Mega-infrastructure projects in drylands: From enchantments to disenchantments

With the planning and the implementation of mega-infrastructure projects (MIPs)—such as large-scale agro-industrial plantations, large-scale road, rail, port, and energy networks (pipelines and dams), and green energy projects (large reforestation, solar, and wind)—people in drylands are promised sustainable development by governments and companies. However, this promise of a development enchantment often leads to disenchantment for local resource users in drylands: while they are often excluded from the benefits of MIPs, their commons are grabbed. Cases that illustrate this process in drylands are the Lamu Port, South Sudan, Ethiopia Transport Corridor (LAPSSET); the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT); the Great Green Wall (GGW) initiative in the Sahel; new dam projects in Turkey; solar and wind projects in Morocco and Kenya; and projects in Pakistan along the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The chapter summarizes research findings showing that local pastoralists, farmers, and fishers not only have their common property undermined, but also their ways of life challenged, as these investments increase the attractiveness for further MIPs. This leads to an increased rural gentrification and the spread of accumulation by dispossession.