badukumi@uoregon.edu – Global Political Economy and Development

A bailout for jobless millennials?

For unemployed and depressed youths, job-training programs and mental-health services are more important than ever

January 27, 2014 8:00AM ET

A recent U.K. study of millennials suggests that the unemployment epidemic is driving a mental-health crisis.

In the shadow of the Great Recession lies a deep depression: Youths in their 20s and early 30s are hitting new lows. Compared with older workers who have lost their jobs, young people face more complex and layered hardships that could last most of their lives. They are experiencing disproportionately high unemployment, stretching indefinitely into the future, in an increasingly unequal and uncertain social landscape. And just when they are most in need of social support, the recession has led lawmakers to erode the welfare and employment programs that youths need to move themselves — and the economy they have inherited — toward recovery.

For young people in the United States and Europe, there is an emotional layer to this economic malaise. According to a recent U.K. survey of 2,161 people ages 16 to 25 by nonprofit advocacy group the Prince’s Trust, the unemployment epidemic is driving a mental-health crisis. While overall happiness levels for the surveyed youths stayed about level over the past year, reported emotional health fell significantly for the segment that is out of the workforce and not in school or job training. These young people experienced feelings of despondency and hopelessness at a higher rate than their peers. Chronically unemployed youths were more likely to have experienced panic attacks, engaged in self-harming behavior or felt suicidal. Mental-health problems struck 4 in 10 jobless young people “as a direct result of unemployment,” according to the Prince’s Trust.

One woman interviewed for the study said, “Being out of work stripped away my self-worth and made me feel like a waste of space.”

In the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has registered similar trends among American youths in the recession era. National surveys show that, for adolescents ages 12 to 17, self-reported mental-health status and physical well-being got worse in 2009 and 2010 compared with the prerecession years of 2001 to 2004. These problems were clustered among youths from low- and middle-income families.

Without a job or educational prospects, many end up blunting their misery through desperate means. In the U.K. survey, long-term-unemployed youths were much more likely (PDF) to have been prescribed antidepressants or to take drugs. In the U.S., a recent public-health analysis (PDF) found that “young single men” were particularly prone to drug abuse during economic hard times.

But the data just confirm what young people have intuited: They are wrestling every day with a real sense of structural injustice. For many millennials, finding any job is a struggle — much less the one that fits one’s degree. Instead of fulfilling aspirations to do better than one’s parents, they are starting out life crushed by a hostile job market and overwhelming student debt, with no financial fallback if they run into a health crisis or fall behind on rent.

Despite frequent media ridicule that characterizes them as immature and entitled, millennials are confronting a daunting cycle of social alienation that seems unprecedented. Unemployment for people ages 16 to 24 hovers around 16 percent, or twice the national rate (PDF). Previous eras of high youth unemployment, such as the Great Depression, flowed into periods of robust growth. But the sluggishness of the current so-called recovery does not suggest that a dramatic boom will follow the bust. Historically, high joblessness among youths is not unusual; however, government data show the gap between young and older adult unemployment rates has expanded to a record high. Labor force participation among young people has fallen steadily in recent years, suggesting that some are being discouraged from even seeking a job. During the recession, the gap between whites and blacks and Latinos has widened, marking a retreat from intergenerational progress toward racial and economic equality.

Federal funding for major youth jobs and training programs plunged by about $1 billion from fiscal years 2002 to 2012.

It is true that middle-aged unemployed people often have a tougher time getting hired again later in life or rebuilding from scratch after losing a career. Yet for the young, joblessness may leave a more insidious lifelong impression. Long-term studies have revealed far-ranging effects of joblessness, known as scarring. Contrary to the idea that the economy will simply bounce back over time, historical data projections reveal that when people start adulthood in deep unemployment, the slump tends to last well beyond their youth. Of course, resilient young workers will adapt their lifestyles to such destabilization, but overall economic drag often leads to depressed future wages and hampers national economic productivity.

According to a study by the public-policy think tank Center for American Progress, which breaks down the cost of the roughly 1 million young people who were long-term unemployed at the height of the recession, the collective social losses (including public benefits paid, forgone tax revenues and setbacks in gaining skills and work experience) add up to a sort of millennial tax of “more than $20 billion in earnings over the next 10 years,” writes Sarah Ayres, a policy analyst at the center. (That is $22,000 per young person — close to the cost of attending a year of state college).

Emotionally, these hardships are compounded by the shredding of safety nets. Access to social and health services has shrunk or failed to meet soaring public needs. The National Alliance on Mental Illness reported that states collectively cut more than $1.8 billion from their mental-health budgets from 2009 to 2011, with some states losing more than one-fifth of their funding despite heavy demand for services. And the Kaiser Family Foundation reported in 2011 that more than two-thirds of children with mental-health needs had been left without help.

Paradoxically, research suggests (PDF), the troubled young single men who are especially at risk of suicide and drug abuse are often excluded from social support programs, which target aid to poor mothers and children.

A steady job is key to regaining stability. Yet according to the National Priorities Project (NPP), a nonprofit organization that seeks to make national budgets more transparent, federal funding for major youth jobs and training programs plunged by about $1 billion from fiscal years 2002 to 2012, adjusting for inflation. While the Great Depression saw a surge in jobs programs for young people, today’s flagship youth jobs program, Americorps, which provides environmentally and community-based service jobs, can serve only about 80,000 people each year, out of some half a million applicants, according to (PDF) the millennial-focused advocacy group Young Invincibles. In 2005, Congress defunded Youth Opportunity Grants, a major initiative providing vulnerable young people with targeted training and job-placement services. On the local level, fiscal austerity has gutted community-based youth employment programs that connect struggling young people to the workforce. Today nearly 7 million young adults are what the NPP calls “disconnected” — out of school and jobless.

Can we pull out of this mess? Oddly, the kids who have been derailed by the recession might be inadvertently laying a stronger new foundation. A study (PDF) released in July of survey data on American teens shows that young people’s attitudes have become “more collectivistic and less individualistic” since the recession began. Potentially reversing a trend toward materialistic social values that stretches back to the 1970s, young people expressed more communitarian priorities, such as concern for the environment and less interest in owning expensive things. The paper’s lead researcher, Heejung Park of the University of California at Los Angeles, told me that “despite struggles they face, youths in economic challenges may cultivate these prosocial values, perhaps because they themselves struggle and come to understand the importance of others and the society.”

Today’s politicians should take a break from slashing budgets and demanding more self-reliance from the destitute and, instead, take some lessons from recession-roughened youths. They may be jobless, but many are busy cutting a fresh path toward a more just future. They simply need political institutions to invest in their generation — and to trust them to wield their full power.

Michelle Chen is a contributing editor at In These Times, an associate editor at CultureStrike and a blogger at The Nation. She is a co-producer of “Asia Pacific Forum” on Pacifica’s WBAI and Dissent magazine’s Belabored podcast. She studies history at the City University of New York Graduate Center.

Stockholm syndrome

What happened to the European left?

February 6, 2014 8:15AM ET

by Guy Standing

european left protest — The street actions of the indignados in Spain are expressions of those who rebel against a manifestly unfair system but who are unable as yet to offer a coherent alternative.

European countries are in crisis — but not just an economic one. Globalization has generated a new global class structure, with a tiny, powerful plutocracy lording it over everyone else. A shrinking “salariat” clings on to full-time employment. Below them, a swelling class of precariously employed workers, the “precariat,” flit between jobs and unemployment without any occupational identity. At the bottom is an underclass made up of the indigent, ill and damaged.

The precariat class is growing — but instead of championing their cause, the political left across Europe is failing them. And in failing the precariat, the left is failing itself.

Sweden, long regarded as the utopia of social democracy, is an unlikely player on the front line of this crisis of the left. This year, center-left parties, which include the once mighty Social Democrats, will likely find a place in Sweden’s government, not because their policies have inspired voters but by elimination: Their right-wing counterparts have been in office for nine years and are presiding over rising inequality, 8 percent unemployment, and unprecedented social tensions such as the four nights of riots, looting and arson that took place just outside Stockholm last May.

When the Social Democrats are elected, they will have to govern in coalition. They appear clueless about what they even want to achieve. The haplessness of Sweden’s left was epitomized by an article by the SD’s general secretary in December, nine months before the general election. Rather than proposing concrete policies, the SD announced they were launching a “listening campaign” to find out what the Swedish people want. That may sound democratic, but political parties should be driven by values and a desire to convince others. Instead of taking a stand, this one is asking people to tell it what to stand for. It is rather sad.

Growing social unrest

Sweden’s predicament is emblematic of growing social unrest across Europe. Inequality is rising faster there than in any other member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and if involuntary part-timers and the discouraged unemployed were included in a composite measure of labor slack, the level of labor underutilization would be at least 10 percent, much higher than the official unemployment rate. One in every four people between the ages of 16 and 24 has no job, and a rising number of young men of that age are trapped in means-tested social assistance and quietly pushed into workfare, schemes requiring them to do menial labor in return for meager benefits. Workfare is a general policy that social democrats have adopted across Europe, much to the angst of the precariat, because the forced low-paid labor is pushed on them.

Sweden is not unique in seeing its traditional left in intellectual paralysis. In September, it was the Norwegian center-left that was booted out of office, even though Norway has done relatively well economically since the 2008 global financial crash. Just before that, the German center-left dribbled into a derisory minority vote. And earlier in 2013 the Italian social democrats (PD) sold what little was left of their progressive credibility by entering a coalition with the right-wing party of a multi-convicted billionaire maverick, Silvio Berlusconi. In France, the socialist president wallows in unprecedented unpopularity, seemingly bereft of progressive ideas and beleaguered by a recent sex scandal.

The roll call of paralysis goes on, through Spain, Portugal, Greece and Bulgaria. In the U.K., the Labour Party has announced it will abide by the spending plans of the Conservative-led government and pitches its electoral hopes on a promise to deal with the cost of living better. Labour tries to appeal to a populist “squeezed middle,” as if the crushed bottom does not matter. Indeed, it deliberately sounds just as tough on the unemployed as the Conservatives do. The precariat are left out of consideration altogether.

The anger inside the precariat is simmering, and from time to time it boils over into days of rage.

The financial crash of 2008 was a failure of a market-driven economic model traditionally embraced by right-leaning politicians. This should have created inroads for the left to become stronger than ever. So why is it the left that has been losing elections, often by a wide margin, rather than its conservative counterparts?

One reason is that social-democratic parties made a historical compromise in the 1990s in a bid to be electable, appealing to what they perceived as “the middle class” and all but ignoring the lower classes in their electoral calculus. But there is something even bleaker about the defeats of the left: Its parties have failed to offer a sense of future.

Traumatized by the overwhelming influence of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, these parties resorted to “third way” buzzwords invented by consultants in think tanks. Not only are we told to support the “squeezed middle,” it’s also recommended that we favor “predistribution” — but what does that even mean? This vague PR-speak revealed these parties’ lack of any substantive vision of a good society. Barack Obama briefly beamed hope but has long since lost his luster. Only after five years in office did he wake up to declare that inequality was a major issue to be confronted, and then he did not say how.

It doesn’t help the left that youth inside the precariat face a hostile social state, unlike anything their parents faced. Ever since Bill Clinton promised in 1996 to “end welfare as we know it,” social democrats everywhere have joined the right in offering the unemployed and youth in general a mix of benefit sanctions, for alleged behavioral deficiencies, and workfare, which is little more than forced labor, mostly in demeaning make-work schemes, if they wish to receive benefits. Politicians call this “tough love.” But there is no love. It is an Orwellian term that conceals the loss of the vital ingredient of progressive politics: empathy.

The days of rage to come

The labor-based parties of social democracy seem doomed to marginal status, just as their old trade-union base withers. That does not mean the left is necessarily doomed: though it is currently impotent, it will take new forms. The old is dying; the new is not quite ready to spring into life. The “morbid symptoms of decay” that the Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci, surveying the lost left in the 1930s, brought into the imagination of another generation are all around. More than half the young in Spain are unemployed, homelessness is rampant, poverty is higher than it has been for decades and charities are overstretched.

The anger inside the precariat is simmering, and from time to time it boils over into days of rage. The spontaneous mobilization of collective energy in Gezi Park in Istanbul, the anti-austerity protests in Athens and the constant street actions of the indignados in Spain are all part of the “primitive rebels” phase of an emerging class, seeking a path of recognition, representation and then redistribution. “Primitive rebels” is a term used by the late historian Eric Hobsbawm. It is used to describe those who rebel against a system that is manifestly unfair but who are unable as yet to offer a coherent alternative; Hobsbawm wagers that they are the harbinger of more strategic action. As with the Occupy movement, they know what they are against but have not yet articulated what they want, except that it is not the past. As one subversive piece of graffiti on a Madrid wall put it: “The worst thing would be to return to the old normal.”

In Bulgaria, there has been an Occupy settlement outside the parliamentary buildings for months. The government, paralyzed, accused the protesters of being middle class and paid to demonstrate. Lobbed back, metaphorically, came the defiant cry, “We do not need to be paid to hate you!” Six youths have killed themselves; one who self-immolated has been adopted as a symbol of defiance. The outside world takes no notice.

There is no need to talk of revolutionary times. Tumultuous times will do.

Everywhere, the energy is growing. Outbreaks of primitive rebels could come anywhere. Comedian Beppe Grillo, who led the Five Star movement to extraordinary success in Italy’s general election a year ago, may not be a great hope for progressive revival. But something he said sticks in the memory. Addressing the political establishment, he screamed, “Give up! You are dead men walking.” The PD may be re-elected with its new, telegenic leader who models himself on Tony Blair, but Italian youth are disaffected. In the U.K., another comedian, Russell Brand, made headlines by saying on TV that youths should not bother to vote because nothing was on offer. The diagnosis was understandable, but the advice was nihilistic and self-defeating.

There is no need to talk of revolutionary times. Tumultuous times will do. What must be offered is a revived sense of the future, a vision of a society that is about more than endless labor and endless consumption amid chronic uncertainty and almost unsustainable debt. It is just a matter of time until the precariat organize and turn their days of rage into a movement. The far right may be growing, but too many Europeans know their history to allow themselves to be duped again. Meanwhile, the left must realize that it has only ever prospered when those entering politics have understood and espoused values corresponding to the insecurities and aspirations of the emerging mass class, struggling in the lower echelons of society. It must offer a sense of future, a politics of paradise, to members of that class. So far, it has failed to do so.

Guy Standing is a professor of development studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies at University of London and the author of “The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class.”

Abuses colour Cambodia’s fight for land

Phnom Penh, Cambodia – Nearly three years ago, a few hundred small-scale cassava farmers migrated from a district on Cambodia’s eastern border to Kratie, a neighbouring province, where they heard there was farmland available in a village called Broma.

The move was not unusual in this predominantly rural country, where land tenure is shaky and poor farmers often uproot themselves for a chance at acquiring land.

“Villagers went there expecting to make their living from farming. They just wanted to survive,” explained Bun Sothea, 22, one of the migrants.

But what supposedly happened next was extraordinary. According to the Cambodian government, the villagers allegedly banded together into a separatist movement and decided to “secede” from the Southeast Asian nation.

This so-called secession culminated in a violent battle between villagers and security forces, in which soldiers shot and killed a 14-year-old girl who had been hiding underneath her house.

After the Khmer Rouge abolished private property and instituted forced communal farming, the country – which never had a strong tradition of land ownership in the first place – was left in economic shambles.

Six months later, a total of 14 people have now been prosecuted and convicted for spearheading the so-called Broma separatist movement, including Mam Sonando, an elderly French-Cambodian who owns one of the few independent radio stations here. He was sentenced earlier this month to 20 years in prison.

But rights groups, internationals observers, and the villagers themselves say that the “secessionist plot” is a convenient fiction manufactured by the Cambodian government to justify the death of the girl, Heng Chantha, during a forced eviction.

‘No evidence’

The farmland where the villagers had settled was on the edge of a 15,000-hectare plantation that the government had granted to an agroindustrial firm.

The company allegedly attempted to evict them starting in late 2011 so that it could plant rubber saplings. When villagers resisted, hundreds of police and soldiers sealed off the village and called in a helicopter for backup before storming in-and shooting Chantha in the process.

Both rights workers and villagers insist that arrested radio presenter Sonando did not even have a connection to the events in Broma, other than broadcasting stories about them on his radio station.

“This entire court case was just for hiding the death of the girl during the combat against villagers,” says Am Sam Ath, the technical supervisor for Licadho, a human rights group that campaigns against land grabs and forced evictions. “There is no actual evidence proving that there was an insurrection.”

Sam Ath, who was blocked from approaching the village on the day of the battle but was able to observe from a distance, said that 1,000 soldiers, police and military police officers had surrounded Broma in all directions. “They tied red cloths to their heads like they were about to go to war.”

Land tenure

Although most outsiders still associate this Southeast Asian country with land mines, civil war, and the depredations of the Khmer Rouge regime, the biggest issue facing many Cambodians is one that gets little traction in the international media: land tenure.

Although the ultra-Maoist regime was ousted in 1979, an additional decade of Vietnamese-backed Communist rule meant that private property rights were not re-established until the early 1990s.

Since then, despite a few high-profile land titling drives and the creation of the Land Law in 2001, many Cambodians still do not have titles to their homes or farmland, even if they have lived there for decades.

Meanwhile, in a bid to speed development, the government has sold off vast swathes of land to agribusinesses for large-scale farming. Most of these plantations, or other economic land concessions, are located in areas where smallholders had farmed rice or other crops for years.

Cambodia’s crackdown on land grab protests

According to Licadho, over 2.1 million hectares of land have been leased to corporations over the past 20 years, “transferred mostly from subsistence farmers into the hands of industrial agriculture firms”.

Another 1.9 million hectares have been leased to mining companies, meaning that private companies hold nearly a quarter of Cambodia’s land. The group estimates that 400,000 people have had their land grabbed, or are at risk of losing their land.

“The seriousness of Cambodia’s land problem cannot be overestimated,” says Rupert Abbott, Amnesty International’s researcher on Cambodia. “Tens of thousands of people are affected. Both urban and rural communities not only face losing their homes and livelihoods through forced evictions and land grabs, but are also threatened with harassment, arrest, legal action and violence for peacefully standing up for their rights.”

In a report published last month, Surya Subedi, the UN’s special rapporteur for human rights in Cambodia, wrote: “There are well documented, serious and widespread human rights violations associated with land concessions that need to be addressed through remediation.”

He said it was hard to see what benefits ordinary Cambodians had actually gained through the granting of concessions, which is often done with no transparency.

Country development

The government has expressed regret for the death of Heng Chantha, but defends its land policies as necessary for the country’s economic development – and branded its critics in the West as hypocrites. In a scathing October 18 letter to a British peeress who had published an editorial critical of land issues in Cambodia, the country’s foreign ministry accused her of writing from a “comfortable sofa in London drinking cappuccino, if not martini”.

“Did the UK or Europe or America get to be industrialised nations by planting potatoes or raising sheep’s in their own backyard?” asked the ministry’s spokesman, Koy Kuong. “Perhaps you should read objectively your own country’s development history before preaching to other countries. Your development views are so condescending to us.”

But it seems clear that the issue of land rights is becoming ever more politically sensitive, as Prime Minister Hun Sen and his ruling Cambodian People’s Party face elections next year. And the frequent, occasionally violent land protests in the capital over the past two years are a major black eye for a government seeking to emphasise the development achievements of the past two decades.

In this environment, Hun Sen has vacillated between making concessions to some villagers while cracking down on the most vocal protesters, casting into sharp relief the government’s fear of broad-based discontent over its land policies. Under pressure, he put a moratorium on granting economic land concessions in May – although critics charged that a number of large plantations were grandfathered in.

Crueler than before

At the same time, the consequences for protesters who fall afoul of the government have been harsher than ever.

101 East: No Place like Home

After a violent eviction in January, 18 women and children from the Borei Keila neighborhood in Phnom Penh were detained without charge at a “social affairs centre” with a record of human rights abuses. Another group of female protesters from the Boeng Kak neighborhood were jailed for a month after a protest. Both communities had lost land to powerful companies aligned with the government.

A number of other land protesters across the country have also been harassed, summarily jailed, and even shot.

The villagers who had been living in Broma have now been forced to leave, with some going back to their hometowns, others migrating to Thailand to look for work, and others taking jobs as maids or cleaners. Six village residents were sentenced to prison terms alongside Mam Sonando, while another seven had sentences commuted after cooperating with prosecutors.

Sonando, whose trial uncovered no evidence that he was a secessionist, and who has already fallen ill multiple times while in detention, is now facing the possibility of living out his days in jail. “We will keep on appealing because he received injustice. He is innocent,” says his wife, Dinn Phannara.

Villager Sothea says she has been forced to leave behind her home and cassava farm. Her brother, Bun Ratha, a land campaigner who has been accused of masterminding the secessionist plot, is in hiding. If caught, he will be jailed for 30 years.

Source: Al Jazeera

African tribes losing ground to conservation

Nairobi, Kenya – Trouble is brewing in northern Tanzania, where the government has recently designated a wildlife protection zone that threatens to displace tens of thousands of Maasai tribespeople, who live and graze cattle across the grasslands.

In a rush to protect elephants, rhinos and other endangered animals from gun-toting poachers, governments are fencing off swathes of territory that have been inhabited and used by small ethnic groups for generations.

Samwel Nangiria, who represents several Maasai groups, said his people have repeatedly lost out in the name of animal welfare and insisted it will not happen again.

“If they enforce this eviction, blood will be shed,” he told Al Jazeera.

Human rights groups warn the Maasai are not alone. Hunter-gatherers, nomadic cattle-herders and other distinct African tribes routinely face eviction and violence when their ancestral lands are selected for conservation.

Estimates of the number of evictions vary. One study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison described expansions of Africa’s protected areas in recent decades that have displaced anywhere from 900,000 to 14.4 million people.
Tanzania tribe evicted from ancestral land

In Tanzania, elders of the semi-nomadic Maasai, best known for their vibrant shuka fabrics and beaded jewellery, seek to overturn a decision in March to declare a 1,500-square kilometre wildlife zone on the eastern fringes of the Serengeti.

“We are scared because we know we are fighting the government,” said Nangiria. “The memories are fresh in our minds of previous evictions. People were shot, houses were burned. But this time round the Maasai are not leaving. We have compromised so much for the sake of conservation.”

Ministers say the Maasai have been granted alternative land and stress the importance of animal breeding grounds along the “iconic great migration” route of wildebeest. Critics say officials seek bigger safari tourism revenues, including from an Emirati-owned hunting lodge in the area .

‘Not prepared’

Tanzania’s northern neighbour, Kenya, has its own rifts between ecologists and native peoples. Samburu pastoralists from the central highlands say their ancestral terrain has been chipped away by years of successive wildlife protection schemes.

The latest project at Eland Downs, in Laikipia, was a 171 sq km national park that was designated on land purchased by two US-based environment charities, the Nature Conservancy and the African Wildlife Foundation.

Richard Leiyagu, chairman of the Loiborkineji Self-Help Group, said 25,000 Samburu families had been shunted off land that their semi-nomadic forefathers had used for grazing cattle, the lifeblood of their community.

“These people have not been prepared for another lifestyle. The only way to sustain their way of life is through livestock,” he said. “It’s a time-bomb. They will be forced to demand more space and they will clash with the private conservationists.”

The pattern is repeated across Africa. In southeast Cameroon, Baka pygmies bemoan beatings at the hands of government-backed eco-guards when they are caught using traditional hunting skills under the canopies of Boumba Bek National Park, according to Survival International.

Likewise, the Bushmen of the Kalahari reserve in Botswana have reportedly been beaten and arrested for killing antelopes on protected land, despite tribesmen winning court battles that upheld their right to live and hunt on their ancestral terrain, the indigenous rights group said.

Conservation has climbed up the political agenda in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in response to a surge in poaching for elephant tusk and rhino horn, feeding demand for traditional medicines in Asia’s growing middle-class.

The conservation group WWF ranks wildlife contraband as a comparable global threat to drug trafficking and gun-running. Last year, poachers slaughtered nearly 700 South African rhinos and as many as 30,000 elephants.

There is a real concern now about people being displaced as a result of conservation, and there needs to be a way of reconciling the needs of indigenous groups and conservationists.

Andrew Erueti, Amnesty International

But in their effort to halt animal extinctions, conservationists clash with indigenous groups. Pastoralists are pushed off land to make way for national parks, and hunter-gatherers are arrested for traditional bush-meat hunting in the forests.

“Over the past decade, tribal groups of hunter-gatherers and pastoralists across Africa have tapped into the global indigenous movement as a force for funding and advocacy,” said Andrew Erueti, an expert on indigenous rights for the UK-based rights group Amnesty International.

“There is a real concern now about people being displaced as a result of conservation, and there needs to be a way of reconciling the needs of indigenous groups and conservationists.”

Mohamed Matovu, a spokesman for Minority Rights Groups, said creating national parks ranks alongside other threats faced by rural African groups, such as valley-flooding dam projects and land-grabs for farming, mining and logging.

“Conservation is also business, when you look at it,” Matovu said. “With revenues shrinking, tourism is an easy way to spruce up your economy. And the money that comes from tourism is almost never shared with those who are evicted from the lands.”

Jo Woodman, a campaigner for Survival International, said Western conservationists wield “vast influence” over African officials. Rather than embracing native peoples, who understand rural terrain and have lived alongside animals for generations, lobby groups typically design “people-free” reserves, under the control of government ministries, she added.

“Tribal communities could have really done with the conservation groups to help fight off encroachment by loggers and poachers, but instead they are dragged out of parks and dumped on the edges, made into the enemies of conservation,” Woodman said.

Sinister undertone

Her colleague, Fiona Watson, said there was also something more sinister going on.

“There’s a deep element of racism throughout Africa against hunter-gatherers,” she said. “Many members of government see hunter-gatherers and semi-nomadic pastoralists as backwards and that they have to drag these people into this century.”

New wildlife protection schemes are moving with the times. The state-backed Northern Rangelands Trust brings together 19 conservatories in northern Kenya that are managed by the region’s 100,000 residents, mostly rural cattle-herders.

One of the biggest global conservation groups, WWF, said it works to protect Africa’s gorillas, elephants and other endangered beasts – while also ensuring that “local communities maintain their ability to provide for their families”.

Tanya Saunders, CEO of the Tsavo Trust, is designing a conservancy in eastern Kenya that will be managed by semi-nomadic Orma pastoralists, an impoverished group that has faced repeated inter-tribal clashes along the troubled Tana River.

“We need to address wildlife conservation through the people who live alongside the wildlife, who are expected to be its guardians,” she said. “Nothing short of ownership of conservation projects by the people themselves has any chance of viability in the long term.”
Maasai elders at a community meeting [Al Jazeera]

Albert Barume, an expert in tribal groups for the UN’s International Labour Organization, has monitored conflict between conservationists and tribal peoples throughout his career, and has noticed two recent reasons for optimism.

In March, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights in Arusha, Tanzania, ordered Kenya to temporarily stop forcing Ogiek hunter-gatherers from the Mau Forest, marking another legal victory for native groups.

He has also noted a growing awareness among conservationists that those living on lands destined for national park status should be co-opted into conservation, rather than forced to the peripheries of protected zones.

“The old-fashioned concept of conserving nature was that humans harm nature, but that school is phasing out to a new generation of activists,” he said. “Nowadays it’s about creating a partnership between indigenous groups and conservation.

“Instead of being portrayed as anti-conservation, I think they’ll be allies of conservation.”

Follow James Reinl on Twitter: @jamesreinl

Health Ministry kicks against GMOs

The Ministry of Health has kicked against the introduction of Genetically Modified Organisms into the country.

It believes the products may pose some risks to the lives of Ghanaians.

Speaking to Adom TV on MultiTV, the Public Relations Officer of the Ministry, Mr. Tony Goodman said the health of Ghanaians could not be experimented with.

He said the appropriate state agency to determine whether GM foods were safe for consumption and should be allowed into the country is the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA).

Genetically modified foods are foods produced from organisms that have had specific changes introduced into their DNA through some genetic engineering.

These techniques have allowed for the introduction of new crop traits as well as a greater control over food’s genetic structure and increased production.

GMOs have not been accepted in many countries across the world.

Apart from the United States, many European countries have resisted the introduction of GM foods.

There are efforts to introduce the products in Ghana with the Convention People’s Party (CPP) and other civil society organizations vehemently opposed to the idea.

They argue the introduction of GMOs will have serious implications for the country’s economy in the long term because peasant farmers will now relying on multinational seed producing companies to produce food.

Opponents of GMOs argue that the conventional farming practices will be destroyed, making Ghana completely dependent on multinational companies.

The Health Ministry says for the same reasons that Europe has rejected GMOs, Ghana must not accept the products.

The ministry’s position however, appears to contradict that of the Minister for Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, Dr. Joe Oteng-Adjei.

Dr. Oteng-Adjei was reported as saying that with the passage of the Biosafety and Biotechnology Law, Ghana could now adopt GMOs.
– See more at: http://www.myjoyonline.com/news/2013/December-13th/health-ministry-kicks-against-gmos.php#sthash.tMF0XrzJ.dpuf

B-BOVID’s unique agric model worth learning from – FAO’s Africa rep – See more at: http://www.myjoyonline.com/business/2015/january-29th/b-bovids-unique-agric-model-worth-learning-from-faos-africa-rep.php#sthash.Obw8T7Kk.dpuf

The Deputy Africa Regional Representative of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, Dr. Lamourdia Thiombiano, has commended B-BOVID, an agri-business company operating in Ghana’s Western Region for its innovative and unique agric model that seeks to promote sustainable agriculture, food security, and eliminate poverty amongst farmers.

He thus lauded the company’s profit-sharing component, stating that, “It is a difficult task for any businessman to share profit” and encouraged other businesses particularly in the agric sector, to consider the profit sharing model to improve farmers’ standards of living.

Dr. Thiombiano who is also Ghana’s Representative of the FAO gave the commendation when he visited B-BOVID to familiarize himself with the operations of the company and its various models adopted to make agriculture more attractive and dignifying.

The FAO country Director, who was awed by the model, said if such innovations and models are emulated and implemented on a large scale, agriculture cannot be classified as a “suffering or unpaid” sector but a sector with many opportunities for employment and wealth creation.

B-BOVID is committed to ensuring climate smart agriculture, food security and poverty alleviation which is in line with FAO’s agenda on sustainable agriculture policy.

Dr. Thiombiano mentioned that the FAO would soon establish Community Development centre aimed at giving integrated approach to farming adding, “the B-BOVID example is worth learning from”.

Mr. Issa Ouedraogo, Founder and Chief Executive of B-BOVID said it was worrying that farmers continue to swim in abject poverty despite their enormous contribution to the society.

He believes that the over 65 per cent of the African population who are farmers could have a successful lifestyle adding, “We all need to grow together”.

Mr. Ouedraogo said Ghana has a super weather and soil which should enable it to become food sufficient adding, “at B-BOVID, we use the power of business to solve social and environmental problems through innovation and technology in agriculture”.

B-BOVID’s model, which is the first of its kind in Ghana, runs an Palm oil and palm kernel oil mill, an ICT centre for agriculture which is the first in the country, alternative livelihood centre which is the largest in the country, agricultural mechanization centre which is the only one in Ghana’s Central and Western regions, agro-eco tourism and eco-garden (Garden of Eden), animal husbandry, poultry and aquaculture.

Other projects currently underway includes farmers shop, an organic supermarket and an organic restaurant.

Mr. Ouedraogo says the company is introducing farmers particularly the youth to a modern transformative and innovative agriculture that will transform subsistence farming to commercial farming in the communities.

The company also believes in impacting practical knowledge to rural communities to create wealth, jobs, and to entice more youth into agriculture to improve the socio-economic wellbeing of the rural communities.

B-BOVID’s social inclusive concept can be replicated across Ghana and the sub-region; and it is for this reason that B-BOVID’s concept was among the case stories during the launch of the Global Compact Network Ghana in 2014.

The award-winning company’s farm also serves as a demonstration center for those who wish to diversify agriculture especially for the rural communities and for those who wish to replicate the concept. Replicating and supporting this initiative will improve the livelihood of the rural poor since agriculture plays a crucial role in contributing to the major socio-economic development objectives; i.e food security, GDP growth, employment, improved nutrition and poverty alleviation.

Mr. Ouedraogo added that B-BOVID through its unique concept, has created jobs for over 3,000 households in various communities, and indirectly improved the livelihoods of over 12,000 farmers. He said farmers obtain agricultural inputs at subsidized rate whilst first hand practical knowledge is given to the youth and farmers in the rural areas.
– See more at: http://www.myjoyonline.com/business/2015/january-29th/b-bovids-unique-agric-model-worth-learning-from-faos-africa-rep.php#sthash.Obw8T7Kk.dpuf

Land Claim Could Halt South Africa Renewable Energy Project

(Bloomberg) — A land claim brought against South Africa’s largest sugar farmer threatens to stop a 1.1 billion rand ($90 million) renewable-energy project that will produce electricity by burning leftover cane leaves and tops.

Charl Senekal Suiker Trust, which has 5,000 hectares (12,355 acres) of irrigated cane land and is a grower for Tongaat Hulett Ltd., is part of a group that plans to build a 16.5 megawatt biomass facility in KwaZulu-Natal, according to a presentation on the National Energy Regulator of South Africa’s website. Talks to settle claims by four communities bordering part of his farm will take place on Friday, Charl Senekal, the white owner, said by phone on Wednesday.

The government of Africa’s most industrialized economy is promoting agriculture and providing access to land as part of redistribution policies to compensate black South Africans for the seizure of property under white-minority rule that ended in 1994. At the same time, the country is turning to renewable energy as it struggles to meet power demand after failing to invest in generation even as the government expanded supply to millions of households.

“The whole project can collapse if they don’t accept our offer,” Senekal said, declining to give details because they are private. “We’ve made a very reasonable proposal to the government and we hope that this will be successful. I am sure it will be accepted. It’s a great project.”
No Power

Work on the plant in Mkuze is scheduled to start in August if all the communities agree to the offer, with the first electricity to be produced 22 months later, Senekal said. It may create about 400 jobs, and the project will be able to repay its debt in eight years, he said. All four of the community groups need to support the plan for it to go ahead, he said. South Africa has a 24.3 percent unemployment rate.

The development must continue regardless of the outcome of the claim, Dumisani Myeni, chairman of Silwane Trust, established to handle the claims, said by phone from Mkuze. Community groups will be open to leasing the land should the claim succeed. The groups include the Myeni, Ngwenya and Zulu tribes.

“Most of the community doesn’t have power,” Myeni said. “The project will help. Senekal will just need to be a bit flexible. We definitely want to work with him and any developers who come here. We won’t chase anyone away from the land, we just want partnerships. We will reach agreements and work with them.”
Electricity Shortages

A claim against the land was dropped in November 2010 after studies commissioned by Senekal found the area had been occupied by whites since 1880, Johannesburg-based Beeld newspaper reported. The land claims office in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal, didn’t immediately respond to e-mailed requests for comment it said on March 10 will take two weeks to be processed.

South Africa has raised 140 billion rand from private investors for 3,900 megawatts of power as part of a renewable energy program, President Jacob Zuma said on Feb. 13.

Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., the state-owned utility that provides about 95 percent of the country’s electricity, has instituted rolling power cuts since November as part of plans to prevent a total collapse of the grid serving the continent’s second-biggest economy. The cuts have curbed production and forced businesses to shut doors at peak times.
High Probability

Eskom suspended four executives while the government starts an inquiry into the business, Chairman Zola Tsotsi said on Thursday. There’s a “very high probability” of blackouts Thursday evening, the utility said on its Twitter account.

Senekal’s trust will own 30 percent of the project, Building Energy Development Africa 3 SRL, a technical partner, a 51 percent stake, and local communities 2.5 percent, according to the presentation to regulators, dated February 2014. Cape Town-based H1 Capital (Pty) Ltd., a group of black investors, will hold the balance. The project will be 60 percent funded by debt and 40 percent equity.

“I dearly would like it to be one of my legacies,” said Senekal, whose farms produce about 360,000 metric tons of sugar a year. “It’s in the interests of the area, the province and the country that this power plant come off the ground.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Xola Potelwa in Johannesburg at xpotelwa@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Vernon Wessels at vwessels@bloomberg.net Emily Bowers

China to Battle GMO Crop Fear From Field to Dinner Table

Oct. 9 (Bloomberg) — The Chinese government is trying to convince Zhou Guangxiu that the corn in the congee she wants to feed her son is safe. That may not be easy.

Zhou, the owner of a recycling business in the northeast coastal city of Weihai, said one source of her concern was an anonymous article shared online by her friends that alleges genetically modified crops cause infertility in Asians, part of a U.S. ploy against China. She fears her 21-year-old son won’t have his own family if she feeds him the corn-meal porridge.

“I definitely won’t let my son eat it,” Zhou said by telephone. “It’s not just me. All our friends are worried. All the corn grown now is genetically modified.”

China, the world’s most-populous country and the biggest consumer of rice, soybeans and wheat, has begun a campaign to push genetically modified organisms as it seeks to expand food supplies. While no domestic grain crops are bioengineered, President Xi Jinping has endorsed the technology used to boost output everywhere from the Americas to Africa. China’s Ministry of Agriculture said Sept. 28 it would use media, seminars and street advertising to combat the perceived risks.

Meat consumption has surged in China as the economy expanded almost six-fold over the past decade and incomes rose. That led to an increase in livestock herds and demand for feed. The nation is already the biggest soybean buyer and will become the top corn importer by about 2020, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates. Most of its overseas supplies are produced from seed genetically engineered to grow with certain traits, like killing pests or tolerating herbicides.
‘Controversial Views’

“There has been a lot of opposition against GMO in China not based on science, which, if left unchecked, can weaken government support for the development of biotechnology,” Li Qiang, chairman of Shanghai JC Intelligence Co., the country’s largest independent agriculture market researcher, said by telephone from Shanghai on Oct. 7. “The agriculture ministry probably feels compelled to do some education.”

Because the technology is new, “it’s reasonable that society should hold controversial views and doubts,” Xi told the Communist Party conference on rural works last December, the Beijing Evening News reported on Sept. 28. China should ensure biotechnology is safe and should not allow foreign companies to control the market for gene-modified products, he said.
‘Very Big Problem’

The concern among some Chinese consumers about genetically modified grains dovetails with broader worries about food safety. Fears have been fanned by high-profile incidents, including rice found with cancer-causing heavy metals; rat, fox and mink sold as mutton; cooking oil salvaged from sewers; and baby formula laced with chemicals. About 41 percent of Chinese consumers in a 2012 Pew Research Center survey considered food safety a “very big problem,” up from 12 percent in 2008.

The state-led campaign to promote GMOs comes at a time when meat has become a popular choice at meals, requiring more corn, wheat and soybeans to feed livestock. China is the world’s largest pork consumer, ranks second in chicken demand, and trails only the U.S. and Brazil in beef, USDA data show.

In December, the country announced a new food-security strategy that will allow “moderate” grain imports for feed, while maintaining self-sufficiency in wheat and rice, a break from previous policies to ensure the nation grows 95 percent of the corn, wheat and rice it needs, according to an April report by the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service.
More Meat

Per-capita demand for corn more than doubled in the past two decades, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. Beef consumption in China, which the USDA estimates already raises and eats half the world’s pork, could surge by more than 70 percent from 2013 to 2030, Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. said Sept. 5.

China’s demand for corn and soybeans will continue to rise in line with economic growth, according to the USDA report in April. The economy, which has the world’s biggest meat industry, may expand 6.9 percent in 2016, more than twice as fast as the U.S., according to estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

The country imported 63 million metric tons of soybeans last year valued at $38 billion, accounting for more than 60 percent of global exports, customs data show. It also shipped in 3.3 million tons of corn, according to the data. Soybean purchases will climb to 96.9 million tons by about 2020, with corn reaching 16 million tons, according to a long-term projection made by the USDA in February.
U.S. Grains

Most of the soybeans and corn China imports are grown with engineered seeds, including those with built-in resistance to Monsanto Co.’s Roundup herbicide, Zhang Xiaoping, chief representative of the U.S. Soybean Export Council, said by telephone Sept. 30.

China’s biggest supplier is the U.S., where GMO crops account for 93 percent of all corn produced and 94 percent of soybeans, USDA data show. While the U.S. is the largest user, Brazil and Argentina sowed a combined 64.7 million hectares (160 million acres) of GMO corn, soybeans and cotton in 2013, with another 21.8 million hectares planted in India and Canada, according to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications.

“China doesn’t have a choice when the top suppliers all employ the technology,” Zhang said.

Corn in China trades at almost three times the U.S. price. Futures for December delivery on the Chicago Board of Trade were down 0.4 percent at $3.4175 a bushel at 6:08 a.m. On the Dalian Commodity Exchange, the grain was at 2,342 yuan a ton, or about $9.70 a bushel.
Not Unique

Concern that GMO crops are unsafe isn’t unique to China. Only 27 countries planted genetically modified crops in 2013, ISAAA data show, and at least 60 have labeling requirements, including Japan, Brazil and the entire European Union. Surveys in the EU show opposition by consumers, who worry about risks such as human resistance to antibiotics and the development of so-called superweeds that are impervious to herbicides.

China approved strains of genetically modified rice and corn in 2009, saying at the time that mass-production will be allowed only after trial planting and public acceptance. Cotton is the only bioengineered crop widely grown.

Unlike the U.S., Brazil and Argentina, China doesn’t raise gene-altered food crops on a commercial scale, according to Huang Dafang, a researcher with Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and former member of the agriculture ministry’s biosafety committee. Instead, it only buys them, though the government has rejected some imports with unapproved traits, including an insect-repelling variety developed by Syngenta AG. Imports must be processed, mostly into animal feed and cooking oil, he said.
Consumer Concern

Even as the top leadership has approved the safety of domestically developed genetically modified corn and rice, they haven’t been cultivated outside labs, according to Huang. No one at China’s agriculture ministry replied to a request for comment sent by fax.

“The main reason for China’s slow adoption of biotech grain crops isn’t so much that the government is swayed by public opinions,” Shanghai JC Intelligence’s Li said. “It’s that China doesn’t have leading, marketable biotechnologies and is afraid of having the market controlled by foreign companies once commercialization is granted.”

Genetically modified foods currently available show no effect on human health among the populations where they’ve been approved and likely aren’t a risk, according to the World Health Organization.

That hasn’t prevented consumers from expressing concern about food safety. China Central Television reported illegal sales of unapproved GMO rice in supermarkets in central Hubei province, prompting a pledge by the government that it would crack down on illegal growing and selling.

“We don’t know what GMO is and what it really does to our bodies,” said Zhou, the mother in Weihai who expressed fear of feeding her son corn porridge. “Hopefully, the government can help us understand what the truth really is.”

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: William Bi in Beijing at wbi@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ramsey Al-Rikabi at ralrikabi@bloomberg.net Sungwoo Park

bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-15/germans-tired-of-greek-demands-want-country-to-exit-euro

(Bloomberg) — Berlin cabdriver Jens Mueller says he’s had it with the Greek government and he doesn’t want Germany to send any more of his tax money to be squandered in Athens.

“They’ve got a lot of hubris and arrogance, being in the situation they’re in and making all these demands,” said Mueller, 49, waiting for fares near the Brandenburg Gate. “Maybe it’s better for Greece to just leave the euro.”

Mueller’s sentiment is shared by a majority of Germans. A poll published March 13 by public broadcaster ZDF found 52 percent of his countrymen no longer want Greece to remain in Europe’s common currency, up from 41 percent last month. The shift is due to a view held by 80 percent of Germans that Greece’s government “isn’t behaving seriously toward its European partners.”

The hardening of German opinion is significant because the country is the biggest contributor to Greece’s 240 billion-euro ($253 billion) twin bailouts and the chief proponent of budget cuts and reforms in return for aid. Tensions have been escalating between the two governments since Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras took office in January, promising to end an austerity drive that he blames on Chancellor Angela Merkel.
War Reparations

Tsipras has also stepped up calls for war reparations from Germany for the Nazi occupation during World War II and Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has been locked in a war of words with his German counterpart Wolfgang Schaeuble. Last week, the Greek government officially complained about Schaeuble’s conduct, to which Schaeuble replied that the whole matter was “absurd.”

It was Varoufakis’s behavior in the spotlight last night when German public broadcaster ARD showed a video of him shot at a 2013 event saying: “Greece should simply announce that it’s defaulting … and stick the finger to Germany.” He then raises his middle finger.

Varoufakis, who was a guest on ARD’s Guenther Jauch program, acknowledged the footage was from the speech but said that the “video was doctored. I never gave the finger.” ARD told German newspaper Bild that it has found no evidence of tampering with the video. A Greek finance ministry spokesman didn’t respond to two phone calls seeking comment.

“The way the Greeks have been behaving has been impossible,” said Dorli Schneider, an interpreter waiting for a train at Munich’s central station. “Greece should pay back what they owe. We can’t forever give them more money.”
Growing Umbrage

The shift in German sentiment comes as Greece, at risk of running out of cash this month, battles with European officials over the release of more bailout funds. Tsipras will join European leaders Thursday for talks in Brussels.

German voters’ growing umbrage may make it harder for Merkel to sell any possible deal down the road to the German public and Bundestag, which would have to vote on it. She also has to be wary of the anti-euro AfD party trying to peel off her voters, said Juergen Falter, a political scientist at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz.

“The pressure is coming from two sides: the public and some opposition parties,” he said. “The government will probably now react more decisively.”
More Aggressive

Some in the community of 315,000 Greeks living in Germany say they sense the hardened view that has developed as the crisis drags on.

“People are now quicker to point the finger, and the tone is becoming more aggressive,” said Kostas Tassopoulos, who came to the German capital in 2008 and has thrived producing electronic music under his stage name Ekkohaus. “It’s a bit silly of the Greeks to say their problems are the Germans’ fault, and it’s just as silly that the Germans are trying to put all the blame on the Greeks.”

While Merkel’s government says Greece doesn’t have a blank check to do as it pleases, Germany’s official aim is to keep the euro area together. Just 40 percent of Germans now say they want Greece to remain in the euro.

“The German government could support the Greeks more,” said Manfred Ukleja, a 55-year-old teacher. “The Greeks are founding fathers of the European Union, and they have more significance than just their economy.”

Nonetheless, many Germans say they’ve lost faith in Greece. According to the ZDF poll, 82 percent of respondents doubt that Greece will honor its agreed budget cuts and reforms, while only 14 percent trust that it will follow through. The poll was conducted March 10-12 and has a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

“It’s so frustrating that they constantly criticize us, that they don’t appreciate our help,” said Erika Schmidt, a 53-year-old kindergarten teacher from Augsburg. “I’ve got nothing against Greece, but the way they behave and talk about Germany makes me angry.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Dalia Fahmy in Berlin at dfahmy1@bloomberg.net; Elisabeth Behrmann in Munich at ebehrmann1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrew Blackman at ablackman@bloomberg.net; Chad Thomas at cthomas16@bloomberg.net; Chris Reiter at creiter2@bloomberg.net Chad Thomas, Celeste Perri

Keystone XL Opponents Seek Halt to TransCanada Land Grab

(Bloomberg) — Nebraska landowners opposed to TransCanada Corp.’s plan to run the Keystone XL oil pipeline through the state asked two judges to block the Canadian company from seizing property.

The requests, made Wednesday at state courthouses in the Nebraska cities of O’Neill and York, followed by a day a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report that production of crude to be transported from Canada’s oil sands will significantly increase greenhouse gases tied to global warming. President Barack Obama, citing environmental concerns and litigation, has yet to decide whether to approve the pipeline, which crosses an international boundary.

About 90 Nebraska property owners have now joined in two lawsuits to block TransCanada’s bid to acquire easements across privately owned land through which the proposed pipeline will pass. It will extend to a junction in the southeast corner of the state, from where oil will be shunted to the U.S. Gulf Coast.

The filing follows the state Supreme Court’s Jan. 9 ruling that landowners couldn’t challenge a state law allowing TransCanada to seize land because it was unclear that their property was in the pipeline’s route. Four of seven judges ruled in favor the landowners, one vote shy of what they needed to prevail under Nebraska’s constitution.
New Request

In the latest request to block TransCanada, the landowners argue that they’ll prevail in a renewed bid to strike down the law because they now know for certain that they’re in the path.

“There is a substantial likelihood” the landowners “will prevail,” their lawyers, David Domina and Brian Jorde, said in court papers.

The company has acquired almost 90 percent of the land it needs in Nebraska and all the property rights sought in Montana and South Dakota, Shawn Howard, a spokesman for Calgary-based TransCanada, said.

“We have received the paperwork that has been filed and we are currently reviewing it,” he said in an e-mail about the new court filings.

Arguments will be heard in court later this month.

The cases are Steskal v. TransCanada Keystone Pipeline LP, CI 15-6, Holt County District Court (O’Neill) and Dunavan v. TransCanada Keystone Pipeline LP, CI 15-12, York County District Court (York).

To contact the reporter on this story: Andrew Harris in federal court in Chicago at aharris16@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net David Glovin, Charles Carter
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