Wahaz+Nasim+Who+Cares+-+Land+Grabbing

Land grabbing is the act of a country or a company taking over a part of a foreign land through treaties to attain its resources. Land grabbing when used properly can be beneficial as a means of providing additional resources to the land grabber’s population, improving the living conditions of the host nation and providing new technologies to the host nation. By 2011, about 227 million hectares of land has been leased, sold, licensed or under negotiation. However in most cases there are certain issues that arise in achieving these treaties fairly. Most of the time deals occur between powerful corporations or countries with weaker, less influential countries causing many rights of the owners of these lands to be infringed upon.

The Brazilian government, in order to attain profits, opened up the Cerrado region in the land grabbing market. Many local villagers were forced out to make the land available for purchase by foreign countries. When these lands were taken over by foreign countries many structural changes overtook the Cerrado region including the construction of mines, dams, ranches and soy farms. This also led to considerable amounts of deforestation which caused massive endangerment to many animal and plant species. Policies for protecting about 7.5% of the Cerrado region are just being implemented. The Amazon rainforest also a target for land grabbing is now under the complete protection of the Brazillian government due to public pressure and increased concerns of deforestation. Many African nations are also going through similar situations with positive and negative outcomes.

In order to prevent land hungry investors from destroying the land and keeping fair relations with the native population various organizations have developed guidelines for land grabbing. The International Finance Corporation, institutional investors, Committee on World Food Security and the United Nations are just some of the societies that have developed laws and regulations pertaining to this issue. However implementing these guidelines is another problem as most of these areas are very rural and their legal systems have very little influence in the area. In order to be more fair with the local people they should have the choice of moving out of their lands, reside alongside the foreign plantations or not have the plantations there at all. A solution to tackle such issues is having everybody’s opinion including the settlers of the land, the local authorities and foreign nations equally weighted when making the treaty. To address pollution and deforestation only small segments of land should be sold at a time rather than selling thousands of hectares of land at a time. This way the foreign actions can be easily monitored and if the locals are unhappy with their actions they can be removed from the land or make other compromises.

De L.T. Oliveira, Gustavo. “Land Regularization in Brazil and the Global Land Grab.” //Development and Change// 44, no. 2 (2013): 261–283. doi:10.1111/dech.12009.

“Emissions from Cerrado Destruction in Brazil Equal to Emissions from Amazon Deforestation.” //Mongabay.com//. Accessed February 5, 2014. http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0915-cerrado.html.