Water Dimensions of ‘Land Grabbing’

Feb 2, 2014 | Africa UP Close
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In recent years, arable land has become a highly coveted commodity in the global market. Emphasizing land as the issue at stake, water dimensions of ‘land grabbing’ are often forgotten. If, as Lester Brown said, “food is the new oil” and “land is the new gold”, then what is water? African governments are blamed for leasing land to foreign (and domestic) firms at throw-away prices, but do governments attach any value to agricultural water use on these lands? If weak land governance is at the center of most ‘land grabs’ occurring in Africa (and the developing world in general), what would be the social and environmental consequences of the even worse water governance? Answering these broad, but important, questions would go beyond the remit of this essay. Here the questions are only intended to serve as a gentle reminder that we should start exploring the water dimensions of ‘land grabbing’ to avoid serious environmental, social, economic, and political consequences.[i] The fact that ‘water grabbing’ is usually “invisible” should not hinder us from quantifying the volume of “grabbed” water, before export in the form of food or fuel crops