News Land Grabbing / Agrofuels – October 2014

Campaign “Our Land – Our Business”

Following our media action the 10^th of October against the World Bank’s “Doing Business” Ranking and the development of the indicators “Benchmarking the Business of Agriculture”, AEFJN and its partners were invited to meet with a World Bank official in Brussels. The representative of the World Bank received our demands regarding the abovementioned indicators. You can find more information on the media action here. If you wish to have more details on meeting with the World Bank, please contact Gino Brunswijck.

 European Parliament - Agrofuels

AEFJN has participated in two meetings of the NGO-coalition against biofuels this October. The advocacy strategy for the coming months was discussed. The Directive on the use of Biofuels is in second reading in the European Parliament, which means that decision-making process is entering a crucial and concluding phase. AEFJN together with partners will continue to convince Members of Parliament to eliminate consumption targets for land-based biofuels, because they cause hunger, land grabbing and deforestation. The provisional timeline for the second reading of the Directive in Parliament is as follows: the competent Committee ENVI (Environment) will draft a recommendation to the Council position by 21-22 of January; the deadline for amendments to this recommendation is 27^th of January; the vote in the ENVI-committee will take place on the 23-24 February; the vote in Plenary will take place in April.

Conference: “Bridging the gap between policy and practice: international soft law and large scale land acquisitions in Africa”

The 11^th of December AEFJN is organising a conference in the European Parliament on the consequences of large scale land acquisitions for Africa and the international soft law trying to prevent this. Cicodev, commissioned by AEFJN will present a case study on a case of land grabbing in Senegal, Koudiadiene, which Gino visited earlier this year. Afterwards, representatives of civil society will dialogue with Marie Arena (MEP, S&D) to improve the efficiency of soft law instruments. We are asking you to mobilise and subscribe in great numbers for this conference; this will show the Parliamentarians that many care about this subject. Gino will send the invitation very shortly.