by The Guardian has accused the bank of failing to protect the rights of one of Kenya’s last groups of forest people, who are being evicted from their ancestral lands in the name of climate change and conservation.

Thousands of homes belonging to hunter-gatherer Sengwer people living in the Embobut forest in the Cherangani hills were burned down earlier this year by Kenya forest service guards who had been ordered to clear the forest as part of a carbon offset project that aimed to reduce emissions from deforestation.

The result has been that more than 1,000 people living near the town of Eldoret have been classed as squatters and forced to flee what they say has been government harassment, intimidation and arrest.

UN condemnation – but no change in policy

The evictions were condemned in February by the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples and the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination.

They also drew in the president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, who expressed alarm at what was described by 360 national and international civil society organisations and individuals as “cultural genocide”.

An Avaaz petition collected 950,000 names calling for the bank to urgently halt the “illegal” evictions.

Following a request by the Sengwer to assess the impact of the bank’s funding of the project, the bank’s inspection panel decided in May that it had violated safeguards in several areas. At the same time, the bank’s management decided to ignore most of the independent panel’s recommendations.

“Unfortunately, the World Bank’s own leaked management response to the report denies many of the findings, evidently sees little importance in the fact that violation of safeguard policies has occurred, and presents an inadequate action plan to be considered by the bank’s board. It simply proposes more training for forest service staff, and a meeting to examine what can be learnt”, said a spokesman for the UK-based Forest Peoples Programme.

“President Kim said the bank would not be bystanders, but only by taking seriously the many breaches of its own safeguards and approving the action plan requested by the Sengwer people themselves to overcome the human rights violations that these breaches have contributed to will the bank be able to demonstrate that the president has been true to his word”, said Peter Kitelo, a representative of Kenya’s Forest Indigenous Peoples Network.

World Bank directors to decide the Sengwer’s fate today

A final decision on the project is due today when the World Bank board meets in Washington under the chairmanship of Kim to decide on the bank’s response to the inspection panel report.

If the board decides to endorse the action plan, the evictions are certain to be completed. More than half the people evicted are thought to have returned to their lands.

“The eviction of such ancestral communities leaves the indigenous forests open to exploitation and destruction; whereas securing such communities rights to their lands and responsibility to continue traditional conservation practices, protects their forests”, said the Forest Peoples Programme.

 

 

John Vidal is Environment Editor for The Guardian.

This article was originally published by The Guardian and is reproduced with thanks via The Guardian Environment Network.

 

 




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