Community-Led Green Land Acquisition: Social Innovative Initiatives for Forest Protection and Regional Development

Karina Castro-Arce and Frank Vanclay
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Karina Castro-Arce: School of Architecture, University of Costa Rica, Montes de Oca 11501, Costa Rica
Frank Vanclay: Urban and Regional Studies Institute, Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen, 9700AV Groningen, The Netherlands

Land, 2020, vol. 9, issue 4, 1-15

Abstract: Land acquisition often involves power and displacement and can be carried out on a large scale. There are many forms of land acquisition, including for environmental and conservation purposes as well as for production activities. While green grabbing has joined land grabbing as an environmental justice issue of concern, it is not necessarily the case that all green land acquisition is large scale, done by powerful outsiders, or leads to displacement and exclusion. The outcomes of green land acquisition are dependent on the mechanisms used, the adequacy of resettlement and/or compensation, and the social and environmental context in which it happens. We discuss the outcomes of community-led land acquisition for conservation purposes in Costa Rica. We considered a special case of green land acquisition done by local civil society to defend the forest and water resources of the Juan Castro Blanco National Water Park in Costa Rica. We used the literature on green grabbing, social ecological systems, and social innovation to discuss local environmental governance and regional sustainable development. This paper makes a fresh contribution to environmental planning and environmental governance by bringing in aspects of green land acquisition that have not been previously explored.

Keywords: environmental planning; environmental governance; land grabbing; green grabbing; sustainable regional planning; protected area management; land use management; social innovation; social-ecological systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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