The dangerous rise of Land Grabbing through Climate Change Mitigation policies: the examples of Biofuel and REDD+

Abstract

This paper seeks to investigate the interconnections between climate change and land grabbing. It offers a nuanced understanding of the critical intersections of climate change mitigation policies with land grabbing, before and after the Paris Agreement. There are various considerations associated with climate change that drive land grabbing tendencies. This increase of land grabbing has been observed to exacerbate climate change and the recurrence of strategies that produce harmful effects on socio-ecological systems. The term ‘climate grabbing’ is coined to describe the phenomena related to the appropriation of land and resources for the purposes of climate change mitigation. In particular, this paper will focus on two instruments that have been created to manage the complications of climate change and have been reinforced by the Paris Agreement in 2015: biofuel production and the Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation Plus initiatives (REDD+). The article will analyse how those measures increase the phenomenon of land grabbing.