 I'm David from Akinet, Kenya. I'm based in one of the regions, cost region of Kenya. So until recently, I've been concentrating on work in that part of the region, but I've just relocated to Nairobi. But the work that I do basically hinges on what we have been doing in the cost of the region of Kenya. And we've been also trying to scale the whole of that work to cover the whole country program and also linking with other country programs to see how we can replicate some of the best practices, the good practices that we're able to bring about in the course of our work. So quickly, I think I would want to work us through, I would want to work us through some of the implications of the policies that have been adopted here in Europe and are increasingly impacting negatively on people or citizens in the global south. I will leave it to some specific examples, although the problem is far much spread, not just in Kenya. It cuts across, I think, quite a number of many other African countries. But I will draw examples from Kenya and also seek parallels from other countries and help us to see why we think that there is an urgent need for a rethink to some of these policies based on the facts that we will be laying on the table and some of the examples that we will share. So maybe just briefly about Kenya. Kenya has a population of about 40 million citizens as per the 2009 census and over 50% of these people are living below the poverty line. Actually, I chose to be very conservative but the official statistic is that 52% of the citizens are living below the poverty line and that's quite a substantial figure. 11 million people out of the 40 million citizens are hungry and they go hungry on a daily basis. They have nothing to eat. They have no food to put on their table. And that's substantial. I looked at the report that was produced by FAO last year because that figure originated from one of the reports in 2011. But the report they produced in 2012 actually indicates in Kenya we have 12 million, so it's no longer 10 million but it's 12 million citizens who are hungry. That means they go without food on a daily basis. And above that we have five million children who are thoroughly malnourished. I've also been monitoring that figure for a while so it has risen over the years from about 3.5 to now standing at five million young children below the age of five who are seriously malnourished. Then Kenya as a country is basically a net food importer implying that we don't produce enough food to feed the citizens. So we rely a lot on exports or I mean imports from the Americas and many other countries. The bulk of the food comes from outside. We produce but not enough to feed the population. That has serious implications because occasionally we are also faced with recurrent drought and famine conditions. If you will recall, they are 2010, 2011 and even part of 2012 in Kenya and the whole of Horn of Africa. We were struck by a very severe drought and therefore we had to call out to quite a number of African countries and also outside of Africa in Europe to support us in humanitarian aid. And then we put an appeal and we got quite a lot of money to support the communities not just in Kenya but the whole of Horn of Africa. So it's quite a big problem and it requires that people are really considering the things that they do to address that as a global problem because hunger is not just a Kenyan or an African problem. It is a global problem. If you look at the population trends and the food we are producing, it is not really in tandem. So if we are to be able to address hunger as a global problem, we really also need to look at some of the things that are helping in elevating instead, I mean in increasing rather than elevating the problem in Africa and many other countries. Sorry, I think it went too far. We have also looked at some of the major drivers. So if you look at the whole question of land grabs in Africa and in Kenya, we have three things that seemingly are the main drivers. We know globally we are faced with the energy crisis or the fuel crisis. And for some of us who are here, maybe you will realize the renewable targets that have been set by the EU in particular will now increasingly or have already started impacting negatively on some countries in the South but increasingly going forward if those targets are not reviewed, the problem is likely to worsen over the years. We also have a food crisis to deal with globally. We have seen a trend where food prices have been fluctuating over time, not just for Africa, but also I believe also here in Europe. Then we have the financial crisis that we need to deal with. These are some of the main things that are driving this problem. Given the reason that countries want to secure their food production, not just in Europe, also in Asia and many other parts. And they do not have the immediate land to be able to meet that demand. What they are doing is they are looking outward and the obvious culprit or the victim is Africa because supposedly there's an impression that has been created. We have enough land that is lying idle and are utilized, which may not exactly be true. So who are the main proponents? I've also tried there to give you a brief overview of the main actors that are fueling what I call the second scramble for Africa in this global land rush. We have the Asian powers who are increasingly seeking to secure their food supply. We also have the oil-rich countries. They are rich in terms of oil, but they are lacking in terms of water and food production. And because they do not have enough land, they are also looking outward to Africa. These are the Gulf States. We also have the European and North American banks who are the main financiers to some of these companies. We also have sovereign funds seeking also to invest. And the investment in the agricultural sector is one of the areas that has been seemingly portrayed as a viable sector with quick returns. We may want to re-look at that, but we also have issues in the whole of Africa, particularly because we have weak government systems and China systems, particularly for local communities are very insecure and people tend to take advantage of that. So in the name of seeking for foreign direct investment to develop the agricultural sector, we have witnessed a trend where local communities are increasingly being forced out of their lands to pave way for multinational companies to invest in the agricultural sector. That has had serious implications. And by way of examples, I'll also try to take us through that. If you look here, we have had serious environmental impacts. This is one of the examples. I'll just quote a few examples, but maybe later on, if we have time, I'll come to other examples. So for instance, we have witnessed companies coming in, clearing forests, filling trees, to pave way for some of these plantations, which is a serious issue. I believe all of you will agree with me it's quite a serious issue. Then we have pollution arising from use of agrochemicals. Some of the companies are using agrochemicals to support what they are doing in their plantations. We have issues to do with loss of biodiversity. In some of those forests, and a particular example like the one I'm quoting here, it is an indigenous forest where we have unique both bad and animal species endemic to this part of the continent. You'll never find them anywhere else. But because a concession was given to that company to clear down the forest, we risk losing the biodiversity in that area. We also risk using a water catchment because it is quite a huge forest. We also risk losing some animal species that are also endemic to that part of the forest. You never find them anywhere else. Then we have witnessed a scenario where increasingly companies are invading agricultural lands. They are taking away the land that was initially being used by communities to grow food to feed themselves, to now put plantations like this one. This is one of the other examples. This is a Canadian company. The other one that I've just shown there is an Italian company. So what is happening? There's displacement of mainstream food production. We are also increasingly witnessing a scenario where we are competing for water resources with these companies because initially we were being cheated to believe that some of the crops they were proposing are drought resistant and they do very well in marginal areas. So they would not in any way compete with food production. But that is now on the contrary. We have also seen a situation where conflict is now breeding out because the same land that communities were using to support their livelihoods is the same land that these multinational companies are given user rights to. So that in itself has brought a lot of conflicts. And I want to share a specific example afterwards. I'll come back to that. But this particular example, I'll come back to this. You must have heard of the conflict, the recent conflict in the Turner Delta that left over 120 people dead and thousands of livestock slashed and people left homeless. Quite a number of them. The particular girl that you are seeing down there is a girl that we had to rescue eight years old. And when the fighting went on, she lost both her parents. And as an organization, we had to come in, rescue her and rush her to hospital to get that kind of treatment. Of course, these are ills that we can easily prevent. But because of some of the policies that we are practicing and exercising, this is now resulting. Of course, at the heart of all this is land being given out to multinational companies and therefore, occasionally. A reduction in the common property resource. And of course, the bulk of the people living in this area are pastoralists. We have a few of them who are agriculturalists. But for agriculturalists, it may not be much of a problem. For pastoralists, mobility is of paramount importance. So if you limit their movement because you have given out the rest of the land to multinational companies, what are you doing? You are restricting their movement and because they cannot find pasture for their livestock, they move into other people's lands and these kind of conflicts, they have become very often and quite common in that part of the land. So I also attempted here to give specific examples of amount of land that have now been given out in concessions to quite a number of multinational companies occasioning the impacts that I'm just talking about. You will realize one of the companies called Bedford Biofuels, which is basically from Canada, which was given 90,000 hectares for at least period of 45 years by the local authority in the Tana Delta. What were they going to grow? Jatropha cacus, that is an food value crop. It's basically for biofuel production. The impacts are valuable to them. We have another company called Kenya Jatropha Energy Limited from Italy, which was given a concession for 50,000 hectares of land for 33 years. So that's half a generation. I doubt whether the people who are currently living there will live to see the end of that. And how much were they paying for the land? They were only paying two euros per hectare for one year. So every year, they just pay two euros per hectare. And that will last for a period of 33 years. What are they doing also growing Jatropha cacus? That is also an food value crop. And on the impacts you can see, besides the forest, there are 20,000 citizens who are living off that land. So they would have to be pushed off their land. Where they would go to, nobody has taken cognizance of that. They're not telling us whether they will compensate their communities or give them alternative land. Then we have another company, not from Kenya, but in the Nile. This is USA, the Nile Trading Company, who are given 600 acres. And this was likely to expand to one million hectares. And the lease is for 40 years. What are they going to plant? Timber, biofuel, palm oil and Jatropha. Of course, the impacts are also well articulated on the other side. We have another company called Malibia, from Libya. I talked of the Asian countries and the Gulf States. They are given 100,000 hectares of land and the lease period, 50 years. And for this one, it's particularly of interest because it is for free. They're not paying anything. And they've been given a 30 year tax exemption. So for 30 years they'll be conducting their business. They're not paying anything, no tax, no nothing. So they, I mean, if you look at the impacts there, they are small holders farmers who have been using that land to derive their livelihood, livestock keepers and people who are doing maybe small-scale agriculture. Then Qatar government, that is also Kenyan. It's a Kenyan case. Qatar government was given 40,000 hectares of land for a period of 30 years. They claim to grow their horticultural crops. Whether that is true or not, I'm not so sure because in their documentation they allude to horticultural crops but what they were doing on the ground was also in question. Then one that I didn't mention here from the UK, it's called G4. G4 was also given 100,000 hectares in the Tana Delta for a period of 35 years. They also claim to grow horticultural crops but also their trophies as one of the crops that they will put in there. So what am I trying to say? There are quite a number of companies that are rushing for land in Kenya, not just in Kenya but the whole of Africa, to be able to meet the energy demands. Whether that is in the right direction or not, I leave you to be the judges. But in the Tana Delta here you can see after the conflicts, homesteads were destroyed and communities were left homeless, quite a number of them. These are police officers just trying to see it, looking at the damage. In terms of human rights impacts and violations, we have had communities having to get their, for instance, this family had a crop that was just about to mature. It was raised down by one of the companies to pave way for that plantation. So we have families who have been displaced from their homesteads, and they're not given alternative land. We have families who have deprived their right to participate in key decisions, including these ones of being relocated from their original homesteads to other places. We have families that have had to be displaced from their homesteads, and for Africans you would agree with me that graves play a very important role in their lives because that is where they do their prayers. And like some of us who are Christians or ascribed to other religions. For them it's about links with their ancestors and graves really play an important role, including the forests. Those forests are deemed a sacred, that's where they go to worship. So you have to clear down the forest, remove and add graves, and remove people who have been buried ages to pave way for this kind of plantation. I think something is not adding right. So I wanted to share these particular examples for the catcher, where we were able to work together with the communities and other colleagues to stop this company and push them out of this area where they had been given a concession for 50,000 hectares for that 33rd period. They were going to put in place a plantation for Jatropha. And as I said, 50,000, they were going to displace 20,000 communities from that homestead. And before the communities realized the company was down there clearing the forest, bringing down houses. This is the company called Kenya Jatropha Energy Limited and they claim to be 100% renewable energy you can see from their vehicle there. This is an Italian company and they were going to export all this. Actually they were saying 85% of this would be exported to the markets in Europe. So we were wondering, because the idea around the renewable energy, for instance, was to combat climate change and global warming. But if you are clearing down the forest to put a shrub so that you can produce biofuel which is meant to be a greener source of energy. I think the math is not really adding up. So what was our intervention? We quickly walked in there because we realized the community would easily be overpowered. So we quickly walked in, we mobilized the community and gave them information and powered them. And they were able to do demonstrations and contest this at the local authority saying this is not right. You did not consult us in this decision and this is land that ideally belongs to us. How come you have given it out to this company without consulting us? What is happening here? So the communities also signed petitions to the Minister of Environment because ideally for a project like this you need to do what we call an environmental impact assessment. But this company had not even done the environmental impact assessment. And they had already moved in and they had started clearing the forest and doing their business. So the community started questioning, how come we were not involved? We did not participate in these consultations. So they signed those petitions and we also worked together with our sister organization, People Solidia in France who helped us to sign an urgent appeal. The urgent appeal was in form of emails that was sent directly to the president and the Minister for Environment and the Minister for Land challenging this kind of decision that had been carried out outside of the knowledge of the communities. Then we also conducted a research to challenge this intervention from a technical perspective. To tell them yes, you have come with this proposal but in our own view we feel it is not right because it is lacking and wanting in so many ways. So we also supported the community to file a court case to also challenge this because ideally the law of the land requires that communities are involved and they participate in the decisions of this magnitude. How come the whole of this negotiation happened outside of their knowledge? So we also organized demonstrations and public stands in quite a number of places and brought the media to highlight this issue and make it a public case because as it is clearly the communities would be overpowered and the land would be given away. We also hosted some journalists, I've talked about that, both local and international to create publicity around this issue. I also visited the EU, sorry. I visited the EU because definitely the main driver for this was the EU policy, the renewable energy driver, I mean a directive which was creating a market and therefore companies coming in to take advantage of that market have been created. So we had a serious discussion with members of parliament in the EU and they agreed fundamentally we have a problem and they need to review that. We had a very heated lunchtime debate with quite a number of members of parliament in the EU that is one of the public stances and the outcome of course, we forced the company to do an EIN clearly in the report they indicated this project is going to have very devastating impacts both socially and environmental and therefore they need to consider it. And out of our interventions, two directors from the environmental authority were fired and we got the ministry to pronounce a total ban on the growing of this crop we are calling Jatropha in the whole of the coastal region where I work. And as a result also the project was topped completely and the company had to withdraw. But as I say, this company said if you don't allow us to do business in Kenya we are going to Ethiopia and as I hear now they have moved to Ethiopia. So it's not just a problem for Kenya. We might have succeeded to push them out of Kenya. But it tells you if the laws are the same and the weaknesses exist in other African countries they will take advantage of those weak laws and governance and do exactly the same thing that they were doing in Kenya. So overly what we are saying is we might have had the best of intentions in coming up with this policy but definitely looking at this maybe we may need to stop and rethink. Is it really a solution to the problem that we had intended to solve in the first place? Or it is now aggravating other problems and therefore bringing in some challenges. So for the communities there perhaps the whole question of biofuels is a luxury that they cannot afford because majority of them do not even have cars. So why produce fuel to meet the demands of others? To meet luxurious demands of others whereas for their own needs what they need is food and they cannot even meet that need locally. So in conclusion, I think our problem is tutor. We recognize that at the local level yes we have weak governance systems the land laws may not have been effective which is something that we have been working to try and reform. So as we speak, that is one area that we have targeted over the years and as at present I think we have a very progressive piece of legislation that addresses that at the local level but at the international level I think we also need to look at the whole question of that policy. Is it really helping us? Or it is creating a demand that in turn is also creating problems elsewhere. And then finally, I think it is really unconscionable if we will continuously convert land that was being used for agricultural production and convert food crops into the production of agrofuels. I think really that is a luxury some of us in the global south cannot afford at this particular time. Our priority at the time being I think is food production. If we can be supported to produce food to feed the over 11 million hungry citizens that would be an investment in the right direction. So I think that is it. I would stop there. I'm sorry I've taken a little bit more of time. I was supposed to take 15 minutes. I've done 20 minutes. I apologize for that.