Scientific Study about Agricultural Land Governance: Multiple Forms of Land Grabbing and Ambivalent Conservation
COCERC
Lucian Blaga University in Sibiu
Project supported by PNRR
But this isn't just a story of corporate greed versus local peasants. In a complex landscape where traditional land-grabbing meets "green grabbing," local NGOs are stepping up to fight landscape homogenization and biodiversity loss. However, a closer look reveals a deeply conflicted reality: a region rich in culture but crippled by economic poverty, where even the forces of conservation must compromise with the global capital they aim to fight.
What is Land Grabbing?
Land grabbing refers to the “acquisition or control of relatively large areas of land and other natural resources through a variety of mechanisms and forms involving large-scale capital” (Borras et al., 2012). The phenomenon emerges in the context of converging food, energy, and financial crises, climate-change mitigation imperatives, the expansion of industrial agriculture, and increasing demand for resources from emerging centers of global capital. The concentration of agricultural land in the hands of a limited number of owners occurs to the detriment of small-scale farmers and leads to their exclusion from land markets, while also restricting access of younger generations to agricultural activities. Another consequence of this phenomenon is soil erosion and environmental degradation resulting from intensive agricultural practices. Our research situates the Hârtibaciu Plateau within the broader context of Eastern Europe, where land-grabbing processes have intensified over recent decades. Importantly, land grabbing in this region does not occur solely in its conventional large-scale form, but also through what may be described as incremental “pin-prick” dynamics—small, cumulative, and often less visible acquisitions that, over time, generate significant territorial transformations. These gradual processes are difficult to detect and regulate, yet they are essential for understanding contemporary agrarian change in the region.
Causes and Effects
Land grabbing, in its multiple manifestations, is driven by a complex set of structural factors, including market liberalization, transformations in property regimes, and policy frameworks that favor or encourage intensive agriculture and the accumulation of land or livestock (EU policies, CAP). At the same time, land grabbing produces equally complex effects. Beyond the well-documented material consequences—such as land concentration, population decline, weakened social cohesion, the erosion of traditional agricultural practices and knowledge, and environmental degradation—these processes also generate a series of less visible, intangible losses.
Intangible Losses
Intangible losses have significant implications for socio-economic sustainability at both local and global levels, although they are difficult to define and measure. They include the erosion of local knowledge, traditional land-use practices, and human–nature relationships that have historically sustained both livelihoods and ecosystems. As land-use patterns change, these deeply rooted practices and values are disrupted, generating transformations in identities, occupations, and socio-ecological interactions. Similar dynamics observed in various regions suggest that this form of cultural-ecological erosion represents an important yet insufficiently recognized dimension of global environmental change.
Environmental Activism
Land grabbing is associated with both social degradation and biodiversity loss, as well as landscape homogenization. In this context, NGOs and activist groups have emerged seeking to counter these effects through initiatives that combine environmental conservation with cultural revitalization, in opposition to globalization and the erosion of local practices. Although these actors attempt to distance themselves from technocratic models of conservation, they often remain dependent on external funding and market-based mechanisms, which may reproduce some of the very dynamics they seek to challenge. This generates a form of conservation that we describe as “ambivalent conservation.”
The Hârtibaciu Plateau represents a site of multiple contradictions. First, it embodies a complex mixture of classical forms of land grabbing, “pin-prick land grabbing,” and simultaneous efforts to counteract these processes through environmental activism, at times associated with forms of “green grabbing.” Second, although it is one of the poorest regions in the country, it is characterized by a high density of cultural actors and an unusually high level of cultural activity for a rural context. Third, actors involved in conservation display ambivalence in the application of conservationist ideologies, reflecting tensions between principles, practices, and contextual constraints.
Doing Environmental InJustice: A Theory in Praxis (ECOJUST)
ECOJUST documents the disproportionate exposure of vulnerable groups to socio-environmental hazards in an under-researched, rural, non-Western European region. Our case-study approach examines the relationship between development projects and their impact on local communities. We conduct a multi-sited qualitative research in four Romanian locations – Roșia Montană, Topolog Valley, Hârtibaciu Valley, and Câmpulung-Muscel – to allow for a deeper analysis of four environmental conflicts: mining, illegal logging, land grabbing and respectively, waste trafficking.
This article was published with funding from the "PNRR: Funds for a modern and reformed Romania!" program, within the project "Research Career Guidance Center - Central Region" - COCerc, PNRR-III-C9-2022 - I10 / 7 /16.11.2023. The content of this material does not necessarily represent the official position of the European Union or the Government of Romania.
Bianca Pădurean
Transylvania Today Association
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