Green Grabbing: A growing threat to biodiversity and communities

IPES-Food released two new briefings for decision-makers and key actors attending international negotiations on biodiversity – the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) COP16 in Cali, Colombia – to highlight the dangers of green grabs and the urgent need for community-led and agroecological solutions. 

A briefing on green grabbing and the threat to biodiversity highlights the dangers of green grabs and the urgent need for community-led solutions. # 2 pp.

• As the world grapples with the biodiversity and climate crises, an alarming trend is emerging: green grabbing. These threaten to displace local communities and Indigenous Peoples, erode food security, and damage biodiversity – under the guise of environmental progress. Green grabbing has the potential to become “the biggest land grab in history” – jeopardizing not only livelihoods but also the biodiversity these groups help protect.
• Green grabs occur when land is repurposed for projects like carbon offsetting, biodiversity reserves, afforestation, or clean energy production. With governments increasingly turning to these methods to meet climate and biodiversity goals, we must scrutinize their real impacts.  As the CBD Parties gather for COP16, the need to challenge these misguided conservation and offsetting approaches is urgent. Governments must reject land grabs and offsetting schemes in favour of community-led conservation models and agroecological practices.

A factsheet on preserving and protecting agrobiodiversity through agroecology highlights the importance of protecting and restoring crop and livestock diversity to fulfill the Global Biodiversity Framework. # 2 pp.

• Agroecological food production, however, offers a proven solution: enhancing biodiversity while improving soil health, and farmer livelihoods, while increasing resilience to climate shocks. Governments must integrate agroecological principles into their National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) to foster food systems that are climate-resilient, productive, and biodiversity-enhancing, supporting multiple Global Biodiversity Framework targets.

These briefings build on IPES-Food’s research on the Land Squeeze, which reveals how increasing land pressures harm communities and ecosystems alike.