Format/Structure

Paper panel with 3-4 paper presentations.

Long Abstract

Across the world, climate change mitigation and nature restoration initiatives are influencing land dynamics. Afforestation and plantations for biofuel or carbon sequestration are along with nature conservation areas and biodiversity reserves changing land uses in the so-called Global Souths and Global Norths. Meanwhile, these changes in land use influence the dynamics of land ownership as new (and old) actors and modalities enter the property market, such as agricultural or energy investors, nature or corporate foundations, agricultural or energy cooperatives, and non-governmental or nation-state entities. This may result in increased concentration of land in fewer hands, re-concentration of land in the form of a return to old, landed elites, or de-concentration of land in terms of increasing distributed ownership. In other words, land dynamics in the context of the green transition have different outcomes with a diversity of implications.

This panel will explore changing dynamics of land use and land ownership ignited by green claims such as climate mitigation and nature restoration initiatives. It will investigate how green transition initiatives influence access to and ownership of land. What new or old modalities of land ownership emerge in climate change and nature projects? How do they influence questions of food sovereignty, water access, environmental protection and health? How do new land dynamics influence and intersect with questions of inequality, gender, and ethnicity? And what do reconfigured land relations mean for local social relations in rural areas? We invite papers that engage constructively and critically with these questions.

This Panel has 13 pending paper proposals.
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