Land Grabbing

 

While land grabbing is not new, the scale increased starting 2007-2008.

This includes warlords burning down villages to take them over and sell them. Recently, it is also happening for carbon offsets or mining for minerals for solar and batteries. In Massachusetts, there is cutting down trees in the pine barrens for gravel mining and solar panels.

Land is not seen as a common, but something privately owned.
Can we exclude business ownership of public or indigenous lands?

Who manages the land; is there local control?

In Hawaii, there are native land "rights" but long waits to own, and much leasing to pineapple plantations. In Alaska, the "native settlement act" supposedly gives communities rights to profit and control, but corruption can occur when there is pressure to make money.

Native Americans are treated like squatters - people and resources can be removed or land sold off cheaply. For example, there has been uranium and coal mining on Navaho and Dineh land, and people there are paid a fraction of what white owners are paid. We could have stronger laws about indigenous rights both here (eg where affected by projects like DAPL) and overseas business ownership.

Another law would be "the rights of nature" - to prohibit cutting trees and mining where harmful to the environment. Native land ownership in the US in most cases involved moving tribes to reservations. In some cases, such as the Santee Sioux, land ownership was given to individuals instead of the collective. Some was then sold to whites.

Some reservations have the right to build casinos. Usually, natives can work there, but are not allowed to bet. It may give them an opportunity to

buy back land or help send students to good schools. However, this is not sustainable due to fluctuations in the economy. Also, casinos bring in unwanted traffic to surrounding neighborhoods. If people had more basic services there would be less need for casinos.

In the US, we could set a limit on the amount of land covered by crop insurance, to discourage holding of large monoculture plantations.

Restorative agriculture needs federal funding for farmers to hold out while making the transition. There are some programs that help, such as SARE and Land for Good, with sustainable agriculture loans, resources and grants. If we don't take care of the soil, good food and climate control, we will get more forced migration.

It would help to have universal basic services for greater peace, good infrastructure and clean water. There is a housing affordability crisis in Canada. The federal government is allowing people in from war zones, but the housing crisis is driving up prices and driving people out of Canada. Empowering people to live on the land could help with degrowth. Resource extraction is based on increased growth. It would be helpful if we had and used a better indicator of the economy than GDP and the stock market. It would be good to subtract things like the number of women beat up and teen suicides. Bhutan has a "Gross Happiness Index". We need to educate the public about these things. The global north needs to make some sacrifices and use less resources that it takes from the global south, address inequities in income and a lack to true democracy. The only good land grabbing would be native management of public and traditional lands. We need to provide people with motivation to embrace solidarity instead of more stuff.

 

This is a follow-up to the Land Grabbing discussion: https://hcss.nl/report/the-new-great-gamesecuring-critical-minerals-todayfor-a-clean-energy-system-tomorrow/

The energy transition will require a 400% increase in demand for critical minerals to meet green energy demands, with the vast majority of that demand coming from clean energy applications like electric vehicles and stationary energy storage using batteries. Yet the minerals required, such as lithium, cobalt and nickel require mining that contaminates ground water. Existing mines are inadequate to meet the demand.

This has set in motion a “New Great Game” to secure critical minerals for the energy transition.

At the moment China is leading the game, while Europe is a relative latecomer