CASAS’ member, Duygu Avci, has published this paper in English and Turkish with Fikret Adaman, Hande Paker, and Gökçe Yeniev.
Abstract: In traditional land grabbing, an area is expropriated under the pretext of “common good. ”It is then typically sold or leased to for profit enterprises. You are left without your land, your home, or your rights. “Common good” is often a legal cover for dispossession. Green grabbing is no different; it just sounds greener: protecting nature, combating climate change, promoting eco-tourism, or creating urban forests. But displacement, dispossession, and marginalization remain the same. This time, however, the justification goes beyond public interest—it is allegedly “for the sake of the planet.” As a result, rightful objections can easily be dismissed as opposition to green transition. This paper provides examples of green grabbing from Turkey, highlighting the shared fate of those dispossessed—whether in the Black Sea region for hydroelectric power plants or in the Aegean for wind and geothermal energy projects. According to the e-paper, there are ways to prevent green policies from becoming mere reproductions of the exploitative and destructive models they seek to replace. At the top of the list: Ensuring that climate action is combined with social justice and systemic critique.
Read the full text in English here: https://tr.boell.org/en/2025/03/28/green-grabbing-a-new-form-of-appropriation
In Turkish: https://tr.boell.org/tr/2025/03/28/yesil-gasp-mulsuzlestirmenin-yeni-yuzu
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CASAS
The Collective of Agrarian Scholar-Activists from the Global South (CASAS) is a community of Scholar-Activists working in critical agrarian studies.