Mapping the flows of ecosystem service values in the global land market: The winners and losers of large-scale land acquisitions

Luca Coscieme, Nadia Marchettini, Valentina Niccolucci and Fabio Sporchia

Ecosystem Services, 2024, vol. 67, issue C

Abstract: Ecosystem services support human society at both local and global scale. The globalization of supply chains led to proliferating ecosystem markets around the world. Biocapacity – the provision of biomass-based resources like food, fibers and the CO2 removal from atmosphere – of land-based ecosystems is particularly involved due to the nature of the services it provides. Since large scale-land acquisitions (LSLAs) commonly involve ecosystems or land located in the Global South and investors in the Global North, they may lead to the displacement of the benefits deriving from such ecosystems and their biocapacity. Previous studies investigated the LSLAs’ consequences in terms of ecological degradation. However, more research is needed for measuring the associated inequalities in order to track the global drivers of such degradation. This study aims to fill this knowledge gap by measuring net gains and losses of ecosystem service value linked with LSLAs by superseding the common approach and considering the involved countries’ biocapacity. The key novelty consists in backtracking the off-market value chain, which is an aspect so far unexplored among LSLAs studies. By focusing on the biocapacity economic value, we reveal that the growing trend in LSLAs is coupled with loss of benefits for the countries ceding land. The analysis captures the effect of the 2008 crisis which triggered more transactions, as well as the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, which exacerbated the already existing loss. Our analysis reveals that for every hectare of cropland acquired through international land markets in 2021, 15,000 US $ were lost, while for forest the loss amounted to 5000 US $ per hectare. Finally, we reveal that developing countries’ presence is growing among the expanding pool of investors, mostly acquiring from other developing countries.

Keywords: Large-Scale Land Acquisitions; Ecosystem services; Biocapacity; Inequality; Ecological footprint; Environmental sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212041624000354
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:ecoser:v:67:y:2024:i:c:s2212041624000354

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoser.2024.101629

Access Statistics for this article

Ecosystem Services is currently edited by Leon C Braat

More articles in Ecosystem Services from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().