Motley Moose – Archive

The trend of international land grabbing-when governments and private firms invest in or purchase large tracts of land in other countries for the purpose of agricultural production and export-can have serious environmental and social consequences, according to researchers at the Worldwatch Institute. Deals that focus solely on financial profit can leave rural populations more vulnerable and without land, employment opportunities, or food security.

The trend has accelerated as countries that lack sufficient fertile land to meet their own food needs-such as wealthier countries in the Middle East and Asia, particularly China-have turned to new fields in which to plant crops. “Growing demand and rising prices for food are leading some wealthier developing countries to seek secure access to food-producing land in the territory of lower-income ones,” said Robert Engelman, Executive Director of Worldwatch. “If all governments capably represented the interests of their citizens, these cash-for-cropland deals might improve prosperity and food security for both sides. But that’s not often the case. It’s critical that international institutions monitor these arrangements and find ways to block those that are one-sided or benefit only the wealthy.”

The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) reports that some 15-20 million hectares of farmland were the subject of deals or proposed deals involving foreigners between 2006 and mid-2009. Additional land acquisitions occurred in 2010, including deals in Ethiopia and Sudan, according to Andrew Rice, author of The Teeth May Smile but the Heart Does Not Forget and contributing author to the recent Worldwatch report State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet.

Critics of large-scale land acquisitions believe that the land grabs are marginalizing the land rights of local residents, particularly indigenous populations, and compromising food security in the host countries. “[Critics] predict that the outcome will not be development but a litany of dire possible consequences: xenophobia, riots, coups, and more hunger,” writes Rice. Several organizations, including GRAIN, Oxfam, and the Oakland Institute, have reported on the negative consequences that such land deals have on developing countries.

Conversely, some experts argue that the agricultural development that occurs through land deals can provide poor countries with money, infrastructure, resources, and increases in food security. The International Institute for Economic Development, World Bank, U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, and International Fund for Agricultural Development all have published documents highlighting the economic possibilities associated with international land deals.

Nourishing the Planet recommends three critical considerations to help guide global land transactions to promote mutual benefit:

• Well-defined land ownership. Research shows that when land      is legally titled, economic productivity improves. Figuring out who owns the land before acquisitions take place can help ensure the interests of smallholder farmers, promote local economic growth, and support community coordination with international investors. A country’s history and lack of property rights can make land titling complicated. In Ethiopia’s Gambella region, for example, much “unused” agricultural land is traveled by livestock herders, left to fallow, or used for hunting and gathering by indigenous people. These traditional land uses are easily dismissed without property rights.

• International cooperation and  consent. Development      experts agree that local residents should provide free, “prior and informed consent” to investors and government officials before land deals occur. But defining this consent and ensuring that deals operate within this rubric can be difficult. In the case of Mozambique, the government declared in 2007 that 30 million hectares of land was open for private investment. Although the government instituted consultations with local residents affected by potential deals, many local participants reported      coercion, asymmetric information, and multiple sales of single titles. As a result, the government was forced to halt the deals altogether.

• Complementing land deals with  domestic infrastructure development. Many land deals require additional investment in infrastructure to make the land suitable for efficient agricultural production. When coordinated with local residents, this      outside investment can lead to local employment and economic growth. At India’s West Garo Hills Tea Factory, for example, a government agency paid for some processing machinery, a private company offered additional machinery, factory design, and training, and local communities provided land, bricks,      and labor. Not only does the partnership provide local jobs, but the processed tea from the factory is divided between the community and a private tea company.

To purchase your own copy of State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet, please click HERE. And to watch the one minute book trailer, click HERE.

Ever since Jared Loughner’s murderous attack in Tucson, Americans have been more sensitive to the way extreme political discourse can effect the deranged, paranoid and alienated, and how perverse inflammatory metaphors (gunsights, 2nd amendment solutions, watering the tree of liberty) can actually provide the ideas that feed political violence.

However, in Europe, obsessed as it is with Islamist demons, convinced of its own secular moderate rectitude, we’ve forgotten how easily the thin skin of tolerance is broached. In France, they ban niquab. In Switzerland, they ban minarets. Holland includes an Islamophobe bigot in its ruling parliamentary coalition. The Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel talks about how ‘multiculturalism’ has failed. In Britain, the biggest threat to public order in the last few years has been hard line Islamphobic English Defence League which now targets Muslims (though Jews, Blacks and Gays are next in line).

Even the Prime Minister of Britain – itself a multinational, multiethnic, multi-denominational state for hundreds of years –  David Cameron has joined this fashionable chorus of which somehow blames ‘multiculturalism’ as the cause of the rise of Islamist extremism.

Now these alarms have reaped their bitter harvest. With 92 people dead, the vast majority 16-19 year olds at a Labour summer camp, there is no doubt of the political aspect of Anders Brehing Breivik’s crime.

Norway attacks: Utøya gunman boasted of links to UK far right Anders Brehing Breivik took part in online discussions with members of the EDL and other anti-Islamic groups

It was revealed that the 32-year-old former member of the country’s conservative Progress party – who had become ever more extreme in his hatred of Muslims, leftwingers and the country’s political establishment – had ordered six tonnes of fertiliser in May to be used in the bombing. While police continued to interrogate Breivik, who was charged with the mass killings, evidence of his increasingly far-right world-view emerged from an article he had posted on several Scandinavian websites, including Nordisk, a site frequented by neo-Nazis, far-right radicals and Islamophobes since 2009.

The Norwegian daily VG quoted one of Breivik’s friends, saying that he had become a rightwing extremist in his late 20s and was now a strong opponent of multiculturalism, expressing strong nationalistic views in online debates.

Breivik had talked admiringly online about conversations he had had with unnamed English Defence League members and the organisation Stop the Islamification of Europe (SIOE) over the success of provocative street actions leading to violence.

“I have on some occasions had discussions with SIOE and EDL and recommended them to use certain strategies,” he wrote two years ago. “The tactics of the EDL are now to ‘lure’ an overreaction from the Jihad Youth/Extreme-Marxists, something they have succeeded in doing several times already.”

Before the attacks, Breivik uploaded his manifesto to Youtube.

Ever since Jared Loughner’s murderous attack in Tucson, Americans have been more sensitive to the way extreme political discourse can effect the deranged, paranoid and alienated, and how perverse inflammatory metaphors (gunsights, 2nd amendment solutions, watering the tree of liberty) can actually provide the ideas that feed political violence.

However, in Europe, obsessed as it is with Islamist demons, convinced of its own secular moderate rectitude, we’ve forgotten how easily the thin skin of tolerance is broached. In France, they ban niquab. In Switzerland, they ban minarets. Holland includes an Islamophobe bigot in its ruling parliamentary coalition. The Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel talks about how ‘multiculturalism’ has failed. In Britain, the biggest threat to public order in the last few years has been hard line Islamphobic English Defence League which now targets Muslims (though Jews, Blacks and Gays are next in line).

Even the Prime Minister of Britain – itself a multinational, multiethnic, multi-denominational state for hundreds of years –  David Cameron has joined this fashionable chorus of which somehow blames ‘multiculturalism’ as the cause of the rise of Islamist extremism.

Now these alarms have reaped their bitter harvest. With 92 people dead, the vast majority 16-19 year olds at a Labour summer camp, there is no doubt of the political aspect of Anders Brehing Breivik’s crime.

Norway attacks: Utøya gunman boasted of links to UK far right Anders Brehing Breivik took part in online discussions with members of the EDL and other anti-Islamic groups

It was revealed that the 32-year-old former member of the country’s conservative Progress party – who had become ever more extreme in his hatred of Muslims, leftwingers and the country’s political establishment – had ordered six tonnes of fertiliser in May to be used in the bombing. While police continued to interrogate Breivik, who was charged with the mass killings, evidence of his increasingly far-right world-view emerged from an article he had posted on several Scandinavian websites, including Nordisk, a site frequented by neo-Nazis, far-right radicals and Islamophobes since 2009.

The Norwegian daily VG quoted one of Breivik’s friends, saying that he had become a rightwing extremist in his late 20s and was now a strong opponent of multiculturalism, expressing strong nationalistic views in online debates.

Breivik had talked admiringly online about conversations he had had with unnamed English Defence League members and the organisation Stop the Islamification of Europe (SIOE) over the success of provocative street actions leading to violence.

“I have on some occasions had discussions with SIOE and EDL and recommended them to use certain strategies,” he wrote two years ago. “The tactics of the EDL are now to ‘lure’ an overreaction from the Jihad Youth/Extreme-Marxists, something they have succeeded in doing several times already.”

Before the attacks, Breivik uploaded his manifesto to Youtube.

Ever since Jared Loughner’s murderous attack in Tucson, Americans have been more sensitive to the way extreme political discourse can effect the deranged, paranoid and alienated, and how perverse inflammatory metaphors (gunsights, 2nd amendment solutions, watering the tree of liberty) can actually provide the ideas that feed political violence.

However, in Europe, obsessed as it is with Islamist demons, convinced of its own secular moderate rectitude, we’ve forgotten how easily the thin skin of tolerance is broached. In France, they ban niquab. In Switzerland, they ban minarets. Holland includes an Islamophobe bigot in its ruling parliamentary coalition. The Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel talks about how ‘multiculturalism’ has failed. In Britain, the biggest threat to public order in the last few years has been hard line Islamphobic English Defence League which now targets Muslims (though Jews, Blacks and Gays are next in line).

Even the Prime Minister of Britain – itself a multinational, multiethnic, multi-denominational state for hundreds of years –  David Cameron has joined this fashionable chorus of which somehow blames ‘multiculturalism’ as the cause of the rise of Islamist extremism.

Now these alarms have reaped their bitter harvest. With 92 people dead, the vast majority 16-19 year olds at a Labour summer camp, there is no doubt of the political aspect of Anders Brehing Breivik’s crime.

Norway attacks: Utøya gunman boasted of links to UK far right Anders Brehing Breivik took part in online discussions with members of the EDL and other anti-Islamic groups

It was revealed that the 32-year-old former member of the country’s conservative Progress party – who had become ever more extreme in his hatred of Muslims, leftwingers and the country’s political establishment – had ordered six tonnes of fertiliser in May to be used in the bombing. While police continued to interrogate Breivik, who was charged with the mass killings, evidence of his increasingly far-right world-view emerged from an article he had posted on several Scandinavian websites, including Nordisk, a site frequented by neo-Nazis, far-right radicals and Islamophobes since 2009.

The Norwegian daily VG quoted one of Breivik’s friends, saying that he had become a rightwing extremist in his late 20s and was now a strong opponent of multiculturalism, expressing strong nationalistic views in online debates.

Breivik had talked admiringly online about conversations he had had with unnamed English Defence League members and the organisation Stop the Islamification of Europe (SIOE) over the success of provocative street actions leading to violence.

“I have on some occasions had discussions with SIOE and EDL and recommended them to use certain strategies,” he wrote two years ago. “The tactics of the EDL are now to ‘lure’ an overreaction from the Jihad Youth/Extreme-Marxists, something they have succeeded in doing several times already.”

Before the attacks, Breivik uploaded his manifesto to Youtube.

Ok, fresh off the tablet?

Democracy, as we currently conceive it, was the inspiration of an optimistic Enlightenment; drawing on a corpus of classical thinking which seemed virtuous or useful while tip-toeing around the thrones of reigning monarchs.  

In classical Athens, on any given day, the enfranchised citizens congregated on the Pynx to listen to their orators and demagogues on the issues and vote immediately with white and black pebbles.  That form of direct democracy is reserved today for our juries, when we convene them, and the annual general meetings of our public companies and social clubs.

It is just as well, one might argue.  The contemporary criticism of Athenian direct democracy was that it was “reckless and arbitrary.”

Arguable I suppose but Left Blogistan was in the back of my mind as much as Athens in that last remark.

This is the third part of a series of posts analyzing the swing state  Colorado. It will focus on the swing areas in Colorado – the parts that will vote for both Democrats and Republicans. The fourth part can be found here.

Swing Colorado

The swing areas of Colorado lie on the edges of the Democratic base in Colorado, which forms a rough “C” shape (more on this in the next post). They can be mapped as below:

More below.

The following are my desperate, last-minute notes for a short talk on the subject of democracy for the Philosophical Society of Bond University here in Australia next Monday:

I was frankly humbled to consider speaking in the context of “philosophy” until I remembered that it means merely “love of wisdom” and that’s reassuring; though wisdom, like “common sense,” can seem a bit thin on the ground sometimes.  I tend to credit them about equally and admire both where they are found.

Our notions of democracy, I’ve observed, are often entangled and circumscribed by our notions of our “rights;” the right of assembly, the right of habeas corpus, the right of free speech and the right of equitable and honest election of our representatives to the democratic state institutions we have created.  This is fair and reasonable.  

But rights are clearly a “just claim or title” to provisions of a contract between parties, in this case the individual and the state.  It resembles a matter of tort law and while that is not the ideological frame of reference we usually reserve for these notions the parallels are worth considering.

How are we doing so far?

I’m stepping all over myself today but I don’t care.

One more “trial balloon” on the debt ceiling negotiations from an unnamed source and the Left and Right blogospheres will come completely unglued and/or collide.

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

We know that trees can help mitigate climate change by sequestering carbon dioxide from the earth’s atmosphere. But what is less widely understood is how many of these trees can also help to bring an end to hunger and poverty.

Today, Nourishing the Planet takes a look at five varieties of tree that you have likely never heard of, but that are helping to alleviate hunger and poverty and protect the environment.

1.     Black Plum: Black plums are common across tropical sub-Saharan Africa’s coastal savannas and savanna woodlands. The black plum tree is not domesticated, but it is widely utilized and protected, and is often found at the center of West African villages. The black plum is useful in agroforestry and organic farming. It is nitrogen fixing, meaning it adds nitrogen to the soils it grows in. Whether the tree is growing in fields or along boundaries, crops can benefit from natural soil nutrients. Leaves from the tree are also used as nutrient-rich mulch.

Best Way to Eat It: The fruit makes good quality jellies and jams, as well as a black molasses. A beverage similar in flavor to coffee is also made from roasted fruits. Young, leafy shoots from the tree are picked, boiled, seasoned, and eaten like spinach.

Black Plum in Action: Black plum trees’ fruit and leaves support wildlife and its nitrogen fixing abilities encourage soil health. Its deep roots protect soils from erosion, benefitting other plant life and helping rebuild degraded ecosystems.

2.     Ebony: Ebony wood is world renowned for its dense fine-grain quality and rich dark color. It is prized for use in musical instruments, such as pianos and violins, and is considered superior for woodcarving. The tropical species-including Africa’s most common, the jackalberry (Diospyros mespiliformis)-produce the finest ebony wood and a fruit akin to the persimmon.

Best Way to Eat It: The fruits are commonly eaten fresh, dried, or pulped for sauces. They can be used in porridges and toffee, brewed into beer, fermented into wine, and distilled into an ebony brandy. In Namibia they are made into a hot liqueur called ombike.

Ebony in Action: The roots of the jackalberry tree are made into a mixture for treating dysentery and fever and getting rid of parasites. The mixture has also been used to help treat leprosy in Southern Africa. Ebonies are also protecting African communities from famine. The tree’s deep roots keep its leaves green during drought, which can be emergency fodder for grazing livestock when grasses dry up.

3.     Marula: The marula tree is found throughout 29 sub-Saharan African countries-from Cape Verde to Ethiopia to South Africa. While the tree is not domesticated, the marula tree has been intentionally cultivated in the wild for hundreds of years, and its distribution closely matches human migration patterns.

Best Way to Eat It: In the center of each fruit is a large nut stone, which contains a soft macadamia-like nut kernel. The highly nutritious kernels, which are eaten raw and roasted, are rich in antioxidants.

Marula in Action: In South Africa alone, around 500 tons of marula fruit is commercially processed for juice and 2,000 tons for Amarula Cream every year. In Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and South Africa, fruits are often collected and sold by villagers to marula processing facilities.

4.     Dika: Indigenous to West Africa, a Dika tree can grow to be as tall as 40 meters and produces a small green and yellow fruit that looks, at first glance, like a small mango. When forests are cleared in West Africa for firewood or for farmland, the Dika trees are, more often than not, left untouched. Farmers have too much to gain from harvesting the tree’s fruits and seeds.

Best Way to Eat It: Resembling smooth walnuts, Dika seeds are cracked open by harvesters to collect the edible kernel contained inside. These kernals can be eaten raw or roasted, but most are processed and pounded into Dika butter or compacted into bars or pressed to produce cooking oil.

Dika in Action: Each year, thousands of tons of “Dika nuts” are harvested throughout Western Africa, providing a critical income to millions of farmers and harvesters throughout West Africa.

5.     Moringa: Serving not only as a reliable source of food, moringa also provides lamp oil, wood, paper, liquid fuel, skin treatments, and the means to help purify water. The moringa tree comprises 4 different edible parts: pods, leaves, seeds, and roots.  The green-bean looking pods are the most sought-after parts, not only because of their taste – similar to asparagus – but also because they are highly nutritious. Moringa trees are also used in agroforestry and mixed cropping because the shade can protect other crops from the sun and, while smoke from household fires can pollute the air, the soft, spongy moringa wood burns cleanly with little smoke or odor, making it a cleaner source of fuel.

Best Way to Eat It: People commonly boil the tiny leaflets and eat them like spinach.  Like the pods, the leaves contain vitamins A and C as well as more calcium than most other greens. These leaves also contain such high levels of iron that doctors frequently prescribe them for anemic patients.

Moringa in Action: The moringa tree is best known for its endless supply of food, but one of the most innovative uses of the plant has been to treat water and wastewater.  Researchers at Leicester University in the United Kingdom, have found that mixing crushed moringa seeds with polluted water help settle silt and other contaminants. This is highly cost effective because the seeds can replace the expensive imported material usually used for water purification in rural areas. The seed filtered water still needs a final filtration before it is completely drinkable, but the seeds make the process easier and help other water filters last longer.