Resistance or participation? Fighting against corporate land access amid political uncertainty in Madagascar

Abstract

Drawing on a micro-level ethnography, this paper explores the process by which a rural municipality managed to pressure the state into temporarily halting the land extension of a large-scale biofuel project in an agropastoral area of southern Madagascar. It documents how the coalition of local leaders and wealthy cattle owners behind the protest resisted threats to their land access and local domination by finding spaces of expression outside the control of local consultation, and creating alliances with influential activists. In a moral economy veering between rationales of autochthony and extraversion, the transnationalisation of the protest sent shock waves through a state apparatus divided and focused on the prospects of coming elections. By analysing the environmental, cognitive and relational mechanisms behind the emergence and repercussions of this bottom-up struggle, this paper points to the varied bargaining endowments that exist within agrarian communities as well as to the issues of authority at stake within corporate enclosure of land. In states where the rural poor have been historically marginalised from decision-making, consultation processes generally offer little space for participation. This paper demonstrates that contexts of political uncertainty open up new spaces for them to claim their rights but that gains made in such circumstances are fragile and contested.

Keywords:

• large-scale land deals
• consultation
• participation
• grassroots resistance
• transnational activism
• power and politics
• Madagascar

Acknowledgements

My gratitude goes to all of those who took part in this study and, through their time and hospitality, made this research possible. I would also like to thank my research assistant who has been working on this case study with me since 2011, as well as Jun Saturnino M. Borras, James Sumberg, Ian Scoones, Perrine Burnod, Antoine Bouhey and the three anonymous reviewers for the insightful comments made on earlier versions of the paper. This paper draws on research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Institute of Development Studies, UK.

Notes

¹In November 2008, the Financial Times broke the story that secret negotiations were taking place between the Malagasy government and Daewoo corporation for the long-term leasing of 1.3 million ha of arable land. The news caused great outrage and was used by Andry Rajoelina and the opposition as a key argument to legitimise its overthrow of the Ravalomanana regime (2009).

²Arguing that alternative food systems cannot be achieved without a simultaneous move towards democratic land control, some engaged researchers have recently launched a discussion over ‘land sovereignty’ as a potential land framework for the food sovereignty campaign (Borras and Franco 2013; Borras, Franco, and Monsalve, forthcoming). Land sovereignty is presented as both an alternative analytical framework (going beyond calls for land reform) and a political project whose core principle lies in ‘the right of the working people to have effective access to, control over and use of land, and live on it as a resource, space and territory’ (Borras, Franco, and Monsalve, forthcoming, 11).

³Law 2005-019 of 17 October 2005 fixing the principles governing land statutes (free translation).

⁴Article 18, law 2008-014 of 5 January 2009 on the private property of the state.

⁵Article 28 and 29 of decree 2010-233 laying down the procedures for applying law 2008-014.

⁶Decree no. 99-954 of 15 December 1999 modified by decree no. 2004-167.

⁷The EIA has not been validated by the ONE (National Office for the Environment) who require that a new EIA is conducted for the area affected by the first lease instead of the whole 100,000 ha. The Lalifuel project therefore operates without the required environmental licence.

⁸The local expression that recurred was: ‘Tsy nanao forcé i Lalifuel’.

⁹‘Tatitry ny fivoriana. Tetik'asa voly savoa region X Lalifuel. Fanadihadihana ny amin'ny fiantraika (EIE) amin’ny tontolo iaiana ny mponina’ [Minutes of the meeting-Lalifuel project Jatropha plantation. Assessing the consequences on the people and the environment (EIA)], hand-written document, 16 September 2011, 1 page.

¹⁰Source: Document entitled ‘Minutes of meeting. Object: opposition to the project requiring large tracts of land in the municipality of Benala’, 18 November 2011.

¹¹Discussion, village of Ambalava, municipality of Benala, 4 May 2013. By mid-2014, the association was still not registered with the state, though.

¹²Interview with a member of the SIF, Antananarivo, 22 January 2014.

¹³Free translation.

¹⁴M. Andrianainarivelo officially announced his candidature in April 2013 but he was accused of having started his campaign well before (Madagascar Tribune online 2013).

¹⁵The business plan announced that 25 percent of the surface would be farmed following a model of contract farming.

¹⁶Interview, mayor of Benala, provincial capital, 5 May 2013.

¹⁷Interview, son of lonaky, Itaosy village, 9 May 2013.

¹⁸Minutes of meeting, municipality of Ambatolahy, 18 November 2013. The same expression was used by the head of fokontany of Analaroa (interview, 4 May 2013, Benala village, municipality of Benala).

¹⁹On the connection between landlessness and the status of andevo (slave), cf. Evers (2006).

²⁰Interview, deputy head of fokontany, Ambalava village, municipality of Benala, 10 May 2013, and quotations from the press conference.

²¹Interview, M. Tsihory, Antananarivo, 25 Jan 2014.

²²Note de service, Direction Générale des Services Fonciers, no. 392/12/VPMDAT/SG/DGSF, 1 December 2012.

²³Law no. 2006-031 of 24 November 2006 determining the legal regime of untitled private land property.

²⁴Source: INSTAT (National Institute of Statistics), provincial capital and village interviews.

²⁵Both the mayor and his cousin mentioned on several occasions having ‘high connections in Antananarivo’. The same information was given by the uncle of Benala's mayor, who refused to reveal the identities of these contacts but explained: ‘These are very powerful people. If Lalifuel acts badly, I can tell you that they will regret it’ (Mr Ritra, lonaky of Talata, municipality of Arivony, 2 April 2013).

²⁶Minutes of the meeting, municipality of Benala, 18 November 2011.

²⁷Petrochina (688,400 ha), Pan African Mining (1 million ha) and Mainland Mining (more than 2 million ha). These figures, as well as the other ones mentioned in this paragraph, are based on cross-referenced information from media articles, expert reports (Andrianirina et al. 2011; Burnod et al. 2014; Raharinirina 2013) and civil society accounts (Andrew Lee Trust 2009; Franchi et al. 2013; SIF 2013, and newsletters from the Collectif Tany). However, they cannot be considered to be definitive, in view of the opacity that surrounds these projects.

²⁸An area of 40,000 ha was bought by Madawoodlands in the Sofia region (Re:Common 2013). In Makira protected forest in the northeast, carbon credits were allegedly sold to Microsoft and the zoo of Zurich on an area of 320,000 ha (Collectif Tany, newsletter no. 31, 31 March 2014).

²⁹Depending on the stages of the project, the business plan projected the creation of 40 to 500 permanent and 250 to 5000 seasonal jobs per year between 2009 and 2019.

³⁰By April 2014, the Lalifuel project had invested in most of the areas mentioned above. They had constructed a dam, a secondary school and a new town hall, made borings and water pumps, set up an affordable local health centre whose staff they pay and rehabilitated a few other public buildings. They had also invested in public electricity (but this help had been short-lived) and, at the time of the last fieldwork (January–April 2014), were carrying out daily street cleaning. Although functioning projects like the health centre and the water pumps were highly appreciated, the socio-economic commitment of the company was also creating a lot of frustration: most of these projects were indeed concentrated in Arivony's main village while very few of the promises made to the other villages who had given land had been fulfilled.

³¹Interview, head of fokontany Kibanivato, Ambatolahy, 6 May 2013.

³²Décision no. 216/12-RIH portant abrogation de la décision no. 33/11-RIH du 23 Juillet 2011. Signed in Ihosy on 1 August 2012 by the regional head.

³³Letter from the General Direction of the VPDAT to Lalifuel, 21 December 2012.

³⁴Interview, senior member of the regional government, Antananarivo, 13 May 2013.

³⁵Law 2004-001 of 17 June 2004 defines the Régions as ‘both decentralised territorial entities and administrative circumscriptions’ (art. 4).

³⁶Interview, Mr Herizo, Antananarivo, 13 May 2013.

³⁷Interview, Mr Herizo, Antananarivo, 13 May 2013.

³⁸A provision already set out in law 2007-036 of 14 January 2008 on investments in Madagascar.

³⁹Law 2008-014 stipulates indeed that all cession of land above 50ha in a rural municipality needs to be approved and signed by the Minister responsible for state land (art. 27).

⁴⁰The boundary marking operations were finally held in July–August 2013, more than a year after the lease was issued.

⁴¹The document mentions geranium but Lalifuel is actually growing quite a few other crops, with corn and sunflower representing roughly half of the total area farmed (1500 ha at the time of the last fieldwork), and jatropha only a fifth of it (interview, local manager Lalifuel, Satrokala , 5 April 2014).

⁴²Interview with officials from the regional land services, Ihosy, 25 March 2013; interview with officials from the regional ministry, Ihosy, 12 April 2013 and Antananarivo, 13 May 2013.

⁴⁴M. Patrick, Senior field manager Lalifuel, Arivony village, municipality of Arivony, 2 April 2013.

Additional information

Mathilde Gingembre is a PhD researcher at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK. Her interdisciplinary and ethnographic research looks at land deal negotiations in the context of agribusiness projects in Madagascar with a focus on issues of power, politics, participation, inequalities, resistance and land rights.