Land Grabbing

Important notes on land grabbing

• The loss of land and resources due to land grabbing has significant social and economic consequences for local populations;
• This practice is considered as a modern form of colonialism and often involves threatening local communities to drive them off their land;
• Land grabbing occurs in developing countries, where rural communities depend on their land for their survival and livelihood, but lack the legal means to defend it.

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Land grabbing can be defined as the appropriation of plots of land larger than what is usual in the region by any person or entity, public or private, foreign or domestic, through any means, ‘legal’ or ‘illegal’, for the purposes of speculation, extraction, resource control or commodification at the expense of farmers, agroecology, food sovereignty and human rights.
This phenomenon exploded in 2008, when the World Bank issued an agricultural policy based on free trade that removed any limits to the purchase of land belonging to the countries of the global South. This triggered a flow of investment and capital from developed or emerging countries.
The main objectives of these massive acquisitions of land, especially in Africa, Asia and Latin America, are the development of monocultures or the extraction of resources.
Land grabbing poses a threat to food security, food sovereignty and human rights of local populations. Communities are often deprived of their land without any proper consultation or compensation. This can lead to impoverishment, food insecurity and social conflict.

zeroCO2 and land grabbing

zeroCO2 fights land grabbing by ensuring that local communities have the resources to defend their land and are not compelled to sell it; for example, reforested land has a much higher value than uncultivated land, thus allowing owners to resist low bids.