Farmers whose land was acquired for a controversial Bidco palm oil project in Uganda have been compensated.
The
payoff to the 36 farmers follows mediation by the dispute resolution
office of the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC).
A
Ugandan environmental lobby had last year filed the case at the IFC’s
ombudsman on behalf of the Bugala Farmers Association (BFA), claiming
that their land was grabbed and that Bidco had degraded the environment
to pave way for palm oil production.
The case went into dispute resolution.
Compensation
A
report by the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO) published last month
shows 36 of the 38 farmers named in the case received compensation for
“appropriation of land”. Two of the farmers “could not be traced”
“It
was agreed that the BFA would receive a lump sum from the landlord
working in collaboration with the company, which they would then
allocate to each complainant based on a formula they devised,” says the
CAO report.
The landlord in question remains unnamed
though the documents specify that he sold the land to the Ugandan
government which was later allocated to Bidco.
Farmers who were still living on the contested land would be given titles for their parcels.
Out
of the 36 farmers who were compensated, eight later rejected the deal
and are expected to take their case to court this month.
“They
maintained that they would rather proceed to court, but refused to
return the compensation paid as part of the settlement agreement,”
writes the CAO.
Bidco has invested hundreds of millions
in the Kalangala palm oil project, after it was allocated the land on
an island on Lake Victoria.
However, the project has been wracked by controversy that has seen the Kenyan firm dragged to court.
Environmental degradation
Bidco
was cleared of charges of environmental degradation by a Ugandan court,
but the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 2016 said that
there had been flaws in the process it used to admit the palm oil
project into the Business Call to Action (BCtA)— a programme that
supports private sector job creation.
In the case
brought to the CAO, the farmers argued that the IFC had a role to play
in addressing a dispute arising from the project as it had invested
Ksh4.6 billion ($46 million) in Bidco, which would rely on palm oil
inputs from Uganda.
Bidco, in its submissions to the
CAO, argued that it ought not to be drawn in the land dispute as it had
simply been “given” land that had already been earmarked for the project
by the government of Uganda.
Further, the company said that there had only been one pending case for compensation.
It is this lone farmer, Bidco said, that had rallied others to “claim that their compensation was inadequate”.
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