"Nature-based Solutions": Concealing a Massive Land Robbery | Bulletin 255 - March/April 2021

It is imperative to understand the concept of ‘nature-based solutions,’ to name it for what it is: ‘nature-based dispossessions’, and to expose the real threat it poses to territories.

While the concept of ‘Nature Based Solutions’ has eagerly been seized upon by polluting industries, financial institutions and governments, its origins lie somewhere else.

The term ‘nature-based solutions,’ in the context of the exclusionary and predatory projects that gather behind it, reveals something fundamental.

Using “intersectionality” in her reflection, the author highlights how essential it is to understand how various situations of oppression often befall the same subject.

Big polluters are making ‘net zero’ pledges to satisfy the financial players that fund them. So-called ‘nature-based solutions’ are at the core of these pledges –a new corporate brand for offsets.

These companies have destroyed large territories and the devastation that comes with their fossil fuel extraction continues. Now, they are putting forest protection and tree planting at the heart of their climate strategies

The mining sector seeks to gain legitimacy and expand its frontiers of accumulation and territorial control. It does so using a discourse of sustainability and by investing in so-called “nature-based solutions.

This text shares reflections that emerged from our discussions with women impacted by Green Economy projects in Brazil.

For the world’s richest men, the environmental crisis has finally arrived. From fleeing into outer space or fantasylands to science-fiction solutions, capitalists desperately seek fossil-fuelled business as usual to continue.

The WRM has compiled articles in Bahasa Indonesian and in English in order to expose the many processes of corporate control that are threatening forests and people’s territories across the islands. The compilation also highlights the strong and persevering resistances against the many attempts to destroy and grab land and territories from forest populations. Access the compilation in Bahasa Indonesian here and in English here.

Another two young men have been killed at the industrial oil palm plantations of Plantations et Huileries du Congo (PHC). European development banks have been financing PHC for years, and agreed to hand over the plantations to an obscure private equity fund after the previous owner, Feronia Inc. went bankrupt in 2020 – after having received more than USD 100 million in development funding. Witness statements indicate that PHC's security was responsible for the killings of Joel Imbangola Lunea, Blaise Mokwe and Efolafola Nisoni Manu and a recent spate of violence at the Lokutu plantations, including accounts of rape and sexual abuse of women.

The booming demand for palm oil has come at the high price of rainforest destruction, labour exploitation, and brutal land and water grabbing. Communities living in and around oil palm plantations in Indonesia and elsewhere are deeply concerned about their freshwater sources. But this long-term impact on freshwater streams around oil palm plantations seems to have been overlooked until now. The reality is that along the destruction of these plantations, is also the serious problem of water grabbing. Read further in the report from ECOTON, GEMAWAN, GRAIN and KRUHA here.