Prior to industrialisation, land was humanity’s single most productive asset. The humans respected and lived on the land without caring much about who owned it. Much changed thereafter as a piece of land became a symbol of wealth and privilege for the rich and for the poor it meant dignified existence and livelihood security. No other form of wealth is comparable. Perhaps nothing could be closer to it, as the total value of all kind of land on earth is currently estimated to be around $200 trillion. Its value might increase anytime as access to a piece of land is like stepping onto an escalator to cruise upwards.
While the value of land is invariably going to increase, the land area available may actually shrink in the coming decades. As climate is changing in unprecedented ways, previously desirable land may become grossly unusable. This will generate a rush to extract value from land that is lying in lowland areas likely to be submerged, and the land that is vulnerable to emerging environmental extremes. Growing human population, projected to peak at 10 billion in the coming decades, will create unmanageable land pressure. Consequently, privileged countries will harden their borders (they are already doing so) thereby heightening inequality between countries. This dynamics is not far-fetched, much is getting real.
With a sweeping scope across world history, Land Power offers intriguing insights and alarming truths about how land has been used to acquire social and political power. In the past two centuries, upheavals in land holdings have seen dramatic changes across the globe. Such changes ascertain who owns the land that determines a society’s future for centuries, that eventually sets the inhabitants on new trajectories. The monumental consequences of changes in land ownership during the 19th century, called the Great Reshuffle, may have been over but some societies are still embarking on experiments to rewire land power.
A problem and a solution
Michael Albertus, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, argues that land is as much a problem as a solution to resolve both inequities and injustices of land allocation and distribution. Land is power, but it in no way should fuel disparity, indignity, and destruction. But it has played contrasting roles, and continues to do so. Land Power explains how land reshuffling has led to dispossession of indigenous communities and ethnic minorities, paving the way for the world’s greatest social evils. While some countries are adopting to repair past land reshuffles, these are still early days. There is little denying that a better future can be made if land power is put in service of a whole society.
Drawing on original research and on-the-ground fieldwork across several countries, Albertus argues that landholding is not only complex and highly unequal but is grossly underscored by sexism, racism and climate crises. The decision about who gets the land sharpens a society’s sexism while patriarchy raises it head. India offers a stark view of how land power can exacerbate the ugliest forms of gender inequity. As patriarchal and sexist as the society may be, it can become even more so when it sets out to use land power to stymie women.
Most of the countries that have tried to empower women through land allocation efforts, as Columbia, have failed to make any significant progress. Gender biases persist in many countries like China, Soviet Union and South Africa. It is not surprising that land holding across most the world continues to favour men, with women being largely victims of prevailing biases. Women continue to remain on the sidelines. Women groups are trying to press for their rights, which is likely to transform the prevailing situation.
Population growth triggered land scarcity has given rise to inequity and injustice that the world is grappling to resolve. But what if the process reverses itself? With low birth rates spreading worldwide, an implosion in the global population is likely to weaken the land power. Most societies in Europe and in East and Southeast Asia are near or beyond peak population. The population of the US is being propped up only by immigration, and the populations of Japan, China, and Germany are declining. This will alter human relationship with land.
Shrinking populations
Vaulting across time and geography, Albertus provides a range of possibilities that we are most likely to confront. The narrow conception of individual ownership of land may wane in the years ahead. Will group allocation of land be the new reality? A new reshuffling of a shrinking population will provide breathing space for generating ideas for crafting a better future from the land. What we do with the land today can change our collective future. However, much will depend on alignment of timing with ideas. In some places on earth this has already started happening, but most of the countries seem to be missing out on these moments. Without doubt, land is indeed the resource on which human future depends.
Land Power offers new insights into how public and private initiatives will guide us to carve a new future. It is a must-read book on land power as an economic power. This captivating book demonstrates that land may be both social and political power, but it has unseen power to design a new future for mankind. The book offers new insights into how public and private land initiatives in different countries can effectively safeguard ecosystems, and allow flow of ecosystem services to the society. Land Power is lively and timely, offers the shape of scenarios to come.
The reviewer is an independent writer, researcher and academic
Title: Land Power
Author: Michael Albertus
Publisher: Basic Books/Hachette, New Delhi
Price: ₹511
