Transcript
TIM ANDERSON: There's a few conceptual steps to start from. In context of the SABL's, first of all, a number of people are reclaiming this land first of all, but the damage has been done. So in terms of land valuation the approach I've taken in, let's say, in writing about land and livelihoods is that you can't really value land properly because the discounting in the future and so on that problem is just insurmountable. But what you can do is make estimates of the annual productive value of land. so, for example, broader sense it's not just about the commercial productive value it's about the production of real value, that's to say, some of the value is not actually monetised, but if you lose it, you lose real value. So, for example, there's a few categories that I've worked out in association with the groups there. One is commercial loss to start with. The other one, in context of urban land might be to do with urban rent. Then you've got a couple of big categories, rural production loss, social value loss and ecological goods and services loss and in each of those areas there is a body of research trying to put value on the annual productive value of those goods and services. But they're usually not counted because they don't come into the formal economy.
DON WISEMAN: Supplementary to all of this, or at the heart of it all is this cultural link to the land. That has a value, doesn't it?
TA: Yeah, there are cultural services and values that people have tried to estimate in the past, it's a difficult area, but just one of the areas, but there are some far more tangible things, including food and housing for example, which typically aren't counted properly either.
DW: Say people want to go back to their land and the land is wrecked. They've been mining and it's just a hole in the ground. What do you think should happen there?
TA: Well in a particular case where you can have intense damage in a particular area and spill off damage in other areas, but with the SABLs our starting point is really to look at those areas which suffered damage because of logging and preparation for agricultural monocultures, for example. So, like I said there's a few categories you can estimate value and value loss over time and that might not complete value loss - that is to say the land might be damaged, but the agricultural value in terms of output, it might be damaged immensely, but the ecological value might be damaged partially, for example. So land isn't really ever completely damaged. It can be alienated and it can be damaged but typically it recovers. So there are some estimates that need to be made about the extent of the damage which is going to vary in different circumstances and over what period of time and so on. The framework approach we've set up is creating a number categories and a number of issues in those categories which have to be argued for and estimated in terms of particular damaged.
DW: In terms of this compensation, this is something that would need to be organised by a government?
TA: Or through a court process. In a sense, my report to this group Act Now is about setting up a framework for advocates basically which you imagine the first thing is going to be lawyers suing the government over wrongful alienation of their land and then making a claim, which, as I say, is going to vary from case to case, but where there are certain categories which we can identify in each case.
DW: Up until this point, have there been cases, are people being compensated in any way for losing their land or having their land taken from them illegally?
TA: Yes, there have been some to do with logging and they've drawn on some research about the productive value of land and to some extent the ecological goods and services produced by the environment. But I'm really just trying to bring those elements together basically in the case of the SABLs. Which may have implications for other losses of land too, but at the moment we're focussing on the SABLs, which if things went ideally you'd imagine the land would be returned to their owners and there would be a period of alienation of that land where a certain amount of damage has taken place over a certain amount of years, for example.
