Land expropriation – The hidden danger of climate change response in Mozambique

Bernardo Almeida and Carolien Jacobs

Land Use Policy, 2022, vol. 123, issue C

Abstract: This paper sets out why land expropriation is a hidden danger of the response to climate change; a danger that is not adequately captured in legislation and that risks disproportionately affecting the poor. Measures to mitigate the risks and impacts of climate change are often dependent on states’ access to land. The legal mechanism through which states can obtain rights over land is expropriation, but a fair expropriation process depends on a number of structural conditions that are (partly or completely) lacking in many countries: effective recognition of people’s land rights; a legally detailed expropriation process and adequate administrative capacity to implement it; and respect for the rule of law and access to justice for the affected populations. Climate change exacerbates the problems that many states have with their expropriation processes: it brings new and more complex questions about the limits of expropriation; provokes more urgent expropriations; and disproportionately impacts the poorest people. Based on legal analysis and empirical research, this paper looks into the case of Mozambique in the aftermath of Cyclone Idai to show how issues related with expropriation are a hidden danger for many Mozambicans, but also for citizens of other countries in similar situations.

Keywords: Climate change; Expropriation; Land rights; Resettlement; Mozambique (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837722004355
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:123:y:2022:i:c:s0264837722004355

DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2022.106408

Access Statistics for this article

Land Use Policy is currently edited by Jaap Zevenbergen

More articles in Land Use Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joice Jiang ().