What is a land grab? Exploring green grabs, conservation, and private protected areas in southern Chile

Abstract

Discussions of land grabs for various purposes, including environmental ends, have expanded in recent years, yet land grabbing remains inconsistently defined and poorly understood. Our ability to assess the extent to which land grabs are occurring, and to identify the mixture of factors driving land and resource acquisition, is limited. This paper assesses whether a land grab for conservation is happening in southern Chile, and identifies the various driving forces that combine to drive land acquisitions in the region, based on a detailed exploration of the recent massive growth in privately owned protected areas in the region. This paper finds that the various dominant definitions of land grabs each apply only partially to southern Chile, that land grabs for conservation need to be incorporated into the Chilean and the global economy, and that green grabs interact in various ways with broader resource grabs, particularly for forestry and hydroelectricity. This case study demonstrates the limitations of some definitions of land grabs, particularly their focus on capitalist accumulation within land grabs, their international nature, and their emphasis on legal processes.

La privatización de la conservación en Chile: repensando la gobernanza ambiental

“…Primero, el carácter elitista de estas organizaciones y los proyectos de conservación. El carácter global de las organizaciones y sus nexos con grandes corporaciones (Corson 2010, Holmes 2014, 2013 confiere un riesgo evidente de exclusión de actores situados en la escala nacional y local (tales como otras formas de organizaciones ambientalistas, comunidades indígenas, pequeños productores y comunidades de base) del proceso deliberativo asociado a la gestión de los territorios y de la gestión de la conservación.…”

“…Holmes (2014), analizando si las áreas privadas protegidas en Chile obedecen a este patrón, sugiere que no existe evidencia de que las apropiaciones hayan vulnerado derechos de propietarios en las transacciones, Sin embargo, la gran extensión de las tierras para la conservación administradas por filántropos extranjeros y grandes organizaciones de conservación internacional, hacen necesario examinar con mayor atención en proceso en el mediano y largo plazo. Dada la falta de un marco regulatorio definitivo para la conservación privada en el país, que establezca tanto derechos como los deberes de esos particulares para la conservación, no es posible establecer que el uso actual de esas grandes extensiones de terreno serán su uso definitivo en el largo plazo.…”

Accumulation by securitization: Commercial poaching, neoliberal conservation, and the creation of new wildlife frontiers

“…The new range of actors also speaks to the tension between ownership and control. While the GLC partially reflects processes in which conservation-related land and resources come to be owned by private actors (see, for e.g., Holmes, 2014;Snijders, 2012), we show how control over them is more diffuse: it involves private actors but also two states, especially a foreign oneÑhere South AfricaÑwho comes to the table with explicit security concerns. This also underscores how ownership, control, and accumulation do not all accrue to the same groups and the complexity of dealing with conservation-security concerns in a contiguous cross-border context.…”

Private Protection Initiatives in Mountain Areas of Southern Chile and Their Perceived Impact on Local Development—The Case of Pumalín Park

“…Land with a high conservation value is sold for ecotourism, or as payment for ecosystem services. Since the 1980s and mainly since the 2000s, NGOs have been cooperating with corporations and have allowed their activities to be viewed with corporations and have allowed their activities to be viewed as positive [8][9][10]. However, in Chile, formal recognition of PPAs is inhibited by a lack of implemented regulations [11].…”