Abstract
Global climate change policy enforcement has become the new driving force of resource grabbing in the context of the “scramble of resources” in Africa. Nevertheless, the environmental crisis should not be seen as an isolated phenomenon amid contemporary capitalism. On the contrary, a very distinct feature of the current wave of land grabs is the convergence of multiple crises, including food, energy/fuel, environmental, and financial. The Southern Mozambique District, Massingir, is an area with high potential regarding water sources and biodiversity. It recently became a host of a biofuel project, and also a huge block of land is being transformed into a conservation/tourism area; answering to many issues within capitalism’s crisis, this area is an evidence of how synergetic resource grabbing can arise as a response to the convergence of multiple crises. Therefore, by analyzing the emerging politics of natural resources in Massingir District and the dynamics regarding the land-use change, changes in property relations, it is possible to understand how rural livelihoods are shaped. Risks related to food security and sovereignty, loss of control and access to resources, consistent narrowing down of the set of livelihood strategies, and inter-community conflicts over scarce resources are the main implications of such emerging climate-smart land politics.
Highlights
The Global South, the African continent, has been at the core of land grabbing in the last decades
Past waves of enclosures answered to the crisis of accumulation; contemporary land grabbing is said to be the capturing of control of blocks of land and other natural resources, involving large-scale capital, which shifts resource use orientation into extractive character, as a response to the convergence of food, energy and financial crises, and to the current climate change mitigation and adaptation imperatives [3]
Because a very distinct feature of what is driving the current wave of land grabs in Massingir District is the convergence of multiple crises, including food, energy/fuel, environment, and financial [2], an inter-sector led analysis is needed for further understanding the inter-related dynamics and cross-interests of land grabbing trends and how it shapes the power relations regarding access and control of resources and, rural livelihoods
Summary
The Global South, the African continent, has been at the core of land grabbing in the last decades. Past waves of enclosures answered to the crisis of accumulation; contemporary land grabbing is said to be the capturing of control of blocks of land and other natural resources, involving large-scale capital, which shifts resource use orientation into extractive character, as a response to the convergence of food, energy and financial crises, and to the current climate change mitigation and adaptation imperatives [3]. Because a very distinct feature of what is driving the current wave of land grabs in Massingir District is the convergence of multiple crises, including food, energy/fuel, environment, and financial [2], an inter-sector led analysis is needed for further understanding the inter-related dynamics and cross-interests of land grabbing trends and how it shapes the power relations regarding access and control of resources and, rural livelihoods. The study reveals how the systematic (re)concentration of resources, which is answering directly to the convergence of multiple crises, is embedded in an unfair process of rural transformation by creating new and synergetic vehicles of accumulation and consistently narrowing down the set of rural livelihood strategies
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