The Land Grabbers The New Fight over Who Owns the Earth

by PEARCE, FRED

• ISBN13: 9780807003244
• ISBN10: 0807003247
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-05-29
• Publisher: Beacon Press

Summary

The Land Grabbersis a first-of-its-kind exposé that reveals the unprecedented land grab taking place around the world. Fearing future food shortages and the over-financialization of the stock market, the world's richest countries, corporations, hedge funds, and individuals have spent the last few years buying and leasing vast swaths of foreign soil-including parcels as large as the state of Massachusetts. From the plains of Africa to the jungles and prairies of South America, author Fred Pearce has traveled the globe to investigate the full scale and effects of the land grab, resulting in a larger-than-life cast of characters that includes Wall Street speculators, Gulf oil sheiks, Chinese entrepreneurs, big-name financiers like George Soros, and industry titans like Richard Branson. Along the way, Pearce introduces us to the people who actually live on, and live off of, the supposedly vacant land that is being grabbed, from Cambodian peasants, victimized first by the Khmer Rouge and now by crony capitalism, to African pastoralists confined to ever-smaller tracts. Corporate and governmental promises about the benefits of development, Pearce shows us, are often illusory, masking environmental and social destruction and the massive transfer of wealth out of host countries. This is investigative journalism at its best, taking the reader beyond the abstract claims in corporate reports to shed light on the human realities that underlie the land grab.

Author Biography

Fred Pearce is an award-winning author and journalist based in London. He has reported on environment, science, and development issues from sixty-seven countries over the past twenty years. Environment consultant at New Scientist since 1992, he also writes regularly for the Guardian newspaper and Yale University’s prestigious e360 website. Pearce was voted UK Environment Journalist of the Year in 2001 and CGIAR agricultural research journalist of the year in 2002, and won a lifetime achievement award from the Association of British Science Writers in 2011. His many books include With Speed and Violence, Confessions of an Eco-Sinner, The Coming Population Crash, and When the Rivers Run Dry. 

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part One : land wars

Chapter 1 Gambella, Ethiopia
Tragedy in the Commons
 
Chapter 2 Chicago, U.S.A.
The Price of Food

Chapter 3 Saudi Arabia
Plowing in the Petrodollars

Chapter 4 South Sudan
Up the Nile with the Capitalists of Chaos

Part Two : White Men in Africa

Chapter 5 Yala Swamp, Kenya
One Man’s Dominion

Chapter 6 Liberia
The Resource Curse

Chapter 7 Palm Bay, Liberia
Return of the Oil Palm

Chapter 8 London, England
Pinstripes and Pitchforks

Part Three : Across the Globe

Chapter 9 Ukraine
Lebensraum

Chapter 10 Western Bahia, Brazil
Soylandia

Chapter 11 Chaco, Paraguay
Chaco Apocalyptico

Chapter 12 Latin America
The New Conquistadors

Chapter 13 Patagonia
The Last Place on Earth

Chapter 14 Australia
Under the Shade of a Coolibah Tree

Part Four : China ’s backyard

Chapter 15 Sumatra, Indonesia
Pulping the Jungle

Chapter 16 Papua New Guinea
“A Truly Wild Island”

Chapter 17 Cambodia
Sweet and Sour

Chapter 18 Southeast Asia
Rubber Hits the Road to China

Part Five : African dreams

Chapter 19 Maasailand, Tanzania
The White People’s Place

Chapter 20 South Africa
Green Grab

Chapter 21 Africa
The Second Great Trek

Chapter 22 Mozambique
The Biofuels Bubble

Chapter 23 Zimbabwe
On the Fast Track

Part Six : the last enclosure

Chapter 24 Central Africa
Laws of the Jungle

Chapter 25 Inner Niger Delta, Mali
West African Water Grab

Chapter 26 Badia, Jordan
On the Commons

Chapter 27 London, England
Feeding the World

notes on sources
index