Grey areas in green grabbing: subtle and indirect interconnections between climate change politics and land grabs and their implications for research

This paper builds on the literature on green grabbing. It makes a fresh contribution by bringing in aspects of green grabbing that are less visible and obvious. These are subtle, fluid and indirect interconnections between climate change politics and land grabs. It is difficult to see these interconnections from an ‘either black or white’ perspective. It is likely that the extent of this ‘grey area’ intersection in terms of affected social relations, nature and land use change is quite significant globally, even when such interconnections tend to operate below the radar of dominant governance institutions and database tracking. This situation calls for more nuanced understanding of governance imperatives, and for constructing the necessary body of knowledge needed for appropriate political intervention. This paper offers preliminary ways in which such interconnections can be seen and understood, and their implications for research and politics explored. It concludes by way of a preliminary discussion of the notion of ‘agrarian climate justice’ as a possible framework for formal governance or political activism relevant to tackling such grey area interconnections.

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