Disappearance of common land


  • Privatization of common land
  • Enclosure of the commons
  • Lost shared land
  • Overriding of rights to common property
  • Expropriation of common land by private landlords
  • Vanishing public land
  • Limited public land
  • Scarcity of corporate land

Nature

When common land is privatized it passes into the hands of people whose priority is to profit from it, often by selecting the most profitable product and limiting the use of the land to the production of it. This is to be contrasted with use by traditional rural communities of such land to supply most of their needs (fuel, food, housing, medicine, fabrics). They were therefore forced to maintain a variety of habitats in which a wide range of species could flourish.

Background

The expropriation of common land commenced prior to the process of industrialization, often centuries ago. The dispossessed commoners were forced to become vagrants and outlaws, without any permission to work.

Incidence

Common land has been disappearing at a very high rate in all countries and this process has accelerated since the 1970s. Developers, whether private or governmental, have sought means to remove land from commoners and allocate it to people they felt could manage it better. Throughout the world commoners have then been encouraged to work for those whose property the land became or to move to towns. In Brazil, for example, peasant communities are evicted from the land to make way for agro-industry. Where previously the land had supported thousands, it then becomes the exclusive property of a single combine or family. In Africa and other regions with nomadic populations, enclosure has dramatically effected what used to be a sustainable lifestyle.

From 1945 to 1993 in the UK 30% of rough grazing disappeared with 90% of meadow land, 50% of lowland woodlands, heaths and fens, together with 140,000 miles of hedgerow. Since 1963 80 commons had been deregistered. Since 1980 local authorities there were no longer required to provide "equally advantageous land" when they took over open space for development.

Claim

  1. While in industrialized countries communities are trying to defend their landscapes for spiritual and aesthetic reasons, in many countries the very survival of individuals in communities is at stake. Whether meadow land or rainforest, the future of the global environment depends on the outcome of the struggle between those who wish to defend common land and those who wish to enclose it.

Counter claim

  1. Common property will always be destroyed because the gain that individuals make by overexploiting it will outweigh the loss they suffer as a result of its overexploitation. This demonstrates the value of privatizing land and justifies the massive transfer of land from tribal peoples to the state or to individuals.

Web page

  1. Global land use change, economic globalization, and the looming land scarcity
  2. The International Land Conservation Network
  3. Governments achieve target of protecting 17% of land globally
  4. PDF WHO OWNS THE WORLD’S LAND?A global baseline of formally recognized indigenous and community land rights
  5. What Is Land Back?
  6. 7 reasons for land and property rights to be at the top of the global agenda
  7. Driving Dispossession: The Global Push to “Unlock the Economic Potential of Land
  8. Land
  9. Govern land as a global commons
  10. Bill Gates is the biggest private owner of farmland in the United States. Why?
  11. The Global Farmland Rush
  12. US Corporations a Driving Force Behind 'Unprecedented Wave' of Global Land Privatization: Report
  13. Land and property
  14. Indigenous people and the crisis over land and resources
  15. America's Public Lands: What, Where, Why, and What Next?
  16. Privatizing America’s Public Land

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