Green grabs, land grabs and the spatiality of displacement: eviction from Mozambique's Limpopo National Park

Abstract

The Mozambican state is currently working to relocate 7000 people from the interior of the Limpopo National Park (LNP), itself part of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park (GLTP). As the process began in 2003, this stands out as one of the region's most protracted contemporary conservation‐related evictions. I draw from this case to shed light on the increasingly complex spatial dynamics of land and green grabs and, more specifically, demonstrate the importance of zooming out from discrete land acquisitions to examine how their resulting displacements are increasingly shaped by spatial processes at and beyond their borders. In doing so, we begin to see that displacement from the LNP is not a simple case of eviction from a discrete protected area. Rather, it has been provoked by the opening of the international border, hence drawing transfrontier conservation areas (TFCAs) like the GLTP into the purview of land and green grabs. At the same time, competition over space with an adjacent grab – a sugarcane/ethanol plantation – has severely interfered with relocation, drastically prolonging it. The case, more broadly, sheds light on how conservation, agricultural extraction and climate change mitigation – all forms of land acquisitions that incite dislocation – come together to produce novel patterns of environmental displacement, placing profound pressures on rural communities and their abilities to occupy space and access resources, including labour opportunities.