Since the 1990s, all over the world companies and governments have been invading the land and extracting the resources belonging to communities for hundreds of years. Prafulla Samantra, is the 2017 Goldman Environmental Prize winner, a life long activist working to protect democratic rights and preserve natural resources like forests, rivers, and water sources.
Prafulla is a speaker at this year’s Global Land Forum in Bandung where he will be speaking about the power of grassroots mobilisation.
As an activist for many years, he sees a growing threat of corporations coming together, invading the land and resources of communities, and seeing a shift of interest on from Governments to protect private companies in the expense of their people.
“From one end, land is taken away from the traditional farmers and forest dwellers, and from the other, where people have habitat rights on natural resources, they are being exploited for development projects without consent of the people.”
Examples
-South Korean steel company POSCO in India have destroyed paddy fields, beetle farming and fishery and took control of 5000 acres of land. It has ultimately displaced nearly 20,000 people. Within the last 10 years more than 400 people including major numbers of women have been booked under false criminal charges by the police for which many people remained in the jail and victimized by the police and corporate-goons.
-TATA an Indian Multi National Company tried to take the land of the indigenous community of Kalinga Nagar of Odisha
-A new dam on the Narmada river has recently been constructed. Currently, the livelihoods of over 40,000 families is undetermined.
How Prafulla and others are tackling land grabbing
A key aspect, according to Prafulla on tackling large land grabbing is to “organise the people who earn their livelihood from land” who are vulnerable to land grabbing. “we have to bring all the communities dependent on land and natural resources to have united fight against corporate capture of land and rivers.”
Another important step is to “identify the laws which favour people environment and preservation of resources and to use these laws to counter the corporate’s exploitation.” With this information we can challenge the government and challenge corporations in the court of law to prove that their activities are a violation of the law.
Protecting land through a united global campaign
We can make the biggest impact with the largest front. According to Prafulla, we have to stand united at national and international levels.
His suggestion? To make a consensus on 5 key points
1. The agriculture and any land having cultivation of food crops including Natural Forest of having habitat right of indigenous people can not be used for non-agriculture and can not be converted to commercial goods and services.
2. Land should not be personal property or state property, It should be commons under communities.
3. There should be land reforms by which land can be distributed to small farmers for mass production
4. There should be no primitive accumulation of capital by land. Where ever it happens profit must be shared by the farmers that is the original tenants of land.
5. Land can not be considered as it belongs to only present generation but the future generations are also inheritors.
Picture Credit: Down to Earth Magazine
