(C) OpenDemocracy This story was originally published by OpenDemocracy and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . COP28: Landowning King Charles III has no place opening climate conference [1] [] Date: 2024-02 When we think about the climate crisis, we don't typically think of land ownership. If we did, perhaps the fact that King Charles III is giving the opening address at COP28 would raise more eyebrows. The UN’s signature climate change conference has garnered rightful criticism for being hosted in Dubai in 2023. But the fact that one of the world’s biggest landowners is launching the event should invite just as much scrutiny. A new report from Culture Hack Labs, written in collaboration with Indigenous activists, reveals how land ownership is at the root of climate breakdown. If we want to get out of the crisis, we need to fundamentally change our relationship to land. The British monarch has been deemed the ‘climate king’ for his dedication to environmental causes. During COP26 in 2021, King Charles met with a delegation of Indigenous leaders in Glasgow, where he said that the UN conference was quite literally the ‘last chance saloon’ to save the planet. What he failed to mention was that the Crown owns 89% of Canada. This land is primarily used for the world’s most destructive oil operations – which are warming Canada twice as fast as the rest of the world. What do you think? Win a £10 book voucher for sharing your views about openDemocracy. Tell us It’s not a coincidence that concentrated land ownership is linked to harmful land practices like oil extraction – or that the king owns such an inordinate amount of land to begin with. As our report sets out, capturing land was the driver behind the linked historical processes of capitalism and colonialism. The expansion of colonialism first, and then capitalism, have led to a host of ill effects: from climate change to biodiversity loss, and from epistemicide (the destruction of Indigenous forms of knowledge) to the erasure of entire cultures. These twin processes are at the root of what many call the ‘polycrisis’ – the interlinked crises of our environment, economy, politics and society. Legal scholars have shown how, across much of the world, land laws have embedded a logic that separates humans from the rest of the natural world, which in turns justifies exploitation and extraction from the land and the wider environment. The same logic has solidified class hierarchies, elite ownership, structural racism, settler colonialism and the increasing enclosure and privatisation of the commons. Power structures first established during the Middle Ages and consolidated during the colonial period have mutated and evolved rather than disappearing with the end of colonial rule. The biggest landowners of today are often yesterday’s colonisers. A few weeks ago during his first state visit as king to a Commonwealth country, Charles said there were “no excuses” for the “abhorrent and unjustifiable acts of violence committed against Kenyans” – but offered no apology for colonial violence. Between 1952 and 1960, during his mother’s reign, 11,000 people were killed in the Mau Mau revolt where the Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA), also known as the Mau Mau, clashed with the British authorities. A recent investigation by renowned economist Utsa Patnaik showed that Britain – as a monarchy – drained a total of nearly $45tn from India during the period between 1765 to 1938. If Charles is really the climate king, why is he not announcing that he will devolve the millions of acres of land stolen from Indigenous peoples across the world and pay reparations for the genocide, intergenerational trauma and ecological devastation that followed? The British Royal family aren’t the only ones still profiting from colonial land theft. The Catholic church – one of the key players in the colonial project – currently owns 177 million acres worldwide. Meanwhile, Australian mining magnate Gina Rinehart, a direct descendant of English colonisers (or “pioneer heroes” as they call themselves), is Australia’s richest person as well as the country’s biggest private landowner. And it’s not only old-world relics that are responsible for the concentration of land ownership. Billionaires such as Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg have all invested in farmland, knowing that with climate change food will become scarce and therefore more valuable. Farmlands are typically used for monocultures: soy, sugarcane, palm oil. These are cultures that are heavy in pesticides, destroy the soil, surrounding forests and biodiversity, and increase greenhouse gas emissions. Modern-day land grabbing is a kind of ‘colonialism 2.0’ that continues to wreak havoc on people and planet. The antidote: beautiful Indigenous alternatives The stories, knowledge, wisdom and underlying epistemologies (ways of knowing) and ontologies (ways of being) tied to the land were trampled by capitalist and colonial land appropriation. But they hold the answer to the climate crisis. While Indigenous peoples only constitute 5% of today’s global population, they protect 80% of the world’s biodiversity. In the words of Indigenous academic Tyson Yunkaporta: “an Indigenous person is a member of a community retaining memories of life lived sustainably on a land-base, as part of that land-base.” They are literally world-leading experts in conservation and regeneration, with a team of scientists recently concluding that their knowledge “represents a vast and underutilized database about habitat diversity, species distributions, ecological interactions among organisms, economically important species and sustainable management practices”. In the face of the polycrisis, we desperately need inspiration from Indigenous peoples, who according to Australian architect Julia Watson are “highly advanced when it comes to creating systems in symbiosis with the natural world”. In order to avert climate catastrophe it is time to rethink our abusive relationship with the planet and Indigenise our relationship with the earth. As our ‘Catalogue of beautiful alternatives’ shows, there are many alternative models, transitional pathways towards more reciprocal and just ways of relating to the land. These beautiful alternatives already exist: from the work of the Sogorea Te’ land trust based in the San Francisco Bay area, which empowers women to reclaim and restore ancestral lands, to the UK-based Landworkers Alliance, unionising peasant farmers, growers, and foresters towards land justice and food sovereignty. We can also celebrate the fact that there has been slow but steady progress in recognising Indigenous land rights, while the EU now criminalises environmental damage ‘comparable to ecocide’. While change is on the horizon, the responsibility for the ongoing crisis is ever more concentrated. In his recent article ‘The Great Carbon Divide’, environmental journalist Jonathan Watts suggests we are not equally to blame for rising temperatures, and that recognising this fact is essential in order to identify possible solutions. In the words of economic anthropologist Jason Hickel: “We need a political discourse that is class conscious, that recognises that the rich and capitalism are the major drivers of the climate crisis. This is about bringing production – and provisioning systems and energy systems – under democratic control.” A key lever of change, our relationship to land may hold the key to a more just and equitable future. It is time we figuratively and literally return (to) the land. That could mean giving stewardship back to its original custodians, first nations across the US and Canada. It could also mean novel approaches such as Community Land Trusts (CLTs), which enable communities to hold land and other assets collectively and at the same time cultivate food sovereignty, mutual aid and ecological restoration. Perhaps then together we can learn a new-old way of being in right relations with the rich tapestry of life – the rich interconnected whole that we are with the Earth community. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/cop28-king-charles-iii-landowner-crown-un-climate-conference-dubai/ Published and (C) by OpenDemocracy Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/opendemocracy/