This masterclass forms part of the Network of Excellence on Land Governance in Africa lecture series, hosted by PLAAS.
Date: 17 September 2024
Time: 10:00 to 13:00
Venue: Zoom. Please register on this link: https://shorturl.at/HZRtN
“Land governance concerns the rules, processes and structures through which decisions are made about access to land and its use, the manner in which the decisions are implemented and enforced, and the way that competing interests in land are managed” – (FAO/UN-Habitat, 2009).
The impacts of weather and climate change events such as drought, flooding, and temperature increases have resulted in land degradation and desertification – 60% of Africa’s arable lands are already degraded. Responses to climate change, such as investments in biofuels and other renewable energies, carbon forestry, biodiversity credits, innovations in agriculture and the extraction of critical raw materials for the energy transition also affect access and rights to land. Climate change impacts and adaptations impose costs on states and communities. These costs exacerbate budget deficits caused by the debt burden characterising most African countries, pressuring governments into regulating land use towards the production of cash crops and other foreign-exchange generating activities.
The “market” is increasingly represented as the solution to contemporary environmental problems and the challenges of “sustainable development”. Rio + 20 was typical of this trend and is representative of a deep-seated transformation in international environmental governance favouring “market forces”. Yet the market has not resolved the challenge of unsustainable growth.
Conservative estimates show that industrial gas emissions have increased by almost 50%; more than 300 million ha of forest have been cleared; many communities in developing countries have lost rights and access to lands and forests to large multinational corporations acting in collaboration with national governments. Although poverty has been reduced in a few industrialising countries, nearly 20% of the world’s population remains in absolute poverty, and more continue to be impoverished through land and resource expropriations. Commodification and privatisation of the environment has accelerated. This is evident from increased “green grabs”, land grabs, new forms of land and resource expropriation through carbon sequestration, water privatisation, and the creation of new protected areas on lands expropriated from the poor and marginalised, as well as the suppression of indigenous forms of production and consumption.
Dr James Murombedzi
Conducted by Dr James Murombedzi, this NELGA Masterclass will explore the impacts of climate-financing, carbon credits and carbon-offsetting, and sequestration schemes on rural landscapes. Climate responses centered on shifts to low-carbon alternatives also involve the extraction of resources from rural areas to produce renewable energy and infrastructure, whether biofuels, hydropower or solar and wind farms. Prompted by the climate challenge, and backed by donor and private finance, national plans the world over are full of investments in biofuel, hydropower, REDD+ carbon forestry and Bio-energy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) projects.
Dr Murombedzi is the Senior Political Affairs Officer (Climate Policy and Governance), and Head of the African Climate Policy Centre of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. His current work focuses on climate change governance frameworks, national climate change policies and strategies, and the climate change and sustainable development nexus.
