A dam on the Deduru Oya river, envisioned as early as the 1960ies, during the early internationally-assisted development frenzy, has been finally built in 2006 despite the long resistance of local peasants. The dam was built to provide water for agriculture and 1.5 megawatt of electric energy. Many families have been displaced to areas further south as a consequence of this development. Those displaced in the area called Nelumwewa have soon realized that the new land was unproductive despite the use of OGM rice provided by the authorities, as part of the internationally funded relocation program. Now the United Nations Development Program has launched a development program to mitigate the consequences of the earlier development program! They have blamed the lack of production and the poor performance of the seeds to  “climate change”. Apparently the OGM seeds won’t work in these highly saline conditions... The project has thus explored the possibility of a return to local rice which apparently is the only one that adapts…

Marina Forti, who has researched the issue for the Manifesto (October 23) talks about a “strange chain of events”. Indeed these events are an interesting aggregate of “disaster capitalism” and “plunder” both under the ideology of development. Perhaps the novelty is that “climate change” now provides a natural (!) scapegoat….

Create a disaster to plunder; and then launch a program to plunder in the process of mitigation! Doesn’t it look like Wall Street?