Why the World Bank is Neither Monitoring, Nor Complying with the FAO Guidelines on Responsible Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests

Abstract

Around the world, peasants, pastoralists, indigenous peoples and fisher folk are facing increasing increased threats of displacement and dispossession. The confluence of the food, financial and climate crises has further exaggerated pressures on land and forests, spurring land grabs, green grabs and countless conflicts over natural resources.1 The deepening “ecological hoofprint”2 resulting from expanding industrial meat production and the corresponding demand for animal feed, along with the boom in biofuels production, are key drivers of these dynamics around the world.3 Meanwhile, the World Bank’s 2008 report on agriculture for development ramps up support for “new agriculture” based on the same corporate model of industrial production—what McMichael calls “new wine in old bottles”—a development project that squeezes rural farming economies toward concentrated control by corporate actors and pushes small-scale producers off of their land.