Land Grabs - Liberia's Titanic Problem

 

by Jamie Gorman

Sitting in the rural Liberian village of Small Bong Mines, about to eat a meal at the house of one of my new colleagues at the Sustainable Development Institute -Friends of the Earth (FoE) Liberia- the voice of Celine Dion unexpectedly floated across the dead heat of the midday sun. 'Near, far, where ever you are,' she cried, 'my heart will go on'. The local radio station was commemorating the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, a terrible tragedy that cost the lives of 1,500 people in icy Atlantic waters. The parallels between that 'unsinkable' liner and this West African republic may at first seem distant. Yet as I sat, stomach grumbling in anticipation of the rice and fish dish being freshly prepared in front of us, it became clear that there are some important similarities.

I have spent much of the last week living with and meeting the communities who, without their consent, now find themselves living on an 110,000 hectare palm oil plantation as a result of a land grab that has given a total of 220,000 hectares to Malaysian based trans-national company (TNC) Sime Darby. FoE Libera, has been active in a number of these communities and has held public meetings. This week has focused on engaging those isolated communities who have not yet received much information or participated in dialogue, as well as revisiting and sustaining support for those who are already working with FoE Liberia and actively engaging in natural resource and community rights issues.

Like the Titanic, the sheer scale of this land grab is unbelievable. The Liberian government has signed a 63 year contract with Sime Darby (in a country where the average life expectancy is 46 this is hard to fathom), after which the lands will revert to government ownership and never return to the communities that have customarily held them for generations. The contract gives the company the power to decide which communities it wishes to displace and resettle, although by taking the land from which communities derive their livelihoods Sime Darby can force the communities to leave voluntarily without the company needing to bear the cost or publicity of resettling them.

As the Titanic slipped underwater on the night of 15 April 1912, the lifeboats were deployed to save the wealthiest first class and second class passengers. The majority of third class passengers- many of whom had been forced to emigrate to escape from poverty in Britain and Ireland- and the working class crew remained on the ship as it sank. They drowned inside the flooding compartments or froze in the water under the starry Atlantic sky. Their social class marginalisation resulted in their lives being divested of value and in this situation of life or death they were not afforded the right to choose. Their right to respect and dignity was not considered important compared to that of the wealthy passengers.

Here in Liberia, the communities of this land grab will be removed from their land, displaced from their homes and denied their culture. Much like rural Ireland, where newcomers to a community remain 'blow-ins' decades after they have blown in, displaced communities will be strangers where ever there go for generations to come. Generations will suffer from the violence of this injustice as the respect they are refused today continues to deny them their dignity tomorrow. Like many of the working class victims of the Titanic disaster, the victims of this land grab are from marginalised and rural communities. They have not been considered important enough to be afforded the right to choose their own futures.

Although the effects will not be as suddenly realised as those of the Titanic's iceberg encounter, they will be just as devastating. 'If we agree to this we will be enslaving ourselves on our own land. We will have to migrate or we will die!' noted one impassioned community leader. He suggested that the company had tried to give him money and that government officials had made efforts to coerce him into agreeing to the land grab. 'They infringe on the rights of the common man so that they can get what they want,' he exclaimed, 'these guys are making big money; they don't want to respect our customary rights.'

For this fragile democracy, barely ten years out of terrible civil war, the potential for land grabbing and resource exploitation to plunge the country back into unrest is very real. There is great need for civil society organisations to bolster democracy, accountability and governance- so that the government works for the people and not TNC's profits. In this way the amazing work of FoE Liberia is very timely. They are providing the information about what will happen that the company has failed to tell people, they are working for collective action in the communities so their voices can be heard and helping them to engage in the discourse on climate change and natural resources that they have been cut out of because it has been controlled by global elites for the benefit of their own profits.

Sitting below the same stars under which Titanic floundered, listening to one FoE organiser explaining carbon trading to farmers in a tiny remote village, was mind-blowing. These are the people who will be affected by monoculture plantations that Northern TNCs will benefit from; these are the people who will be affected by the climate change that those companies will help to bring about. Yet no one had ever thought that their opinion mattered- And of course, their opinion doesn't matter to the companies' profits. But if Liberian development is to continue full steam ahead, and not run aground as the Titanic did one hundred years ago, then their opinions must matter. If these rural communities are sacrificed for the benefit and profit of Liberia's 'first class passengers' then the world will have failed to prevent a gross injustice and Liberia will fail to reach its final destination where all people are treated with the equal dignity and respect they deserve.