FOCSIV REPORT 2021 “The owners of the Earth. Land Grabbing Report 2021: consequences on human rights, the environment and migration “

The 4th Focsiv report, presented in Rome on 9 July, produced as part of the “Faces of Migrations” project, co-financed by the European Union, analyses and focuses on the phenomenon of land grabbing – known as land grabbing, growing seizure of large tracts of fertile land by multinational corporations, finance and international real estate investors and states, to the detriment of local farming communities and indigenous peoples – in the context of global competition for increasingly scarce natural resources.
Four years after the first “Masters of the Earth” report, the grabbing of land to the detriment of the original peoples and the most vulnerable communities has continued with the same intensity, if not greater.
If in 2018 we denounced in the pages of that first Report how agribusiness concentrated 88 million hectares of land in its hands, in 2020 this phenomenon reached and exceeded 93 million hectares, snatched from local populations and countries and handed over to an “extractivist” system that is bringing our planet to a point of no return.
“A phenomenon that did not stop with Covid-19, local communities denounce it and the murders perpetrated against rights defenders, we remember Luca Attanasio, the Italian ambassador murdered in Congo who had spent so much for international cooperation , and the 331 indigenous leaders killed in 2020 ”.
The proposed analysis is based on Land Matrix data, the international site that collects information on contracts for the sale and rental of large tracts of land for the exploitation of resources.
In view of the United Nations Pre-Summit on food systems, hosted by the Italian Government, which will be held in Rome from 26 to 28 July 2021, the report presented, “intends to address the persistent phenomenon of land grabbing to the detriment of the communities of peasants and indigenous peoples. Food systems must focus on the true custodians of the earth, of our common home, who are the main producers who feed the impoverished peoples of the world ”.
Land grabbing and growing inequalities affect the most vulnerable and economically fragile communities and weigh even more on women, girls and girls, crushed by patriarchal societies and centuries-old traditions of discrimination.
The United Nations Pre-Summit on Food Systems will pave the way for the final global event in September by bringing together different actors from all over the world in order to leverage the power of food systems to make progress on all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (OSS).