A.3.b. Resisting Land Grabs in the 21st Century

Ownership and use of land is becoming an increasingly contested issue in recent years. Apart from multinational corporations claiming land to exploit its resources – minerals, oil or coal (see A.5.) – companies are also taking over land for biofuels or fast growing trees to be used as timber, some governments are buying up land in other parts of the world to ensure against future lack of food or for investment, and financiers and oligarchs are also involved in taking land from local small farmers. Although some of these land deals are undertaken officially and authorized by governments, others occur secretly and the precise number of land deals since 2000 is not known. Oxfam has estimated that over two million square hectares were taken over in the first decade of the 21st century, two-thirds in Africa (where Chinese state corporations have been especially active). This extensive land grab has generated local resistance in Africa, Asia and Latin America – sometimes in an attempt to defeat the project and keep their land, and sometimes demanding better terms for local people being incorporated into these vast projects. There are, for example, impressive examples from India, where in December 1999 the Adivasi indigenous movement organized a 1,7000 mile march to launch a Land Entitlement Satyagraha ( Starr, Naming the Enemy: Anti-Corporate Movements Confront Globalization (A.4 Resistance to Multinationals) ). Sunitra Narain noted numerous campaigns (some successful) to resist takeover of land or water for hydro-electric projects and dams in India ( Narain, Sunitra , A Million Mutinies New Internationalist, , pp. 10-11 ).