Demining as an economic programme

Demining appears in humanitarian budget lines, and that classification obscures what it actually is.

The return calculation

A hectare of arable land produces a crop every year, indefinitely. A hectare that cannot be entered produces nothing, also indefinitely. Clearance converts the second into the first at a one-off cost, and the return continues for as long as the land is farmed.

Run that arithmetic against almost any other reconstruction investment and demining wins comfortably. A rebuilt bridge is enormously valuable and it does not produce a crop. Clearance is the rare intervention where a single payment restores a permanent income stream.

Why cost per hectare is the wrong headline

Published figures vary by an order of magnitude, and both the high and low numbers are honest. Manual clearance of a dense urban area with mixed contamination is expensive per hectare. Non-technical survey that releases a large field on evidence is very cheap per hectare.

Most of the area is released by survey, and most of the money is spent on the small proportion requiring physical clearance. Averaging those together produces a number that describes nothing.

The sequencing point

Nothing else can start first. Not the power lines, because crews stand in fields. Not the water mains, because they run underground. Not the roads, not the housing, not the return of residents.

Every reconstruction timetable is therefore a demining timetable with other activities attached to it. Anyone planning a rebuild who has not put clearance capacity on the critical path has produced a schedule that will not survive contact with the ground.

An uncleared hectare shows on a balance sheet not as zero but as a negative: it is taxed, it cannot be borrowed against and it cannot be sold. I see this every season I cannot send machinery onto a field. Keeping demining in the humanitarian column makes it look like a cost, when it is one of the few infrastructure investments whose return can actually be calculated.