The growing trend of corporations, particularly in the tech and agribusiness sectors, investing in carbon offset projects through tree planting is leading to large-scale land grabs in the global South. In this recent article, the organisation Grain shows that the rise in tree planting projects, fueled by corporate demand for carbon credits, has led to over 9.1 million hectares being targeted for conversion, primarily in Africa and countries like Brazil and India.
Many of these projects are linked to historical land grabbers and notorious figures in the agribusiness sector, revealing the colonial dynamic of these projects, where foreign companies exacerbate conflicts and undermine community rights.
The publication includes an open dataset with information on all plantation projects for the voluntary carbon markets over 100 hectares in the global South initiated after 2016.