Water Dimensions of ‘Land Grabbing’

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.

The advent of "virtual water"

In this effort, the "virtual water" concept--developed in the 1990s by Tony Allan to describe global grain trade — would become handy.[ii] Virtual water could simply be understood as the total amount of water consumed in production of an agricultural commodity, in the field as well as in processing, packaging, and shipping. Measurements should consider the total water consumed by the crop, including water from soil moisture and the environment (blue water), as well as the easy-to-measure withdrawals from surface and underground water sources (green waters).

Water consumption figures vary from crop to crop; from one micro-agro-ecology to another, and depend upon the efficiency of the agronomy system. Therefore, measurements would not be as easy and as straight-forward as land acreage. The empirical investigation of Rulli and colleagues puts the amount of yearly 'grabbed' waters at 454 billion cubic meters (to grow crops on 469.4 × 105 ha of land).[iii] This amount exceeds moisture requirements to ensure a balanced diet in the developing countries where the investments are happening, and more than 60% of the virtual water will be going to the United States, United Arab Emirates, India, United Kingdom, Egypt, China, and Israel. To be sure, these numbers only indicate the volume of water to be 'grabbed' when the full acreage of 'grabbed' land is put under cultivation.

Africa was not an active participant in the hitherto virtual water network, which the 'land grabbing' phenomenon would reverse and, in a way, globalize Africa. The question is: Will this benefit Africans in Africa? Whether the land deals will positively impact local or national economies has dominated the debate, shadowing the dynamics of access to and utilization of water resources by local populations. In the Horn of Africa, large swaths of land transferred to foreign (and domestic) investors are located in the pastoral rangelands. In these lowlands, due to their climatic uncertainties, pastoralists have developed and put into practice an efficient resource use regime; however, this process is nearing destruction because of the land transfers and the restricted access to surface water sources and dry season watering points. If proper and effective mitigation strategies are not implemented, this might result in a deadly blow to pastoralists in the affected areas.

Ambiguity of rights to land versus water

Apparently, obtaining the rights to use a certain plot of land directly translates into use of water resources. As Bossio and colleagues stressed for the case of Ethiopia, "land rights are implicitly also water rights." Investing firms are not required to pay a separate fee for water use if they pay for each acre of land. In Ethiopia, the distance from a surface water body (irrigation water source) determines the lease prices. It is not water which is being valued; investors purchasing land further from a river, for example, would only be compensated for the irrigation infrastructure they would have to build before getting water through cheaper land lease rates. Thus, the amount of water a farm uses on a per hectare basis is not included in the expenses of the farm, thereby disincentivizing investors from using water efficiently in agronomic production systems.

The consequences for neglecting to consider the water dimensions of 'land grabbing' are not limited to the local or national levels. Regional ramifications are fathomable, too. The ferociously contested nature of dealing with trans-boundary water resources is too well- known. Highly politicized trans-boundary river basins are not spared from these 'water grabs.' In the Nile Basin, for example, Ethiopia and Sudan are the preferred destinations of Gulf agricultural foreign investment in the form of large-scale agricultural investments. Estimates conducted by Bossio and colleagues show that the 12 confirmed investments in the upper Blue Nile Basin of Ethiopia on 138,961 hectares of land could result in using four percent of the basin's water. Thus, when a significant majority of the leased lands are brought under the plough, Egyptian interests and Gulf interests might clash. 'Land grabbing' is not only bringing "new geopolitics of food scarcity" as Brown (2012) argues;[iv] it could also significantly influence future regional hydro-politics.

If 'land grabbing' is primarily about water,[v] then the water dimensions of the phenomenon should take center stage in the ongoing debate. Failing to recognize that the investors are primarily after the 'virtual water' rather than the land or grain would result in under-valuing agricultural water use. This might also contribute to the blatant disregard for the impact of large-scale land acquisitions on water access and rights at local and regional levels.

Fana Gebresenbet Erda, a researcher at the Institute for Peace and Security Studies, is a member of our Southern Voices Network and research fellow here at the Wilson Center.

Photo taken in Ethiopia by Michael Lindsey of the U.S. Navy, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

[i] This essay only intends to wake us up from the "willfully blind" (Allan, 2011, p. 8) state society is usually in when it comes to the issue of water's role in our economy. Allan, Tony. 2011. Virtual Water. London: I.B. Tauris. p. 8

[ii] Allan summarized his lifelong work on the concept in his most recent book (Ibid) in a manner to be understood by "a general audience, not a technocratic one."

[iii] This amount is more than fivefold of the yearly flow volume of the Nile measured at Aswan (84 billion cubic meters).

[iv] Brown, R. Lester. 2012. Full Planet, Empty Plates: A New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity. Earth Policy Institute, Washington DC.

[v] The Saudi case of abandoning farming in their deserts using aquifer waters while leasing land in Ethiopia and Sudan is most illustrative.