I will be starting an MPA degree at the London School of Economics this fall (in about a month)… Unfortunately, the tuition fees are quite high (and about 20,000 Euros a year) and I need every support I can get!

That’s why I’ve applied to the democratic scholarship. As part of the notion of ‘democracy’ there is an extended voting phase for a couple of weeks. So please, please vote for me!

Although the site is in German, it’s very easy:
- Scroll down, enter email-address and a password,
- Open email, click on link
- Scroll down again and give me 5 STARS please!
(click on the 5th star)

If you’re interested in what I wrote and would just like to know a little more about it:

This is my application for the democratic scholarship of Absolventa eV. (Link to vote: http://tinyurl.com/votenow4dennis ) I am actively committed to a meaningful development cooperation. This can only occur if certain basic conditions are provided. By that I mean a government that listens to its people and nourishes democracy. In order to achieve that corruption and bad governance have to be mitigated as much as possible. This is my goal and passion! Therefore I hereby apply to the democratic scholarship and hope you’ll vote for me!

Application Text in German:

What I love about metropolises, just like Tokyo, Hong Kong and Shanghai as well, is the diversity of activities, people,  cultures, languages, the vibrant lifestyle, the endless possibilites and a personal sense of freedom.

I will post some photos and more impressions here soon…

Below the abstract of the thesis, titled foreign farmland acquisition – controlling ‘land grabs’.
If you are interested in obtaining a copy, please contact me.

The phenomenon of agricultural investment is nothing new: China started leasing land for food production already more than 10 years ago and private corporations have long invested in cash crops for export such as bananas, pineapples or coconuts. However, recent events have triggered a new wave of investments that portrait different characteristics than ‘typical’ well-known agricultural investment – this 21st century version of outsourced agriculture is new. These recent deals are commonly described as ‘land grabs’ and occur predominantly in the poorest and most unstable countries of the Global South and have caused a wave of debate and controversy.

This research paper questions both sides of the debate by examining the threats as well as opportunities so-called land grabs bring to a Least Developed Country (LDC). Subsequently the question is raised as to how negative impact can be avoided or mitigated to the largest possible extent as well as how positive impact can be maximised and spread out into every level of society. Currently, there are a number of international initiatives that seek to address these very issues, developing strategies or recommendations in order to allow for a greater share of equity. These initiatives are analysed, resulting in both descriptive and prescriptive policy analysis.

The research question for this paper is thus: based on the threats and opportunities for the LDCs, how well do current international initiatives reflect on-the-ground realities and consequences of land grabbing in their policy recommendations. Ultimately, this paper provides a better understanding of how land grabbing can be effectively controlled in order for its impact not to be detrimental to the sustainable development of the LDCs.

The theoretical approach utilised is the Sustainable Livelihood Approach, the Human Rights Approach, and Post-Development Theory. The methodology utilised is three-fold: literature review, policy analysis and semi-structured interviews. The paper makes use of a more generalised description of processes in LDCs, whereby the number of occurrences of land grabs ‘naturally’ put emphasis on Sub-Saharan Africa.

The study shows that the general lack of awareness of existing human rights and the consequent missing power to execute any of these rights, especially land rights, are one of the most crucial issues concerning land grabs. When customary land rights are taken into account (and land is subsequently not formally titled ‘unused’ or ‘empty’) the largest problems of land expropriation and displacement can be avoided. These in turn increase the chances for the local population of not losing their livelihoods and ensuring the right to food. The case studies, interviews and literature analysed show that numerous threats to the local population are followed by land grabs, whereas development opportunities remain theoretical in nature as most depend on two factors. These are i) socially responsible investments and ii) good governance; a set of factors especially weak in LDCs. An additional threat also comes to light that fails to act as mitigation to existing threats, namely inadequate forms of compensation for land expropriation and displacement. Land grabs are thus detrimental to the local level.

In order for the impact of land grabs not to be detrimental, the study reaches the following conclusions: 1. It has to be ensured that the conditions in which long-term large-scale agricultural investments occur are development-enabling and in favour of the local population. 2. For the long term it is most important to tackle underlying issues related to land grabbing, namely land rights and good governance. 3. In the short run, it is advised to focus on what is available now, as current international initiatives are in a too early stage of development. That means, development actors have to strengthen their foci on 1) human rights (and especially the right to food and land rights with the extension to include TIK systems), 2) the sustainable livelihood approach, and 3) the support of power and endogenous development of local groupings and social movements (Post-Development Theory).

By utilising a comparative analysis of case studies (from literature and NGO presentations) and interviews (conducted as part of my research) from 12 different cases, I’ve come to the following conclusion:

• Customary land rights are not acknowledged (58%)
• Local farmers are displaced (42%)
• Poverty increases (25%)
• External dependence increases (25%)
• Local landowners experience land expropriation (17%)
• The investor follows unsustainable practices (17%)
• Local interests are ignored (17%)
• Non-transparent contracts; regulations are unclear (8%)
• Food insecurity increases and/or causes famines (0%)

Furthermore, while the biggest problem is the big gap between formal land title registration and customary land rights systems, another issue is compensation for the loss of land and/or displacement. Data from 8 countries shows that compensation mostly fails to work in practice, and if it does it is by no means sufficient to restore livelihoods.

Opportunities?
What I’ve found is that, first of all, most opportunities depend on a number of factors and are hence potential rather than factual in nature. This holds especially for land fees and taxes. Tax exemptions, for instance, are used as incentive for investors, yet in the case of an Ethiopian land deal cause losses of 12 million US$ per year for a project of 600,000 hectare. The government makes only little direct profit in most cases and thinks of a more general profit being the stimulation of the local and national economy. That’s, however, mostly not the case. Concrete cases show that most of the benefit comes through employment opportunities, infrastructure building and increasing know-how. Success is limited, though, as all this depends on a number of factors: 1. the good will of the investor, 2. working monitoring schemes of the government, which in turn depends on 3. good governance.
Lastly, it all comes down to ‘good governance’ and how the government regulates investments. Once these mechanisms start working (better), opportunities are vast. Land deals can…

• Spur the local as well as national economy (and hence increase average wealth, uplifting livelihoods)
• Create local part-time and full-time employment (increasing know-how (human capital), social capital, as well as financial capital)
• Introduce and/or improve technological standards and agricultural R&D
• Increase yields considerably and make agriculture more efficient, hence also intensify farming (towards the commercialisation and industrialisation of agriculture rather than merely subsistence farming)
• Increase food supplies for the local and domestic market
• Improve infrastructure, and thus access to markets, health facilities, schools, et cetera.

If anyone is interested in more detailed descriptions and conclusions please contact me, I’ll be happy to send you my Honour’s Thesis once it’s done.

That means I will be able to do my internship with the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (link: en / de) for three months from June through September. As usual my planning doesn’t really allow any time between all the ends and starts of things, so I’ll have not even a week after the week in New York to move to Bonn, and I think merely a weekend to move from Bonn to London. Oh well, I chose it like that and I’m really excited about the summer!

Firstly, it’s going to be my first time in New York City. As I’m going as part of my UCU summer course it’s gonna be well-organised.  The course is on urban planning and social and economic geography with two of my favourite professor’s here from UCU: Prof. Dr. Jan van Weesep and the Dean Prof. Dr. Rob van der Vaart. After the programme there I’ll have some more days to enjoy the city. Any recommendations as to what I just can’t miss there are more than welcome!

Then, the internship should be very interesting in terms of my professional interests. It’ll give me the great opportunity to be able to look at development issues from yet another angle. While I’ve had quite a lot of experience on the NGO-level through my volunteer work in Japan and East Africa, and while I had interesting insights into the world of an international organisation of the United Nations through my UNDP internship in Sri Lanka, I now have the chance to become acquainted with how government works more directly. That means, to speak in development-terms, having experiences in all three pillars of cooperation (1st pillar or bilateral cooperation, 2nd pillar or multilateral cooperation, and 3rd pillar or civilateral cooperation). The internship is also exciting for me as I will focus on a region that’s quite new to me, the Middle East.

Throughout the last few years, I’ve increasingly realised how effective changes towards sustainable development/growth are only possible with a solid foundation, i.e. supportive government policies, relative political stability; in short, a cooperation-conducive environment that seeks the genuine betterment of society. And that means, government affairs cannot under any circumstances be ignored for development, or, if you want to change something do it from the top-level. In that sense I hope that this upcoming internship will also prove useful for me to see to what extent I can confirm my standpoint, how much of it I should revise, or what there is I might want to dump.  I got quite good insights into how a government in a developing country works during my time in Sri Lanka, and how it tackles annoying requests by the UN to do something about this or that, while it happily indulges itself in corruption and nepotism. This German internship, however, will hopefully add something else. First, it’s a Western government, one whose country is infamous for its efficiency and accuracy, and it’ll be intriguing to see whether the same applies when dealing with development cooperation. And second, I have extensively dealt with aid effectiveness during my studies. There would be aid as a national interest or aid conditionalities (think of the United States, where 76% of aid is tied to the purchase of US services and products, see for example here and here)… many interesting things to look at!

In the literature available, as well as in media reports, there is a general concern – from mild to apocalyptic – regarding land grab deals. VOX terms it a “cause of concern” (2009) and STWR envisages “more losers than winners” (2009). Von Braun and Meinzen-Dick (2009) say rather differentiated that “the scale, the terms, and the speed of land acquisition have provoked opposition in some target countries”, whereas the New Scientist prophecies that “the wars over oil of the recent past will pale in comparison to the global struggle for food that could result from the land grabs going on now” (2008). However bad it may be, we will, says De Schutter from the FAO, “experience more and more in future the situation that the Sudan, the Republic of Congo or Ethiopia export maize and biofuels, while facing difficulties to nourish their own populations” (quoted in Spiegel 2009).

As my theoretical approach focuses, amongst others, on the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach, I have come up with a before/after model by utilising data from literature, case studies (from Mali, D.R. Congo, Burkina Faso, Benin, Pakistan, Angola, Mozambique, Kenya and Madagascar) and interviews (Uganda, Liberia and Sierra Leone). The threats that I identified are the following:

The result for livelihoods of local farmers and landholders is alarming:

Already little available financial and social capital vanish, while human and natural capital reduce significantly. The repercussions of this are, again, devastating and can be translated into rising poverty, an increasing number of famines, a poorly (read: non-existing) organised civil society, and more. This will have larger structural and aggregate effects on the already poor economy let alone furthering political instability and consequently corruption and conflict.

The link to the fantastic article talking specifically about elite universities in the US such as Yale and Harvard can be found here: http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-disadvantages-of-an-elite-education/

While I wouldn’t go so far as to say my college can just as well be placed in what is described in the article, there are a number of features (mentioned in the article) that do appear again and again, and made me thus appreciate this article so much. What is it that I think I’ve experienced in my college? Many students appear to be sleepwalking from high-school to college, not knowing what they’re doing here; clearly ‘good’ is equalled to numerical values; diversity is predominantly about ethnicity and race – not class; grade-culture and being pampered with many second chances; feeding the system rather than questioning it; et cetera. Although I may say I perceive it as a somewhat general culture here, it is by no means the only one and many great fellow students, mostly critical towards ‘the system’, prove that point. And sometimes I just think most of these features represent a pseudo reality, a wannabe-elitist school perhaps? On the other hand it can be said that even on a smaller scale (UCU being the ‘elitist’ college in the Netherlands, perhaps even in mainland Europe) the culture of career-making rather than mind-making with all the features listed above can already be observed. We should be careful not to slip away too much from great intellectual journeys…

There are many things coming to my mind now and so much one could talk about. Maybe some reactions can start a discussion or I will develop some clearer thoughts on this when time allows… In the meantime, do read the article!

Surveys – do YOU live/work in a ‘Least Developed Country’? Help needed
Now for my next two chapters (threats and opportunities) I will need to make use of my surveys and interviews and case studies. Therefore, if you work or live in a country with this classification (see link above) please help me! The more information I can gather the more credible it will be, the more it can be seen as a global phenomenon displacing and destroying local landholders and their and their families’ livelihoods (this being one of my hypotheses).
If you are willing to participate, please contact me here or by sending me an email to d.i.keller [at] students.uu.nl, comment on this post, or make use of facebook.

Not surprisingly now: I have created exactly that for myself. It’s a personal portal or profile with materials such as a slightly more detailed curriculum vitae, references and certificates, contact details – and room for expansion.
I am willing to provide a link to any interested party. I do not, however, share the link on my public blog/websites for obvious reasons. While I’m planning to include the link in any future applications I’ll be just as happy if I receive an e-mail with a request to my profile-website. Please feel free to do so. My e-mail is mail[AT]denniskeller.net .