Even within countries with substantial land wealth, there are of course significant intranational inequities in access to and control over these resources, adversely affecting growth and development. (There is a clear positive correlation between equality of land distributions and subsequent growth in gross domestic product – GDP – per head.) As a simple illustration, Figure 38 shows, for 13 countries, the share of land value that accrues to different segments of income distribution among land-owning and landless agricultural households. Although this is limited to analysis of agricultural land and considers only market values, it clearly demonstrates widespread inequalities, with the top 10 per cent of agricultural households capturing on average more than 60 per cent of the value of agricultural land. If land wealth is to be better and more equitably distributed within countries, this will require issues around security of tenure to be addressed. It will also require all stakeholders, including marginalized and indigenous communities, to be involved in decision-making concerning land use (see Chapter 2, Box 2).
7.3.3 Land wealth and environmental risks
To put into context countries’ terrestrial resources and their ability to govern them, we compared land wealth as measured by the LWI with each country’s greenhouse gas emissions and natural disaster risk (the latter as captured by the WorldRiskIndex, which measures exposure to natural hazards and societal vulnerability to those hazards, based on countries’ likelihood of suffering harm, their adaptation capacity and their short-term coping capacity). There is little correlation between land wealth and exposure to natural hazards: countries with significant exposure to natural disaster risks are distributed throughout the LWI, though none is among the truly land-wealthy. However, as recent experiences with catastrophic forest fires in Brazil, the US and Canada have demonstrated, land-wealthy countries are certainly not immune to such risks.
As recent experiences with catastrophic forest fires in Brazil, the US and Canada have demonstrated, land-wealthy countries are certainly not immune to natural disaster risks.
There is a stronger, inverse relationship between land wealth and societal vulnerability (both the LWI and the WorldRiskIndex include governance and capacity metrics). Notable outliers with much lower societal vulnerabilities than their land wealth would suggest include the arid Gulf countries of Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia, all of which have little land wealth but considerable ability to adapt to, cope with and avoid suffering from natural disasters, on account of their high levels of economic development. Conversely, Angola, the Central African Republic, the DRC and Papua New Guinea are much more vulnerable than might be expected given their respective land wealth scores. For these countries and others like them, there is a strong imperative to ensure sufficient capacity is built to adapt to environmental risks through responses that utilize land assets sustainably rather than undermining them.
In the authors’ assessment, there is some indication that countries with the highest rates of greenhouse gas emissions growth between 1990 and 2014 are also those with relatively low exposure to climate risks. This raises the troubling possibility that some countries with actively growing emissions, particularly through forest conversion, are unconcerned about the climate change it creates because their short-term economic interests outweigh their perceptions of climate risks that will disproportionately affect other, more vulnerable, countries. This highlights the challenges of ‘negative externalities’, where costs are borne by third parties rather than the polluter. Unless addressed through legislation, market mechanisms, other incentives or regulation, environmental irresponsibility may persist at others’ expense (see recommendations in Chapter 9).
7.4 Land wealth and international relations
As alluded to earlier, each country’s land wealth is not just of concern to itself. Land wealth is increasingly significant in shaping the political, economic, security and trade relationships between countries, as well as their dealings with one another in environmental forums. As such, the LWI is intended to give an idea of how countries might be motivated, or best placed, to act in the future on the basis of their land wealth, and what this could mean for international relations and land-use pressures between now and the middle of the century.
Considering how land wealth overlays and interacts with other international dynamics, in the sections below we describe five potential (and non-exhaustive) country typologies that are relevant to emerging trends warranting increased international scrutiny and action. We have labelled these typologies as follows: ‘land superpowers’, ‘potential land elites’, ‘threatened land-wealthy countries’, ‘land-poor geopolitical elites’ and ‘land-poor developing countries’. These typologies reflect some of the more noteworthy intersections between land wealth and broader economic, political and other international relations dynamics, and indicate the likely impacts of geopolitical and economic power on a country’s future land wealth and vice-versa. To be clear, no rigid correlation exists between a country’s LWI ranking and its typology. The typologies are not intended to serve as contiguous or mutually exclusive categories from the top to the bottom of the LWI. While each typology is a composite of land wealth on the one hand and geopolitical and economic power on the other, the LWI itself informs only the former component. It does not capture the latter, which is informed by factors associated with more traditional understandings of the international order – such as size of the economy and membership of economically and politically influential groupings.
For example, countries towards the top of the LWI will generally be land superpowers or potential land elites on account of their significant land-based resources, but their designation as one or other of these two typologies will also reflect their economic and political power, which is not captured by the LWI. A potential land elite, for example, may have a higher overall land wealth score than a land superpower, but would not be classed as a land superpower because it has less political clout or economic influence. In Europe, for instance, Poland may be thought of as a potential land elite, whereas France may be regarded as a land superpower despite ranking one place lower than Poland in the LWI; most notably, this is because France’s biophysical redundancy is much lower.
Additionally, some countries have features associated with more than one typology: for example, there may be some overlap between land superpowers and threatened land-wealthy countries if a superpower’s abundant terrestrial resources and associated influence could be materially threatened by future environmental change. A good example is China, which we classify primarily as a land superpower. However, its high risk of water scarcity means that in some respects the country also falls into the ‘threatened land-wealthy’ category.
At the other end of the scale, countries classified as land-poor geopolitical elites or land-poor developing countries will generally appear lower in the LWI since, despite vastly different geopolitical economies, they have in common a paucity (although differing profiles) of land wealth. A small but rich country might have the ability to acquire or access land-derived resources overseas to compensate for a lack of native resources. Qatar, for example, ranks alongside Guinea-Bissau in the LWI and scores lowest of all 163 countries featured in the LWI for amount and quality of land, yet on a per capita basis it is one of the world’s richest countries. In our framework, it is categorized as a land-poor geopolitical elite. This leaves it far better placed to avoid or manage resource constraints than the land-poor developing countries that occupy most of the lowest positions around it in the index. More generally, there is a troubling risk of a new scramble for resources, in which countries with significant geopolitical heft will wield their soft power and economic influence to exploit other countries’ lands.
The typologies are, moreover, not intended to be definitive for every country; rather, they are indicative of differences in characteristics. In other words, the typologies are designed to highlight interesting patterns and commonalities rather than provide a comprehensive system of categorization covering every country. We have emphasized the ends of the land wealth and international influence spectrums to discuss some of the more interesting convergences between these two dimensions, but other categories covering more moderate land wealth and levels of influence are equally conceivable. Furthermore, as the typologies that we discuss are contestable and only partially reflective of countries’ LWI scores, we have deliberately not assigned countries to typologies in Table 5 – even if it is understandably tempting to do so. Some countries featured in the index fall outside the five typologies discussed in the report; this is particularly the case for countries with middling land wealth or geopolitical/economic power profiles. More important than the exact boundaries of these categories are the geopolitical and resource management dynamics they bring into focus.
The following sections describe each typology. Using the five typologies as a reference point, the geopolitical implications of countries’ motivations or capacity to act in the future, on the basis of their land wealth, are discussed in further detail in Chapter 8.
7.4.1 Land superpowers
It is perhaps not surprising that, under the LWI assessment, the US, Russia, Australia, China, Brazil and Canada all feature among the top 10 land-wealthy countries. These are large countries with significant areas of vegetated and cropping lands, able to store and absorb large volumes of carbon. They also have substantial economic and governance resources. More generally, the world’s biggest economic powers tend to have significant land wealth: all the G7 countries rank in the top 17 positions in the LWI; and 13 of the G20 countries are in the top 25. Such countries, which combine significant land wealth with substantial political and economic strength, can broadly be considered as ‘land superpowers’.
While geopolitical and economic influence are not wholly determined by land wealth, they can certainly be bolstered by it. Nonetheless, the role that land has played in the accrual of countries’ economic wealth varies considerably across the traditional global economic powerhouses. For example, the US’s economic growth was initially founded on the expansion of agricultural productivity. Conversely, although agricultural land constituted the majority of Britain’s wealth in the 18th and early 19th centuries, this share was rapidly supplanted by ownership of assets from overseas through colonial expansion and the Industrial Revolution. Today, neither domestic agricultural land nor investments overseas contribute greatly to the UK’s economic standing. Nonetheless, this standing, combined with a high land wealth ranking (17th), results in the UK’s classification as a land superpower. Its LWI score reflects a poor performance in terms of tree cover losses, and a middling ranking on forest carbon and land productivity trends, but is boosted by the country’s biophysical redundancy trends, current soil carbon content, habitat protections, relatively limited climate exposures and strong governance.
An abundance of natural resources can often result in more difficult and stunted development pathways – the ‘natural resource curse’ – rather than acting as an effective catalyst.
Just as it was for the US and the UK, broad-based agricultural productivity growth is certainly a common prerequisite for kick-starting economic development, but it typically plays a diminishing role thereafter. More generally, an abundance of natural resources can often result in more difficult and stunted development pathways – the ‘natural resource curse’ – rather than acting as an effective catalyst (although this certainly isn’t always the case, as exemplified by the more positive trajectories of Botswana, Chile and Malaysia). Equally, in some cases, economic development is not linked to land wealth; land-limited countries such as Singapore (which, as already noted, does not meet the size threshold for inclusion in the LWI) have generated enormous ‘landless’ wealth by creating value through manufacturing and services trade. Other key components of land wealth, such as good governance and strong institutions, do appear to have more widespread importance in catalysing and maintaining economic success, but so too do factors unrepresented in the LWI, such as investments in human capital that manifest in technological progress and innovation.
Although land wealth may not always be a causal factor in positioning certain countries among the global economic elite, land superpowers’ combination of economic and land resources means they have considerable ability to exercise and invest their land wealth as they see fit. They are well positioned to capture further value through exporting ‘virtual’ land – embodied in traded products or ecosystem services – and can exert influence in international forums governing the globally important resources they control.
Russia’s geopolitical and economic standing has been severely degraded by its war on Ukraine: although Russia remains a permanent member of the UN Security Council and is unlikely to be ejected from the G20 (as it was previously from the then G8), the international response to its aggression means it has fewer opportunities to constructively engage and trade as before. Nonetheless, the reality that Russia typically accounts for around a fifth of all global wheat exports is just one example of the worldwide significance of its land-based resources, and the country remains a land superpower. The potential geopolitical land-use consequences of Russia’s war on Ukraine are discussed further in Chapter 8 (Box 15).
7.4.2 Potential land elites
Since land resources are becoming strategically more important as growth in consumption of goods and services (the result of expanding populations and incomes) pushes the planet towards the boundaries of sustainability, then plausibly some countries with significant land assets will be increasingly well positioned to join a reshaped global geopolitical elite. Those we identify as ‘potential land elites’ are typically large countries with significant areas of vegetated and cropping lands, able to store and absorb large volumes of carbon. They tend to have less substantial economic and governance resources and less geopolitical influence than land superpowers. In Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, for instance, Poland, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Georgia, Romania and Lithuania all score highly in the LWI and are classified (either exclusively or primarily) as potential land elites. In the Americas, Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia and Peru are in the top quintile of the LWI, along with the region’s land superpowers of Brazil and Argentina.
The factors contributing to each of these countries’ land wealth vary, but, with the notable exceptions of Georgia and Lithuania, all have plentiful natural vegetation, representing the productivity of the land. Some, in common with many of the land superpowers, have experienced significant tree cover loss since the turn of the century. Kazakhstan and Georgia have lower-quality soils and have experienced more biodiversity decline than many of the other potential land elites. Botswana is the highest-ranked African country on account of its abundant natural and semi-natural vegetated land, its limited habitat and tree losses, and its established biodiversity protection measures. However, its land productivity and the carbon content of its soils are poor, suggesting little room for ‘business as usual’ agricultural expansion, and this may be of concern given its expected rate of population growth to 2050. If, however, under a system in which countries are economically and politically rewarded for biodiversity protection and land restoration, Botswana is empowered to manage the threats to its existing land wealth, then it could be well placed to join established land elites rather than see further degradation of its resources.
Notably, too, the comparative advantages and opportunities enjoyed by potential land elites will vary in terms of how these factors might be asserted or leveraged internationally. Much will depend not only on the physical availability of high-quality lands in such countries – as well as on governance and economic capabilities – but also, critically, on the international context, as examined in Chapter 8. Countries with significant biophysical redundancy that also score highly on measures of land quality and risk exposure may increasingly be able to project power and gain wealth through their ability to export virtual land embodied in expanded agricultural production. Essentially, what this means is that they will have more freedom to trade land-derived goods and services by virtue of being under relatively less pressure to restrict the use of local lands to production of food for their own populations.
Those that score more poorly on degradation and risk exposure indicators may be better served by increasing their emphasis on nature-based solutions and other restorative measures to increase carbon sequestration and ecosystem richness, assuming durable market mechanisms or other strong incentives evolve to provide income for doing this. In the past, such functions have not been widely monetized or used in trade, and so have not necessarily galvanized much international attention or helped countries to attain geopolitical influence. However, as international carbon markets mature and payments for ecosystem services (PES – see Chapter 3) become more widespread – as may now be accelerated by the adoption of the Kunming-
Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework at the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in December 2022 – the value of restored lands is increasingly being recognized in economic terms. Countries that are motivated to draw on such mechanisms may gain greater international importance as a result.
7.4.3 Threatened land-wealthy countries
Just as the factors contributing to land wealth vary among the high-ranking countries, so too do the threats facing them. The countries we have identified as the ‘threatened land-wealthy’ are typically large countries with significant areas of vegetated and cropping lands, able to store and absorb large volumes of carbon – but with serious threats to those resources. Generally, the areas of most concern relate to environmental degradation and risk exposure, with recent tree cover loss being a particular problem.
In some cases, threatened land-wealthy countries also have less substantial economic and governance resources compared with land superpowers. Indonesia and India, for example, have more limited economic capacity than most of their G20 counterparts; for Indonesia, at least, this goes some way towards explaining the recent degradation of its resource base, as land-based assets have been exploited for short-term economic returns. Despite scoring very highly across quantity indicators (except for biophysical redundancy), Indonesia has suffered significant degradation trends and also faces substantial water risks and exposures to future climate impacts. India’s land wealth has multiple vulnerabilities, and the country also has limited biophysical redundancy and, across large extents, poor soil quality. These factors suggest it is likely to be less resilient to future risks compared with other countries with similar land quantity scores.
In other cases, risks to countries presently classed as land superpowers mean that the threatened land-wealthy typology also potentially applies to them. For example, Argentina, Australia, China, Spain and the US have significantly higher water risks than do most other land-wealthy countries. Australia, too, generally has poor soils in terms of carbon content and faces relatively high risks from climate change.
However, especially for the larger threatened land-wealthy countries, the risks will vary significantly across their landmass; how land is allocated to different ecosystem services will therefore be a crucial factor in managing such risks. In China, one of the world’s most water-poor countries, 75 per cent of grains and more than 90 per cent of cash crops are grown on irrigated lands. Inefficient water management compounds the problem: even though China’s irrigated farmlands are generally located in water-stressed regions, little more than half of the country’s agricultural irrigation water is used effectively. Further tightening of water resource constraints can be expected over the coming decade as areas under irrigation expand.
Risks to land wealth also apply to several of the countries primarily classed as potential land elites. For instance, Botswana, Iran and Kazakhstan have relatively low soil carbon content; and the latter two, together with Peru, are at high risk of water scarcity.
Such examples underscore the challenges of the global land crunch: even countries with comparative advantages in producing land-derived goods and services will face increasing environmental risks from exposure to climate hazards, while also being more vulnerable to these hazards as a result of overexploitation of lands. Solving the land-optimization puzzle therefore critically requires reducing overall demand for land, meeting the remaining demand more efficiently, and ensuring that production is not simply consolidated in regions with current comparative advantages.
7.4.4 Land-poor geopolitical elites
The group of countries we have termed ‘land-poor geopolitical elites’ are not well resourced with land assets but have significant economic and political power. For example, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE – all Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states – have low LWI rankings but are geopolitical elites given their degree of economic influence and strong ability to import land-dependent goods.
As land assumes increasing strategic importance, the prospects for countries in this typology chiefly depend on the basis of their current wealth, on their economic structure, and on their capacity and willingness to diversify their economies and secure imports of land-dependent goods on an ongoing basis. There are three main circumstances under which land-poor countries are most likely to lose out.
The first is where global competition for land resources increases a land-poor country’s trade deficit or presents absolute supply constraints. Trade in virtual land will continue to be significant in terms of both movement of physical goods – such as food and forestry products – and activity in carbon markets. This means that land-poor countries may increasingly find themselves paying for land-based resources from overseas. Countries that depend on imports for their food security perhaps stand to lose the most. The risks to their domestic agricultural production are likely to increase as the climate changes, while the international supply chains on which they rely may be disrupted by climate events, by institutional, security and conflict impacts, or by geopolitical tensions.
The second scenario potentially arises where a country has limited opportunity to capture value from new markets for ecosystem services. Although the ability to thrive in such markets – including those for services that are currently incompletely valued – is unlikely to be determined entirely by land wealth, land-poor countries may have little scope to profit from forest sequestration credits in carbon markets, REDD+ support, or international PES. Nonetheless, if they have the capacity to develop and invest in technology and green infrastructure such as non-land-intensive negative emissions technologies (NETs), they could still benefit from international carbon market credits. For some arid countries, land provides the potential for development of renewable energy for domestic and international markets (such as capturing energy from sunlight).
Countries that are highly dependent on extractives are likely to find their international influence waning if their assets become ‘stranded’.
The third circumstance in which land-poor countries are most likely to lose out is where an economy depends heavily on fossil fuels and other extractive industries, rather than on service sectors or light industry. The economic contribution of fossil fuels and extractive industries is likely to decline in importance, relative to a country’s land resources, much more rapidly than that of services or light industry. Countries that are highly dependent on extractives are thus likely to find their influence waning if their assets become ‘stranded’. The risk of asset stranding arises from declining values of, and reduced demand for, fossil fuels and other products of extractive industries (such as minerals) as the world moves towards net zero and more circular economic models.
However, many of the countries likely to be in this situation, among them the GCC states, should be able to further transition their economies towards green growth opportunities, whether in renewable energy infrastructure or in science and technology. This has less to do with the growing strategic importance of land than with a general economic shift towards cleaner energy, greater circularity of resource use and less resource-intensive economic development. As such, the challenges of this transition also apply to land-wealthy countries, such as Australia, that have significant extractive industries. What differentiates the land-wealthy is their potential for broader economic diversification, as well as their capacity to build and sustain influence in international diplomatic and security forums, where land-based environmental concerns are likely to figure increasingly prominently.
7.4.5 Land-poor developing countries
In common with land-poor geopolitical elites, the countries we have identified as ‘land-poor developing countries’ are not well resourced with land assets, and face many of the same challenges as better-off land-poor countries with respect to their land futures and interactions with the global economy and environment. However, land-poor developing countries typically have much less capacity to adapt to these challenges on account of their low levels of economic development, high levels of poverty, and increased vulnerability to economic and environmental shocks. Examples of countries within this typology include Bangladesh, Belize, Lebanon, Liberia, Malawi and Vanuatu.
Many land-poor developing countries, especially those classified by the UN as least developed countries (LDCs), find their sustainable development hindered by severe structural impediments such as limited economic and governance capacities. And, despite their relative lack of land wealth, many of these countries are far more dependent on agriculture than more developed, wealthier economies are. Virtually all countries where the value added from agriculture, forestry and fishing contributes over one-third of GDP appear outside the top 100 countries in the LWI, and many of these are land-poor. Given their structural dependence on land-based sectors, the often precarious state of their land assets and mounting environmental pressures, many of these countries will find it increasingly difficult to derive value from their land sectors or – given the size of their economies – to compete internationally to secure virtual land from abroad.
Nonetheless, there are some notable differences among the land-poor developing countries in relation to what accounts for their lack of land wealth. For example, Haiti and Rwanda score higher than Russia, a land superpower, on soil quality and its change. Malawi scores higher than the top 15-ranked countries in the LWI on land resources and their change. Hence, while some components are structural, and some are constrained by territorial boundaries and physical characteristics, not all factors that currently position such countries at the lower end of the LWI are insurmountable under the right sets of conditions. Critically, however, the three circumstances mentioned above in relation to land-poor geopolitical elites are also likely to create problems for many land-poor developing countries, but to an even greater degree. Yet, given sufficient support from development partners and international investors, and with conducive market and regulatory structures, even the most vulnerable countries may still be able to better deploy those elements of their land wealth in which they have greatest comparative advantage and thus bolster the resilience of their land resources. Ensuring the right mechanisms are in place should be an urgent priority for the international community in order to prevent land-poor developing countries from becoming even more vulnerable and potentially further marginalized as climate pressures mount and inequalities widen (see recommendations in Chapter 9).
7.5 Using land wealth well: the role of trade and markets
As land wealth is unevenly distributed and the supply of available land is tightening, it follows that land resources need to be used well – at local to global scales – to ensure both that countries thrive individually and in cooperation with one another, and that aggregate pressures on the land system are manageable. Policy responses need to account not only for disparities in resources but also for asymmetries in power.
But what does ‘using land wealth well’ mean? Optimizing land use, so that lands provide the goods and services they are most suited to providing through natural comparative advantage, can broadly result from proscription or reward, or some combination of the two. Governments are typically wary of proscription, through measures such as land zoning or land-use strategies, as these approaches can introduce market barriers and reduce the freedom of landholders to use land as they want. Reward is often thought of as occurring implicitly through market mechanisms. For example, if a tract of land is best suited to producing a certain good (e.g. wheat) or providing a certain service (e.g. carbon storage), then in theory economic rationalization should lead to optimal land-use allocation, maximizing the land’s comparative advantage.
But in practice things are not as simple as that. Some important services are not well monetized (for instance, assigning land for biodiversity is often not as economically rewarding as using the same land to produce crops such as soybeans or palm oil); some services rely on markets that don’t function well (e.g. carbon markets); and some activities are incentivized even if they don’t make the most economic or resource-efficient sense (as seen in the perverse incentives arising from some agricultural subsidies). In some cases, too, a lack of access to markets (e.g. because of poor roads and other transport infrastructure) can make it hard to maximize comparative advantage.
At a national scale, determining the ‘best’ thing to do with land is often complicated by domestic resource security motivations. Assuming a stable world with liberalized markets, the most economically rational course of action for each country should in theory be to concentrate on producing goods or providing services in which it has the strongest comparative advantage. Each country would then export the produce and services that are surplus to its domestic requirements, and import the goods and services that it is less suited to (or less capable of) producing. In reality, many countries in such a situation may choose to retain domestic production of some strategic resources as insurance against market interruptions, even if this is not the most efficient use of land.
Trade is the enabler for distributing goods from countries that can produce an excess to others that have requirements they cannot meet through production within their own borders.
In contrast, the nationally rational land allocation looks very different if a country is isolated from external trade and has to be more self-sufficient. In such a scenario, a country may instead seek to produce a greater diversity of agricultural goods at home, optimizing its land use to fulfil local needs. But this would potentially result in less economically efficient aggregate land use on a global basis, at least in the short term. All things being equal, growing wheat in New Zealand or northwestern Europe, where yields can reach 18 tonnes per hectare, is a more efficient use of land than growing wheat in Kenya, for example, where the maximum yield is about 8 tonnes per hectare and realized yields are often much lower. On the other hand, if more ‘efficient’ production comes with pollution, land degradation and other environmental harms that are not priced into the market value of the goods being sold, then even fully liberalized trade will result in sub-optimal global land allocations from a more holistic perspective that recognizes the long-term consequences of these unpriced costs.
Given that a combination of climate conditions, poor soil quality, and limited water and land availability constrains the ability of many countries to produce sufficient quantities of goods (particularly food) for their own use, recourse to international markets to fulfil some or all domestic needs is a logical response. As such, trade is the enabler for distributing goods from countries that can produce an excess to others that have requirements they cannot meet through production within their own borders. Trade therefore also, in theory, serves as a distributional mechanism for improving land-use allocation based on the resources available globally. But as the world has become more globalized and interconnected, trade networks have become highly complex – a process facilitated by the development of liberalizing frameworks such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) Uruguay Round, now subsumed into the World Trade Organization.
For the global land bank to be optimized, markets and trade have to function effectively. Land governance mechanisms need to be robust, taking holistic account of multiple demands, risks and synergies. For example, a country that produces food less efficiently than it stores carbon in forests would have to increase its reliance on trade to ensure its own food security if it wished to capitalize on its comparative advantage in carbon storage. And it would need to be rewarded for doing so. However, a burgeoning literature on the growth of systemic risks in globalized trade systems suggests that such interdependencies, while often economically efficient under stable conditions, are frequently vulnerable to shocks. Complex interlinkages and dependencies across sectors and through longer supply chains, with low transparency, are increasing the fragility of entire systems, allowing the greater amplification and propagation of shocks. Strategies for optimizing land use therefore need to build in redundancies for resilience.
In a context in which many countries are increasingly inclined towards sourcing goods and services from a narrower set of political allies, and in which climate shocks are becoming more frequent, the world’s ability to rely on open global trade to fulfil crucial needs is being increasingly called into question. If the potential of free markets to enable globally efficient land-use optimization is undermined, an obvious hedge against market failure is for individual countries to diversify domestic production to ensure supplies where possible. This might, in the short term, increase local resilience to systemic market failures, but it also suggests land will not be globally optimized for production or preservation of ecosystem services. Such approaches may also exacerbate local vulnerabilities to short- or long-term environmental hazards.
An alternative, or additional, national response to market failure might be for individual countries to seek direct control over land in other territories through investments in large-scale land acquisitions. This would likely have significant implications for the global commons and international relations – an issue discussed in depth in Chapter 8 – but it is already in evidence. Since the start of this century, at least 52 million ha of land (approximately the area of France) – and likely much more – has been acquired in this manner. The countries where the investors responsible for acquiring the largest areas have their headquarters include both the land-wealthy, such as the US, China and the UK, and land-poor countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, Cyprus, Luxembourg and Saudi Arabia. Of the acquisitions concluded by 2016, most were made by private (non-listed) companies, supported to varying degrees by state-owned entities and/or government-mobilized private capital. The vast majority of these acquisitions were for agricultural purposes, dominated by food and feed crop production. A particular concern is that local communities are often bypassed in negotiations for such transactions, and that the arrangements may lead to forced or voluntary displacement from acquired land, frequently without compensation, thereby jeopardizing domestic food security (see also Chapter 2, Box 2).
The countries in which the most land has been acquired are distributed throughout the LWI, although typically they rank much higher for land quantity and quality indicators than they do for governance and economic capacity indicators. This suggests they are more exposed to land acquisitions that may be exploitative, in which domestic interests are not adequately compensated, or that do not fully account for the comparative advantage of the land, especially if the advantage lies in ecosystem preservation and/or restoration.
Exemplifying this, more land acquisition deals (by number of deals and total land area) have been concluded in African countries than in any other region. Between 2000 and 2014, the total area of lands acquired on the continent roughly equated to the size of the UK; a fifth of these lands are hotspots for freshwater use, where crops demand more irrigation water than even the most efficient systems can sustainably supply. Companies from Singapore and India are heavily involved in these investments. Notably, despite Chinese investors being responsible for one of the largest aggregate areas of land acquired globally, acquisitions of land for agriculture in African countries have not been a priority for China. The significant inflows of Chinese capital on the continent in recent decades have tended to focus instead on mining and infrastructure development.
7.6 Conclusions: land as the strategic asset of the future
Land-rich countries with strong and stable governance have the potential to fare comparatively well in a future in which the strategic importance of land intensifies. Through trade, exporting ‘virtual land’ embodied in products or environmental regulation services, they have the potential both to develop economically and strengthen their political power and influence.
However, in the context of a general deterioration of the global commons, no country is likely to escape without suffering the impacts of increasing environmental risks. It is therefore – as set out in the recommendations in Chapter 9 – in all countries’ interests to promote improved land management with the goal of building greater aggregate global land wealth and resilience. Effectively managing the risks to sustainable land use (both for individual countries and on a planetary scale) is made more challenging by the prospect of significant political and economic turbulence and uncertainty: it is likely that the shifts witnessed over the last few years towards greater multipolarity, competition, contestation and conflict will become more pronounced. And if existing trade dependencies become less reliable and supply chains less resilient due to climate impacts, increasing movement of people and hardening of borders, it is likely that recourse to liberalized trade to access virtual land will be a riskier strategy for land-poor countries to ensure national security.
Effectively managing the risks to sustainable land use is made more challenging by the prospect of significant political and economic turbulence and uncertainty.
A potential future of unreliable trade dependencies, growing strategic importance of land and increasing environmental risk presents significant threats to global cooperation on resource management. Three areas of risk merit particular attention. First, land-wealthy nations may accelerate the process of acting to secure their own land futures at the expense of the global commons, in turn generating an economic and political scramble among land-poor countries to fulfil their own needs through exploitation of others’ resources.
Second, without adequate checks and balances, any country with globally important land wealth may continue (or begin) to exploit the resources within its own borders in ways that are unsustainable, further jeopardizing its own land asset base while also destroying or degrading the globally important resources over which it has stewardship.
Third, in the absence of strong and stable governance capacity, some otherwise land-wealthy countries, along with their people and resources, may be open to exploitation by actors – including corporations and other non-state entities as well as public-sector interests – from land-poor countries seeking to project power to maximize their own access to resources (see in particular Chapter 8, Section 8.5).
If national security considerations cause countries to retreat from multilateral resource governance – either by making bilateral acquisitions founded on power asymmetries or, for those that can, by seeking greater self-sufficiency – then, among the many undesirable outcomes that are likely to materialize, two key issues stand out. The aggregate pressures of the global ‘land crunch’ will intensify as land is used in suboptimal ways, at the very time when more sustainable and cooperative land use will become more critical for ensuring resilience to escalating environmental shocks. And inequalities are likely to widen, with land-poor and weakly governed countries becoming poorer and more vulnerable, and land-rich and well-governed countries becoming comparatively better off.
The next chapter explores in greater depth some of the plausible dynamics and outcomes in international relationships and geopolitics that may arise as land assumes a greater strategic importance, environmental threats accelerate, and evolving national priorities reshape countries’ external engagements in novel ways.
