The Tragedy of the Grabbed Commons: Coercion and Dispossession in the Global Land Rush

Abstract

Rural populations around the world rely on small-scale farming and other uses of land and natural resources, which are often governed by customary, traditional, and indigenous systems of common property. In recent years, large-scale land acquisitions have drastically expanded; it is unclear whether the commons are a preferential target of these acquisitions. Here we argue that the contemporary global “land rush” could be happening at the expense of common-property systems around the world. While there is evidence that common-property systems have developed traditional institutions of resource governance that make them robust with respect to endogenous forces (e.g., uses by community members), it is less clear how vulnerable these arrangements are to exogenous drivers of globalization and expansion of transnational land investments. In common-property systems, farmers and local users may be unable to defend their customary rights and successfully compete with external actors. We define the notion of “commons grabbing” and report on an exploratory study that applied meta-analytical methods, drawing from the recent literature on large-scale land acquisitions and land grabbing. Informed by political economy and political ecology approaches, we coded selected cases on the basis of acquisition mechanisms, claims and property rights, changes in production system, and coercive dynamics, and explored the interactions between the different variables using association tests and qualitative comparative analysis. We found that the majority of the cases included in this analysis (44 of 56) could be examples of commons grabbing

“Medium-Scale” Forestland Grabbing in the Southwestern Highlands of Ethiopia: Impacts on Local Livelihoods and Forest Conservation

“…This study demonstrated how the medium-scale forestland appropriations have created in situ displacement and become detrimental to local livelihoods and forest conservation in a way that recalls criticisms of the large-and mega-scale international land grabs in the peripheral lowlands of Ethiopia and elsewhere in the global south over the past ten years (e.g., [3,5,7,10,12,19]). Local farmers' low interest in taking up the alternative livelihood option (i.e., low-paying temporary jobs), the absence of technology transfers from the companies to the farmers and the inability of earlier established companies to contribute to Ethiopia's foreign currency earnings through coffee exports coupled with the aggravated deforestation from the local farmers' efforts to secure access through more intensive use following the forestland transfers to private companies highlight the overall failure to achieve the objectives of transferring forestland to private companies.…”

“…Due to weak legal recognition of customary rights to commons, forest and pasturelands have historically been and still are easy prey to dispossessions justified by development and conservation narratives [6,7,[42][43][44]. The neoliberal-oriented policy of privatizing commons is one tool for dispossession and capital accumulation in contemporary capitalism [42,45] 3 .…”

“…Deconstruction of this claim of legality, however, reveals that it is based on earlier appropriations and control of the communal forest by previous regimes over the past approximately 120 years [55,85,86]. This history of historical dispossessions and marginalization contributes to making local communities and their informal access to the forest in Gera, easy prey for contemporary appropriations-a widespread problem in relation to common resources in many countries in the global south [6,7,87].…”

“…Conflicts over the transferred forestland were observed to at least delay the activities (e.g., project start) of some of the companies in Gera. Such delays occurred even though the companies, like those engaged in large-and mega-scale land investments, had been receiving full support from the government at all administrative levels, including mitigating and/or suppressing conflicts over the appropriated forestland between the investors and farmers in favour of the investors [3,7,91]. Overall, although the expected outcomes have clearly not been achieved, it is too early to make a conclusive statement about the contribution that the recently established companies could make by transferring technology to farmers and enhancing foreign currency earnings.…”

“…This forest is increasingly under pressure from appropriations of various scales: small-(<100 ha), medium-(100-1000 ha), large-(1001-10,000 ha) and mega-(>10,000 ha) scale land grabbing 1 [3,[5][6][7]. This study investigates the impacts of medium-scale forestland transfers for coffee production on local livelihoods and forest conservation in southwestern Ethiopia and their implications for strategies, such as Ethiopia's 2011 climate-resilient green economic development strategy [8], to create conservation and development synergy.…”