The global land rush for climate action
The global land rush for climate action
Land inequality is on the rise across the world, with vast swathes of land now being swallowed up for dubious carbon offsetting and “nature-based” solutions.
Under the theme “Securing Land Tenure and Access for Climate Action,” the World Bank Land Conference 2024 (which used to be called the Land and Poverty Conference) kicked off this week in Washington, D.C. after a four-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The link between poverty, inequality and land ―or rather the lack of it― is crystal clear. An estimated 1.4 billion people directly rely on land for food, shelter and income. They are mostly rural communities, Indigenous Peoples, and small-scale and family farmers. Many are under threat of losing their lands or being squeezed into smaller plots as the ownership and control of land and farms increasingly concentrates in the hands of rich individuals, big corporations as well as investment and private equity. The collective wealth of food and agriculture billionaires increased by 45% between 2020 and 2022, while over 800 million people went to bed hungry.
Photo: Patrick Moran/Oxfam.
The original cause of wealth inequality. Land is the original source of wealth inequality, and is one of the oldest forms of inequalities. Land was at the center of anti-feudal class struggles. Colonialism —and settler colonial nations— was centered on dispossessing and kicking people off their land and forcing them into labor, and extracting its natural resource wealth to the benefit of the richest people in the richest countries. The right to the lords of the land over property —both shaped our world as we know it and in other ways, continued in different names. It is important we recognize the legacy of land in class and race divides.
Land is shockingly more unequal than we thought. Oxfam and the International Land Coalition found that land inequality threatens the livelihoods of about 2.5 billion people involved in smallholder agriculture. The largest 1% of farms in the world operate more than 70% of the world’s farmland. The richest 10% of the rural population captures 60% of agricultural land value while the poorest 50% of the rural population, who are generally more dependent on agriculture, capture only 3% of land value. Land inequality is rapidly growing as the pressures on this finite resource increase.
Source: Uneven Ground
Multi-dimensional and central. Land inequality sits at the heart of many other forms of inequality related to wealth, gender, environment, and health. It is fundamentally linked to global crises of climate breakdown, democratic decline, mass migration, unemployment and pandemics. It is at the core of farmer poverty. It fuels conflict and violence against human rights defenders. It drives environmental degradation and climate breakdown. Land inequality fuels the grab of wealth and tips political power in favour of the few at the top.
Source: Uneven Ground
Are net-zero targets driving a new wave of land inequality? Land is becoming a big part of climate action —the popularity of “nature-based solutions” is rapidly increasing, with more and more governments and corporations making net-zero commitments, with a big focus on taking over land to offset carbon footprints. In our “Tightening the Net” report, we looked at the implications of net-zero targets on land and food security. We found that using land alone to remove the world’s carbon emissions to achieve ‘net zero’ by 2050 would require at least 1.6 billion hectares of new forests, equivalent to five times the size of India or more than all the farmland on the planet.
Global land grab driven by carbon offsetting. Massive carbon offset deals have been negotiated in recent months. Liberia plans to grant exclusive rights to over 10% of its land (around 1 million hectares) to corporations for carbon credit projects. Similar deals have been signed in Zimbabwe, covering a fifth of the country’s land, and in Tanzania, where East Africa's biggest land-based carbon credit project covers six national parks spanning 1.8 million hectares.
At what cost? “Carbon removal” schemes —many of which are unreliable, unproven and unrealistic—, or any type of climate action for that matter, must never come at the expense of the land and territorial rights of communities and Indigenous Peoples. They should not be used as a substitute for decarbonizing our economies. They must not lead to more competition for land, forced evictions or land grabbing that will deepen already alarming levels of land inequality. Free, prior and informed consent must guaranteed. We hope the land governance experts gathering this week in Washington, D.C. don’t forget this.
Something to read
Read the “Land Squeeze,” a report that delves into the trends driving the land squeeze and exacerbating land inequality around the world.
Read a new report by Americans for Tax Fairness, which shows that 50 billionaire families have already spent over $600 million on the 2024 elections.
Watch Ida Helene Benonisen’s video about the Indigenous Sami community, green colonialism and Greta Thunberg.