Tuesday 02 December 2008
by: The Chronicles of Favilla, Les Échos
Farmer working in Madagascar fields. Les Échos's editors reflect on the political limits of globalization: "Can a people accept the alienation of their own land in the name of the market?" (Photo: Ze Eduardo / Flickr)
The latest globalization news: South Korean company Daewoo Logistics is negotiating the 99-year rental of some 1.3 million hectares of agricultural lands with Madagascar's government - that is, a forty-fifth of the island's surface: as though France bestowed freedom of disposition over two of its departments to a foreign investor for a century. One million hectares in the western part of the country will be devoted to corn cultivation (American seeds); the rest, in the east, to palm oil cultivation (Costa Rican seeds). Now here's a "clash of civilizations" political scientist Samuel Huntington had not envisaged when he published his famous book of that title in 1996.
This operation, though exceptional in its scope, is not the only one of its kind: other African countries - Sudan, Ethiopia, Angola, Tanzania ... - also propose the sale or long-term concessions of their territory. The countries involved on the other side of these transactions are those that lack farmable lands and possess - or can pay for - the necessary competencies to develop them: South Korea and the Gulf countries, most notably. Such transactions, according to specialists, have increased since the global explosion of agricultural prices at the end of 2007.
The British press sees these deals as a form of "neo-colonialism." The South Korean press retorts that Western countries are in a poor position to give lessons in morality on this score. One could even cynically maintain that Asian countries possess a political advantage over European powers in their relations with Africa: they've never presumed to give Africa lessons in democracy.
Of course, everything will depend on the way these contracts are applied. Daewoo promises enormous infrastructure investments. On the other hand, the bulk of the agricultural production will leave for Korea and the fate of small Malagasy farmers does not seem to be its priority. Above all, such operations have an enormous symbolic impact: the financial handover of entire regions seems a practice of another age - Napoleon selling Louisiana to the United States in 1803 ... Globalization is beneficial because it allows investments to be allocated to the most productive use on a planetary scale. The problem is that we don't really know its political limits: can a people accept the alienation of their own land in the name of the market?
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Translation: Truthout French language editor Leslie Thatcher.
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