A New and Silent Land Grab Is Underway – We Must Stop It
May 9, 2024
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Ian Scoones and Angela Serrano
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As recently as 15 years ago, large-scale land grabs regularly made headlines around the world, as wealthy governments bought up fertile fields in poorer countries to grow and export produce to feed their own populations. This was part of a trend that has seen 30 million hectares of agricultural land sold off around the world since the early 2000s, according to the Land Matrix, an independent monitoring initiative that tracks land deals across the world.
But these spectacular state-led land grabs appear to have now been replaced by silent, often small and incremental forms of expropriation, where capital extends its frontier for either expanding agricultural estates, conservation areas, carbon investments and energy projects.