New pressures emerging from carbon and biodiversity offset projects

Around 87 per cent of land grabs in transnational deals worldwide since 2000 have occurred in the regions of high biodiversity, while major new pressures were emerging from ‘green grabs’ for carbon and biodiversity offset projects, conservation initiatives and clean fuels, revealed a new report by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food). 

These ‘green grabs’, for which huge swathes of farmland were being acquired by governments and corporations, now account for 20 per cent of large-scale land deals, despite little evidence of climate benefits. 

Titled Land Squeeze, the report released May 13, 2024 exposed the alarming escalation of land grabbing in various forms, opaque financial instruments and speculation, rapid resource extraction and intensive export crop production. 

Since 2000, an area the size of Germany has been acquired through transnational land deals and that globally, just one per cent of the world’s largest farms now control 70 per cent of the world’s farmland, the findings showed.

Drivers of land inequality

Source: Land Squeeze report

In India, the top 10 per cent own 45 per cent of farmland, according to the 2020 Global Land Inequality report. 

As the demand for land continues unchecked, the panel of experts said the ‘land squeeze’ is inflaming land inequality and making small- and medium-scale food production increasingly unviable – leading to farmer revolts, rural exodus, rural poverty and food insecurity. 

“Farmers, peasants and Indigenous Peoples are losing their land (or forced to downsize), while young farmers face significant barriers in accessing land to farm,” said the report. 

This global trend of land grabs and green grabs was particularly affecting sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, while land inequality is growing fastest in central-eastern Europe, North and Latin America and South Asia. 

Susan Chomba, IPES-Food expert, Kenya, said:

The rush for dubious carbon projects, tree planting schemes, clean fuels and speculative buying is displacing small-scale farmers and Indigenous Peoples. In Africa, powerful governments, polluting fossil fuel companies, and big conservation groups are elbowing their way onto our land under the veneer of green goals, directly threatening the very communities bearing the brunt of climate change. 

The report pointed out how governments’ pledges for land-based carbon removals alone add up to almost 1.2 billion hectares, equivalent to total global cropland. 

By 2023, carbon offset markets were already valued at $414 billion globally, a figure projected to rise to $1,800 billion by 2030. 

“Under the guise of ‘nature-based solutions’, business-as-usual investments and top-down conservation schemes are being advanced — raising concerns that powerful actors will use new global biodiversity goals (the ‘30 by 30 target’) to push through massive green grabs,” said the authors.

“It’s time decision-makers stop shirking their responsibility and start to tackle rural decline. The financialisation and liberalisation of land markets is ruining livelihoods and threatening the right to food,” said Sofia Monsalve Suarez, IPES-Food expert, Colombia.

Instead of opening the floodgates to speculative capital, governments need to take concrete steps to halt bogus ‘green grabs’ and invest in rural development, sustainable farming and community-led conservation, she added.