Netherlands

This Fact Sheet examines the involvement of The Netherlands in global land and water grabbing.

Investors from Canada and the Netherlands have almost half of all foreign forest and farmland holdings in the USA. The Canadian holdings reflect investment by timber companies, while the Dutch holdings reflect pension fund investments.

Volgens een rapport van FIAN, TNI en anderen is Europa sterk betrokken bij de aankoop van landbouwgrond en landbouw-infrastructuur. Rechtstreeks door Europese investeerders, maar ook door het Europese beleid dat leidt tot ‘land-grabs’.

Passive indices have been replaced by new sophisticated active indices and pension fund managers like APG are investing in natural resources assets, including farmland.

De Duitse vermogensbeheerder Aquila Capital wil kleine en middelgrote pensioenfondsen in Nederland warm maken om direct te beleggen in boerderijen. "We kopen alleen goede bedrijven en proberen die te verbeteren."

A policy paper will next week be presented to the annual World Bank conference on land and poverty in Washington DC in the United States, which focuses on the confrontation between peasant producers and investors in the Mozambican province of Zambezia.

De investeringen van pensioenfonds ABP in Mozambique hebben de afgelopen jaren bijgedragen aan het afpakken van boerenland en het bedreigen van de voedselzekerheid van de lokale bevolking.

Ardhi University (Tanzania) and its partners, the UNU School for Land Administration Studies of the University of Twente (Netherlands) and MKURABITA (President’s Office, Tanzania), are organizing a one day national seminar on Land Grabbing in Tanzania.

A group of twenty Dutch companies visited Juba this week, looking for business opportunities. In the South Sudanese capital they bumped into a 50-member strong delegation from Japan, who was there for exactly the same purpose. Meanwhile, the Indians are on their way.

Asset owners and managers are signing up to a series of principles on how they invest in agricultural land. Will this mollify critics of the land grab? Nick Lord reports.

The EU lured many multinational energy companies such as SBF to invest in renewable energies in developing countries such Tanzania where almost all projects are on the verge of collapse or shut down.

Dutch-owned Genesis farms is producing Nerica rice seeds on 220 acres of land leased for 20 years in Port Loko District, Sierra Leone.