Is Asia for Sale?:

Resource Grabbing, Investments & People’s Campaigns in Southeast Asia

Mary Ann Manahan, Focus on the Global South

September 15, 2014

Outline

• Framework: Emerging Green Consensus• Context• Drivers of Investments in Land: ASEAN

Economic Integration • Trends: Enclosures and Territorialization • People’s Campaigns and Struggles

UNEP’s Green Economy: Nature as Capita l multiple crises caused by misallocation of ‘capital’; sets the stage

for the creation of markets where nature and its ecosystem functions will be priced

Land, Water, ‘Green’ Grabbing and Control of Commons

CONTEXT

• Resource grabbing not a new phenomenon

• In recent years, increase attention on new wave of foreign acquisitions of agricultural lands/ global land grab in global South due to media reports

• Triggered by complex and interrelated crises in food, finance, energy and climate--- revaluation of rush to control land

• Mantra: for development, food and water security, agricultural investment, and energy security.

ASEAN Economic Community: A Driver of Land Investments in Asia

(1) ASEAN FDI

Record level FDI in 2010 amounting to US$75.8 billion compared to US$37.8 billion in 2009

(2) Sectoral Composition

Where is the money going?

(3) Global Value Chains

Increasing pressure on raw materials (esp. for mining)- resource wars trigger greater competition; leads to increase price of raw materials

Agriculture Value Chain Example CP operations

The parent company of CPF, CP Group is one of the first Asian multinational companies with revenue reaching $33 billion yearly. It has subsidiaries in 15 countries in the world engaged in several businesses, including agribusiness, food processing, retail, telecommunications and property development.

Growth in the Mekong RegionCountry GDP Growth Main Drivers of Growth/Slump

Cambodia 6.8 % Garments and Footwear exportsTourism

Lao PDR 7.8 % Hydropower, Mining, manufacturing

Tourism

Myanmar 5.5% Investments in hydropower, gas and oil

Thailand 0.1 % Effect of widespread flooding; slump in manufacturing

Vietnam 5.9 % Expansion in services; Tourism

Development Plans

Policy ContextCountry No. of signed BITS

(as of 2012)

Brunei 6

Cambodia 21

Indonesia 63

Lao PDR 23

Malaysia 67

Myanmar 6

Philippines 35

SIngapore 41

Thailand 39

Vietnam 58

TOTAL 359

Investment Policy

ASEAN Comprehensive Investment

Agreement (ACIA) A single investment agreement that provides

clearer interaction of relevant provisions: e.g.

liberalization and protection

Regional Economic Integration

ASEAN Economic Community Blueprint: Free flow of investments in AEC A free and open investment regime is key to

enhancing ASEAN’s competitiveness in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) as well as intra-ASEAN investment

Investment is a core element of the goal toestablish ASEAN as a Single Market and Production Base

Integration and Investments

In fact, for CPF Philippines, the timing was just right. “We will be ahead when others decide to come to the Philippines” -- Pinij Kungvankij, vice chair of Charoen Pokphand Foods (CPF) Philippines Corp.

ASEN integration was a major consideration when the company decided to start infusing investments into the Philippines last year.

WHAT ARE HAPPENING TO LAND AND OTHER RESOURCES?

Enclosures

• New frontiers of resource control : new enclosures for agriculture, mining, forest exploitation, conservation, national parks, real estate, townships, extraction, industry, etc.

• “Green grabbing” /Payment for Ecological Services– enclosures with ostensible environmental aims

Kratie, Cambodia

Enclosures are detrimental to those who rely on what we call as ‘commons’, esp. poor and

marginalized women

• threatens access to and control of land and natural resources including customary rights to water, forests and ecosystems

• Affects people’s livelihoods and ability to feed themselves and the community, especially of low-income and poor rural women

A rubber plantation owned by a Vietnamese

Company in a community forest

What happened to the the people?

They lost their sources of food, water

and fuel and their access to their

community forest.

• Employment opportunities? For whom?

Case of Kampongcham, in the subdistrict/commune of

Chomkravean

Other Issues

• Embedded in struggles of farmers, IPs, rural women for access to land/land rights

• Myth/Creation of “frontiers”—newly available land (newly valuable land) for export production

• Accompanied by militarization and harassment/violation of human rights

• Differentiated impacts– across class, gender and ethnicity

Territorialization

Power of the State: Eminent Domain

• Creation of new territories for investment through ceasefires, relocation of villages from upland to lowlands (as in Laos, VN, Burma, Indonesia)

• Burma—“ceasefire capitalism”—alliances with Chinese and other Asian investors and Singaporean banks to move from jade and timber economies to large scale industrial agricultural economy (big support from China—esp. in Northern Burma)

DAWEI

Source: TERRA, 2012

Conceptual Plan of Dawei Mega Project

204.5 square kilometerthe fifth biggest Industrial Estate in the world and the biggest one of Thailand. (30 sq KM)

Source: TERRA, 2012

Source: TERRA, 2012

Community defence struggles Land occupation /

positioning / cultivation has often been used as a legitimate strategy for communities

Ensuring the right to information as in the majority of land deals, local communities are kept in the dark.

Land rights/agrarian reform/ resource rights struggles

Peoples’ Campaigns to Reclaim the Commons

Women at the forefront of resource rights struggles

• As actors and leaders mobilizing against processes that exclude them (despite criminalization and harassment)

“I live here. I have rights and I am working with the women here so

we won’t have to move. I will keep on fighting here”

- Kun Cha Tha who quit her job selling rice to devote her time to protesting

90% of the protestors and leaders in the Boeung Kak lake are women Cambodia’s Boeung Kak Lake

land grabbing case Source: Reuters/Samrang Pring

Local struggles

Source of Photos: Judy Pasimio

In reclaiming their ancestral lands/domains

Delsa Justo, Ati Chieftain who led the land occupation of their

ancestral lands in tourist destination, Boracay

Delsa Justo, Ati Chieftain who led the land occupation of their

ancestral lands in tourist destination, Boracay

In asserting the Right to Self-Determination of Indigenous Peoples

Source of Photos: Judy Pasimio

Summary Southeast Asia continues to be a high growth region SEA in the global value chain- traditional roles but also

looking for new drivers of growth Economic integration is driving new investments

including in agriculture, land and natural resources There is a push to reform policies including investment

policies and land and environment policies to facilitate more investments

Peasants and indigenous communities continue to defend their lands and resources through various resistance struggles

Thank you very much for listening!