Digital land registries containing information about land and other natural resources are becoming the new “birth certificates” for rural properties. Locating and measuring land using georeferencing technology (i.e. GPS) is more often than not a mandatory requirement for gaining access to public policies and credit, and for complying with environmental regulations. They are also becoming a condition for defining property rights in land regularisation processes.
In the following infographic we expose the various twists and turns and the elaborate labyrinths through which corporations (with the support of international institutions such as the World Bank) grab land using these new technologies. This is to the detriment of the public lands and collective territories belonging to peasant and indigenous communities.
This infographic highlights the main findings of a thorough investigation that we carried out with the support of local organisations in five South American countries in order to stop the ongoing cycle of violent dispossession.
Our report zeros in on the land digitalisation process that is paving the way towards the mass privatisation and financialisation of land. This phenomenon is particularly prevalent in agribusiness expansion and investment zones, where public and collective lands are put on the market in order to achieve such financialisation. Read the full report here.
As always, the problem does not reside in technology: we need a political solution. Public lands must therefore be allocated as a priority to rural peoples in order to guarantee their collective territorial rights. In short, we call for a comprehensive agrarian reform!
