Company denies evicting 20,000 people from their land

Oct 09, 2011

A UK-based forestry company has defended itself against accusations in an Oxfam report that it was responsible for 20,000 people in Uganda being violently evicted from their land to make way for forest plantations.

A UK-based forestry company has defended itself against accusations in an Oxfam report that it was responsible for 20,000 people in Uganda being violently evicted from their land to make way for forest plantations.

“The New Forests Company takes Oxfam’s allegations extremely seriously and will conduct an immediate and thorough investigation of them,” it said in a statement. “Our understanding of these resettlements is that they were legal, voluntary and peaceful and our first-hand observations of them confirmed this.”

NFC’s investors include HSBC, the European Investment Bank, Agri-Vie, a French social investor, and several wealthy individuals. It plans to invest more than $31m in Uganda in total.

As investment in farmland becomes more popular, some commentators have decried it as land grabbing at the expense of locals. A group of institutional investors, all already signatories to the UN Principles for Responsible Investment, recently laid out a set of principles for investing in farmland to ensure it is carried out responsibly. The NFC case highlights the difficulties for would-be socially responsible investors – although NFC’s principles are clear, it in turn has to rely on reports from the Ugandan National Forest Authority, which carried out the resettlements.

In interviews carried out by Oxfam, Ugandan locals claimed they had been violently evicted from the land managed by NFC and were now living in destitution. The plantations are on land the Ugandan government designated as forest reserve in 1992, according to NFC. Government officials ordered inhabitants to leave, offering compensation only to the 31 families that had been there since before that decree 19 years ago, according to NFC.

According to Oxfam: “No one was compensated for their loss of land, crops and belongings. Oxfam says that NFC operates under international guidelines designed to protect people’s right to adequate compensation. NFC cannot dodge its responsibilities and blame solely the government.”

Kate Sharum, head of corporate and social responsibility at NFC, said: “The people who would suffer most from aggrieved or angry neighbours is us. We have a vested interest in making sure resettlements happened peacefully.”

Ms Sharum said fewer than 10,000 illegal settlers were evicted. She added NFC had offered several times to put up the money for compensation, but the Ugandan government would not allow this.

NFC said its outgrower programme should mitigate some of the impact, as it supports farmers to plant their own trees, offers training in “intercropping”, and guarantees a market for the mature trees.

FT

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