This Is Our Land: Why Reject the Privatization of Customary Land

Today, the Oakland Institute releases This Is Our Land: Why Reject the Privatization of Customary Land, an educational resource that debunks myths used for privatizing land around the world, while providing facts on how customary tenure systems are critical to protecting livelihoods and ensuring sustainable development for the people and the planet.

Land privatization is consistently shown to serve the interests of private investors and multinational corporations, and it`s done at the expense of billions of livelihoods and the environment. Whether it`s achieved through private titling efforts, or via customary land made available for private investment and “development” projects, this commodification drives inequity, dispossession, and displacement.

Privatizing land doesn`t offer communities the security and stability they need to survive. While insecure land tenure remains a pressing issue worldwide, privatization is just another avenue for private interests and multinational corporations to continue their project of colonization and natural resource exploitation, while furthering the climate crisis.

Produced at the demand of partner organizations on the front lines of the struggle against landgrabs, This is Our Land provides communities with critical facts and figures to challenge the theft of their land and resources.

Help us continue to protect customary land tenure systems around the world by debunking the myths used to justify land privatization.

Original article

Image: Oakland Institute.