Sovereignty For Sale: Corporate Land Grab in Colombia

There are three main trends in the international political economy that are currently shaping land use and value. The first is the increasing demand for land from the emerging economies of China and India alongside Korea, Japan, and the petro-dollar states of Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.

These countries are buying and renting lands in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, particularly Brazil and Argentina, for bio-fuels and other cash-crops. The second and third trends are the increased use of land for mining and speculation. Land has become the hottest commodity on the global market. It is as if the world capitalist class has only just heard Mark Twain’s advice: “Buy land, they’re not making it anymore.”

Consequently more land is being put to the service of biofuel crops and mining. Over the last decade alone, over 560 million acres in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, that were previously dedicated to food production, are now catering to biofuels and mineral extraction. Mostly multinational corporations and sovereign funds now own this land, which is equivalent to the size of the combined territories of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland. The entire forested area of the United States, including Alaska, is almost 490 million acres. Perhaps with these figures we can appreciate the magnitude of these trends.

In February, the Colombian Geological Service issued a report in which it revealed that in Colombia, a mining rich country, 18 multinational mining companies own the rights to mine on over 12 million acres of land. Read More