A comprehensive report released by the Oakland Institute challenges the World Bank’s justification for a massive land tenure formalization program launched in May 2024, arguing the initiative exploits climate concerns to advance corporate interests at the expense of indigenous communities and smallholder farmers across the Global South.
The 110 page report, titled Climatewash: The World Bank’s Fresh Offensive on Land Rights, examines the Global Program on Land Tenure Security and Land Access for Climate Goals announced at the Bank’s May 2024 Land Conference in Washington. The program commits 10 billion dollars over ten years, doubling previous land sector investments, with plans to impact 100 million people across 53 countries.
The World Bank justifies the program by claiming half of all climate actions relate to land, with 40 percent requiring direct land access. Bank officials argue that formalizing land tenure through issuing individual titles and creating land registries is necessary for climate mitigation interventions including afforestation, renewable energy projects, carbon offsetting schemes, and infrastructure development supporting the transition away from fossil fuels.
Frédéric Mousseau and Andy Currier, the report’s primary authors, contend this rationale fundamentally misrepresents climate science and threatens land rights. They argue the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change calls for protecting existing land from exploitation, not privatizing it for industrial use. Climate experts emphasize community management effectiveness and regulatory protection from land grabbing, not individual land titling and market creation.
The research identifies three primary areas where the Bank claims land tenure reform enables climate action. First, the extraction of critical minerals including lithium, cobalt, and copper needed for renewable energy technologies. Second, carbon offset projects through afforestation and reforestation schemes. Third, renewable energy infrastructure and low carbon urban development projects.
Regarding critical minerals, the report challenges Bank assertions about quantities required for climate transition. Analysis from the International Energy Agency indicates green energy technologies would account for only 10.7 percent of projected demand for graphite, cobalt, and lithium by 2050, with 41.79 percent coming from electric vehicles and 47.5 percent from industries unrelated to climate transition including aerospace, defense, telecommunications, and electronics.
The Bank’s Climate Smart Mining Initiative, launched in 2019 as a public private partnership, aims to help governments manage mineral extraction responsibly while recognizing indigenous land rights. However, the report documents how Bank support for lithium mining in Argentina contradicts these stated principles. Following President Javier Milei’s constitutional changes weakening indigenous protections, the International Finance Corporation provided 180 million dollars to Allkem for lithium extraction in Catamarca despite concerns from indigenous communities about water depletion and environmental damage.
On carbon markets, the research highlights fundamental flaws despite Bank attempts to promote “high integrity” offsetting schemes. A meta analysis of global carbon market studies cited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found their net combined effects on emissions to be negligible. Investigation by The Guardian, Die Zeit, and SourceMaterial in 2023 revealed that more than 90 percent of rainforest offset credits certified by Verra, the world’s leading carbon credit certifier partnering with the Bank, were likely phantom credits representing no genuine carbon reductions.
The Bank operates the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility supporting 47 countries to develop large scale programs generating carbon credits. While claiming benefits for communities, the report documents how carbon offset schemes have repeatedly dispossessed indigenous and local communities. In Papua New Guinea, communities in East New Britain received none of 18 million dollars generated by a United States firm from 1.3 million carbon credits allegedly issued without their consent. Mexican villagers received only four dollars per credit from oil company BP after years safeguarding forests.
Regarding renewable energy infrastructure, the report refutes Bank claims about land requirements. Massachusetts Institute of Technology research shows solar plants covering 0.4 percent of United States land area could produce all electricity the nation consumes. This represents roughly half the land area currently devoted to producing corn for ethanol. The Bank’s own research on minigrid systems acknowledges these require relatively small amounts of land, with communities or local governments often providing land freely.
The report argues the true agenda involves opening lands to foreign investors and agribusiness expansion. On October 23, 2024, the Bank announced plans to double agri finance and agribusiness commitments to nine billion dollars annually by 2030. Bank economists describe Africa as the last frontier in global food and agricultural markets, claiming the continent has more than half the world’s uncultivated but agriculturally suitable land.
Policy documents outline a strategy centered on two mechanisms. First, mapping and demarcating public land so governments can transfer it to private investors through transparent auction sales. Second, providing land titles or certificates to create land markets allowing land to be sold, leased, or mortgaged. The Bank claims secure property rights reduce expropriation risk and allow landowners to access credit using land as collateral, though comprehensive literature reviews found no support for links between secure tenure and credit access.
Five case studies in Argentina, Indonesia, Madagascar, Malawi, and the Philippines illustrate Bank interventions at country level. In Madagascar, after 20 years of Bank involvement and over 100 million dollars spent including 53 million in loans, only five percent of the population obtained land certificates by 2023. Parliament passed a 2021 law removing ownership presumption for individuals occupying untitled land, placing 80 percent of the Malagasy population at risk of eviction before public outcry forced amendments.
In Malawi, the Bank pressured the government in 2024 to abandon pro poor amendments limiting agricultural land ownership to 1,000 hectares and constraining foreign ownership. Bank officials labeled these provisions as obstacles to operating commercial farms that would scare away investors, despite landless farmers fighting for ancestral land captured by foreign farmers.
The Philippines case involves the Support to Parcelization of Land for Individual Titling program launched in 2020 with 370 million dollars in loans. The initiative divides 139,000 collective land ownership certificates into separate individual titles, impacting 750,000 cooperative members. Critics argue this reverses decades of land reform progress following the 1986 People’s Power Movement, with farmers forced to sell, lease, or pawn land due to poverty. Organizations representing 14,000 small farmers sent a letter to the Bank in February 2025 charging that land developers and corporate agribusiness conglomerates stand to gain long term from the project.
The Indonesia case demonstrates contradictions in Bank approaches. A 653 million dollar Integrated Land Administration and Spatial Planning project approved September 30, 2024, focuses on securing indigenous collective rights and reducing greenhouse gas emissions from land conversion. However, a concurrent 1.5 billion dollar policy loan aims to increase private investment by lowering investment costs and encouraging renewable energy investment. Given the Bank considers palm based biodiesel green investment, this funding may contribute to government plans to clear 20 million additional hectares of forest for industrial food and energy estates.
The report identifies systematic undermining of collective land rights despite recent Bank recognition of their importance. While projects in Tanzania issued 500,000 Certificates of Customary Right of Occupancy protecting communal land from outside investors, these represent a small portion of interventions issuing over two million individual certificates or licenses. In Peru, indigenous peoples receive land titles only for residential, agricultural, or livestock areas, not forests, leaving traditional hunting and movement areas vulnerable to logging and plantation takeover.
Regarding agricultural transformation, Bank documents explicitly state that encouraging land lease “can support structural transformation and a gradual shift of employment from agriculture to non agriculture.” Land Policies for Resilient and Equitable Growth in Africa, published in 2024 by Bank economists, praises Mexico’s land reform where provision of certificates resulted in household members being 28 percent more likely to migrate and farms consolidating into bigger units.
Professor Solange Bandiaky Badji, President and Coordinator of the Rights and Resources Initiative, speaking at the 2024 Land Conference, emphasized that funding gaps persist for indigenous peoples, Afro descendant peoples, and local communities who drive rights based reforms yet continue facing threats to lands and livelihoods while encountering hurdles accessing direct funding for self determined priorities.
The report proposes alternative approaches to addressing climate crisis and agricultural development. It advocates shifting from industrial agriculture to agroecology, which works with nature to optimize interactions between plants, animals, and people while naturally improving soil health and biodiversity. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment report affirms with confidence that adoption of agroecology principles and practices will be highly beneficial for maintaining healthy, productive food systems under climate change.
On financing, the report highlights that massive increases in climate funding could be secured through mechanisms beyond facilitating private investment. Oxfam estimates nine trillion dollars could be raised from increasing taxes on wealth and income of the top one percent richest people and profits of 722 of the world’s biggest corporations. The European Union Tax Observatory proposes a two percent annual levy on wealth of the world’s 2,769 billionaires could raise 250 billion dollars annually.
Michel Pimbert, Emeritus Professor of Agroecology and Food Politics at Coventry University, suggests additional solutions including taxing greenhouse gas emissions, speculative financial markets, closing tax havens, debt cancellation, and reparations for slavery. These mechanisms could secure trillions required for climate action while constraining corporations pursuing activities contributing more emissions.
The World Bank maintains its program protects indigenous rights and advances climate goals. Speaking at the May 2024 conference, Bank officials stressed that participation remains voluntary and that communities wishing to continue farming communally can opt out of formalization processes. They point to successful land registration in Indonesia where government registered over 60 million new land rights during the past ten years, empowering landowners to participate in investment negotiations.
Civil society organizations remain unconvinced. A coalition of 280 organizations from over 80 countries previously mobilized through the Our Land Our Business Campaign successfully pressured the Bank to end its Enabling the Business of Agriculture project in 2019 and Doing Business Report in 2021. Both initiatives promoted land commodification and facilitation of private sector access to land in the Global South.
The report concludes that the Bank’s land agenda prioritizes unfettered global economic growth, directly opposing urgent needs to curb emissions. It argues the institution exploits climate crisis to pursue longstanding privatization plans serving financial and corporate interests fueling the crisis rather than protecting land rights and supporting effective climate solutions.
Source: newsghana.com.gh
