By: Giorgia F.
Photo from: GRAIN
The big hands of wealthy investors reaching out and tearing land away from native residents. This is what the above picture illustrates. As it turns out, this phenomenon has a name: land grabbing. It is defined as the practice of acquiring large portions of land for farming, resource extraction or commodities and has been around since the pre-colonial era. Although hard to define due to its impact on everything from the economy to international power struggles to the climate, it can be linked to declining agricultural diversity as well as the loss of food sovereignty and human rights.
The uptick in climate as well as social rights consciousness in recent years has placed a microscope over this practice revealing its dangerous environmental and social effects to the public’s eye. Given this increase in scrutiny, the industry has started to change its strategy in order to continue grabbing land without facing much backlash. Whereas previously, land grabbers, oftentimes wealthy corporations, were able to bypass the regulations surrounding land attainment they now attempt to paint land acquisition as a positive rather than a negative. Instead of laying out exactly what newly acquired land will be used for --most notably, unsustainable, mono-crop planting that destroys soil due to the lack of crop diversity -- they claim they are acquiring the land to “improve it.” But what does this mean exactly?
Most of the land grabbing that takes place harms small, rural populations of farmers. It is their land that is commonly acquired by purchasers. These people have farmed their plot of land oftentimes for generations and mostly use sustainable agricultural practices to do so. When a land-grabbing deal takes place, the legal rights to a plot of land are transferred from the previous owners to the investor or corporation taking the land. While some of these land transfers are illegal, deals can also be perfectly legal while still being unfair towards the original owner of the land. When the new owners take over the land they cause immense environmental damage as well as financial and cultural damage to the former owners.
Land grabbing is environmentally damaging for many reasons. If the acquired land will continue to be used for farming, oftentimes mono-cropping, a practice that erodes the soil and makes it less fertile, is used heavily. Additionally, land acquired may be used for building new infrastructure such as factories instead of for agricultural purposes. This is impactful given the increasing scarcity of agricultural land that is essential for providing food security to rural populations that previously relied on the land as their main food source. Beyond the environmental aspect, this process also harms those whose land is now no longer theirs as they are cut off from their food supply and become dependent on the new owners to make a livelihood.
Given the visibility of these negative effects of land grabbing on poorer, rural populations, there was a need to reinvent what land grabbing meant to the public. Knowledge of these damaging aspects of land grabbing is making it harder for land transfer deals to occur without backlash. This is where greenwashing comes into play. Greenwashing is a broad term that can apply to a multitude of issues beyond land grabbing. It is defined as using environmental concerns to essentially cover up murky practices that are often the opposite of environmentally beneficial. The use of greenwashing to conceal land-grabbing practices specifically is often referred to as “green grabbing”. One of the main hallmarks of “green grabbing” is the idea that selling land will help the environment. So with this in mind, corporations looking to justify the acquisition of large areas of land claim that by buying the land they are in fact helping the environment. Obviously, this is not the case as land grabbing has dire environmental impacts like those discussed above. However, the average person might not look deeper into these negative practices in which case the “green grabbing” angle works perfectly to get the public’s support. If you do not dive deeper then land grabbing may actually sound like a perfect solution to countering climate change.
No one will argue with these deals if people think they are occurring for the greater environmental good. That is the logic behind painting land grabbing as necessary for environmental improvement. While the world is becoming more receptive to climate change, the land grabbing industry is taking advantage of this concern to ensure that this damaging practice will continue to take place.
Discussion Questions:
Why is it essential to understand greenwashing in order to combat practices such as land grabbing?
Land grabbing is a major issue in today’s world. How can we make sure people know this practice is occurring and come up with solutions to change this practice?
Works Cited:
Baker-Smith, K., Boruss Miklos Attlia, S. (2016). What is Land Grabbing: A Critical Review of Existing Definitions. Eco Ruralis. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_x-9XeYoYkWSDh3dGk3SVh2cDg/view?resourcekey=0-NEtyTMQ5NXEHKVjMW96KNw.
Center for Economic and Social Rights. (n.d.). Land Grabbing and Its Implications for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. https://www.cesr.org/land-grabbing-and-its-implications-economic-social-and-cultural-rights.
Stewart, R. (2018). The “Greenwashing” of Land Grabs. Global Policy.
Transnational Institute. (2012). The Global Land Grab.