Podcast: Grounds for change

TG: So a very warm welcome and thank you for joining us in SEI’s Ground for Change podcast series, where we’re trying to bring a fresh and honest take on some of the most profound sustainability challenges of our time. Today, our focus is on land, and the multifaceted ways humans depend on land-based resources, whether it be food or timber or minerals, but also how the extraction of those resources has degraded the very ecosystems on which we so vitally depend. And the myriad inspiring initiatives seeking to protect and restore land for people, but also for climate and for nature.

Our objective today is to host a conversation with four experts on this topic, a conversation that draws on their expertise, but also gives space to their personal experiences and emotional connections to the degradation and restoration of land where they work. This is not an ‘ask-the-expert’ type panel discussion, but a chance for an honest dialogue that recognizes the world is changing fast, nobody has all the answers, and all of us and all of our views are shaped profoundly by our own personal experiences.

I will give each of our guests the chance to introduce themselves in their own words, but I’m delighted to welcome to the podcast series all three of our guests today, and they are Irene Suárez Pérez, who’s speaking to us from her home in New York. And Irene has vast experience working on international climate negotiations and championing nature-based solutions at all scales.

Mónica Trujillo, who’s at SEI’s Latin America centre in Bogotá. Mónica is an economist who’s worked on sustainable agriculture and protected areas management across Latin America. And Selorm Kugbega, who’s here with me at SEI HQ in Stockholm. And Selorm is a human geographer who’s worked in depth on structural economic change in agricultural development with a particular focus in Africa.

And without further ado, let’s jump in. And I’d like to start by giving each of my guests a chance to speak as to why land is important to them, personally and professionally and in their work and in their perspective, why and where and how is land becoming more important. Maybe we could start with you, Irene.

ISP: Thank you so much Toby, and a huge thanks to SEI for preparing this podcast and to you for moderating and your leadership. I love that question. It’s a very grounding one and I believe that land is central to who we are. And in my case, land is very, very important because it’s a very central piece to what provides me peace.

So it constantly helps me get perspective. Land helps me in grounding and reminds me of the possibility of regeneration. So throughout life, land has provided that and it’s also a wonderful way of reminding myself that we are nature and that we’re just one small piece of mother nature.

So that’s a bit of land for me. To your second part of that question. I also believe that land is central to our development as individuals, as part of landscape, as part of provinces, countries, regions, and the planet. And I’ve had the experience of working on the nexus of poverty and development, conservation and development, and climate change, which I believe is development, and land has been central in all of that.

So I’ll bring that a bit to life through the story of my country of Costa Rica. And I believe Costa Rica is one small sample of showing that we can reverse trends of these high demands that we all have on land. Costa Rica was in the seventies hit a peak of having deforestation rate of 4 percent per year and that took us to the reality of having only 21 percent of forest cover nationwide. Today we have over 50 percent of our country covered by forest, and we’re very close to achieving the 30 by 30 target of protecting 30 percent of our land surface and also working hard on restoration.

So it just demonstrates that we can reverse land conversion with many elements behind that, of course. So strong institutional arrangements that enforce the law that was passed in my country that forbids land use change, including legions of guardians kicking off with, of course, Indigenous peoples, but also forestry regions, civil society committees, like the Covirenas which I’m also a part of and financial mechanisms, the famous payment for ecosystem services. In our case, we tax carbon.

With all these elements and others, we’ve been able to decouple economic growth from land conversion. Of course, this isn’t a done deal. Of course not. And we’re actually seeing that at risk. There’s fragility of institutions giving you political interest, and we obviously need renewed political will as all countries do.

So I just close saying that land is central to development and to our wellbeing. Thanks, Toby.

TG: Thank you so much, Irene.

The truth that you bring home that we are nature is indeed so grounding. And whilst we can be lost in international discourse and big initiatives, we can, of course, always remind ourselves that we are part of this interconnected web upon which we so depend. And thank you so much for sharing those reflections and Mónica, maybe you could unpack a little bit from your side, what land means to you and where and why and how in your work it’s becoming, more important.

MT: Thank you, Toby.

I am so honoured to be part of this conversation. I was born in Bogotá, Colombia. As a Colombian and as a Latin American, for me, land is nature, it’s life. Land means biodiversity and supports all social diversity and all economic development. So I think my vision is influenced by different visions of different communities that co-exist in this country. So more than half of Colombia, my country, is covered by forest, including different ecosystems. There are more than 300 different types of ecosystems due to its geographical richness.

There are Indigenous people with more than 60 ancestral languages that they speak today. And for example, it’s very common to hear from Indigenous Andean communities the vision of Mother Earth or Pachamama, which is a goddess that sustains all life.

There are also Afro-descendant communities that are recognized as traditional and small farmers or peasant communities with their own vision of land. What I am describing about Colombia is similar to Ecuador, to Peru, to Bolivia, to Venezuela, to Guyana, to Brazil. So it is a larger region that connects the Andes with the Amazon. So I want to refer to this region where I come from, this part of the continent.

So there are different values and visions of what land represents. And I am influenced by that. And those different visions and values still coexist, although the conventional economic model predominates, and unfortunately, it is destroying this diversity. So that’s my perspective. Thank you.

TG: Thank you so much, Mónica. That is so eloquently put.

And last but not least, Selorm, maybe you could share with us what land means to you and in your work, how it’s becoming and why it’s becoming more important over time.

SK: Thanks, Toby.

In terms of my relationship to land, I grew up in urban Accra, Ghana, but my parents always made sure we visited our native village in the Volta region of Ghana, which is in the southeastern part, at least twice or three times a year. It was almost a ritual that we had to do all the time. Besides being really occupied with my favorite pastime there in the village of chasing goats and chickens and sheep, I also started paying attention to how the local people conducted their livelihoods. Most of them were farmers that worked very hard but had very little to show for it.

And I found myself asking some questions about how these people could work so hard but remain quite poor. And this paradox stayed with me for a long time, and because of that, I have been intrigued by the question of how rural economic development occurs within these societies.

And one of the first things that I noticed when thinking about rural economic transformation is the asset base of the community. And land is by far the most important economic asset for sustaining the livelihoods of these rural people in southwestern Ghana. Land is also treated as a spiritual entity by these people that is supposed to be used by the past, the present, and future generations. So there’s a deep ingrained value where present users of the land know and understand that they have a duty to safeguard the resource to support the future subsistence of the next generations.

And so when land is protected by the locals, they do so for their own livelihood today and for the sustenance of the future generations. In Ghana, we do give a couple of accolades or names to land because of the provision and capacity that it has. Among the Akan people in Ghana, they call land Asaase Yaa. And Asaase Yaa gives us certain attributes of the provisioning services that we get from land, but also of its feminine nature, the ability to reproduce and support the subsistence of the local people.

For me, land means a little bit more than the economic gain and wealth creation that we get from it or that many people talk about these days as a resource that you just extract from. It means the future economic trajectories of the local people, but it also means the spiritual meanings of provisioning and life that they attach to the land.

TG: Thank you so much, Selorm.

I think it’s wonderful that you used to go back to your ancestral village a few times a year. And I hope you keep that tradition going now that you’re still based in the far north and the icy north of Europe.

SK: I hope so. I plan to visit every time I’m in Ghana. I did when I was last in Ghana last year in March. So it was quite nice. I didn’t chase the goats though, but I still visited the local people.

TG: Wonderful. Well, what a wonderful start. So much richness, so much experience, but also depth of connection. What we want to do now is there’s so much that we could talk about here. But it’s helpful to connect the expertise that you all have, but also your personal experiences by looking first at some of the challenges and some of the fears that you each have around the challenges facing us when it comes to the degradation of land and the exploitation of land resources, not to doom-monger, but to keep our heads firmly out of the sand and think about, well, what are some of the biggest barriers to change and how can we address them?

And if we can reflect upon each of those fears in turn. And then we can move the conversation away from those fears to one of hope and optimism.

But let’s look first in this reality check of what are we, each of us, most fearful of and why, when it comes to trajectories of land use by 2030. And again, Irene, maybe you can kick us off in what’s really driving you when it comes to your kind of real concerns.

ISP: Thanks.

It’s a notion, this idea that limitless growth still exists. That is what is at the essence of my fear. So the fact that this notion that limitless growth still exists is really driving more land conversion, more degradation, more desertification. We see data from UNCCD just published that 40 percent of the world’s land is degraded. It’s been affecting half of humanity and threatening half of global GDP for those who are concerned about economic growth, and they should factor that in, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

On deforestation, we see annual losses now of 2 million hectares of forest per year. And this is, of course, driven by multiple things, depending on which country, but agriculture is one key driving force. I’d highlight logging, infrastructure development, you name it. Now more rare minerals.

When one is looking at how this notion of limitless growth is at the backdrop of, I believe, elections in some G20 countries like Argentina or the United States, the narrative there of continuing with this limitless extractive economy is basically at the heart of my concerns.

Lastly, I’d highlight the fact that the incentives to pivot from extractive to regenerative exist, but sometimes I feel they’re not growing at the pace that we need to really counterbalance that. So I wrap up there.

TG: Yeah, or the scale maybe.

I think we’re probably doing this the right way around by starting with the fears and then moving on to the hopes because otherwise, we’d all be left rather depressed by this conversation.

But Mónica, to you, what are some of the biggest fears that drive the urgency in your work and are facing the trajectories in land use, land use degradation, restoration in the coming years?

MT: Yes. Thank you, Toby. Yeah. And I absolutely agree with what Irene was saying.

For me, it has to do with this economic model. But in detail, for me, the cancer that is affecting the Amazon and self-destroying this key ecosystem and different key ecosystems that are in the region is deforestation. It is, in my opinion, the most urgent concern, and we have lost more than 85 million hectares of this key ecosystem. That is more than 30 percent of the original ecosystem in the Amazon biome.

Deforestation brings fires, loss of biodiversity, and irreversible damage to the ecosystem when coupled with climate change. Some examples of this deforestation include agriculture, cattle ranching, infrastructure, construction of roads, mining of gold, cocaine production, among others.

Deforestation is happening without control for many reasons. But one crucial reason is economic. There are other connected reasons, such as cultural, political, and institutional reasons, but I would like to refer mainly to the economic problem. I think the economic problem is that we have not managed to make the standing forest profitable or economically attractive, the standing natural forest.

Today, illegal economies and unsustainable agricultural practices predominate in this wonderful region. The problem with agriculture in the Amazon is that it copies or it follows models from other ecosystems or from other countries, such as monoculture with commodities, focusing only on one crop, such as soybean, cattle, palm oil, coffee, and so on. Agriculture in such diverse areas as tropical forests should copy characteristics of the forest and the local ecosystem. That is diversity. The key principle to follow is diversity. Farming and livestock systems should be diverse, as are the agricultural systems of the Indigenous people.

TG: People will be forgiven for having the impression that deforestation is relentless and relentlessly high, and rates globally do remain stubbornly high. But maybe just pushing back a little on your fear, maybe it’s good for our listeners to know that there has also been success in reducing deforestation, particularly in your own country, right? Between 2022 and 2023, deforestation in Colombia dropped by some estimates by approximately half, which is mind-blowing.

MT: Yes, but still there are high rates of deforestation. So yes, it’s like a small victory, but the problem is so huge that you have to continue working, and it’s a continuous work and enforcement of laws, regulatory measures, and, of course, trying to change the economic system. I think that’s the key.

TG: Thanks. Well, that was my attempt to introduce a small chink of light early in the despair, but your point is well made.

Selorm, maybe you could share with us a little bit from your perspective. You spoke to this in part being rooted in communities who work so hard yet remain so impoverished. Unpack a little more, if you would, on where the real fears are that drive your own concerns and your own work on land.

SK: Yeah, I would like to highlight two major fears that mainly concern competition between land uses.

The first one is the pursuit of economic development by some African countries no matter the consequences, and that is linked to what Mónica and Irene have mentioned about the challenge of limitless growth.

For Africa, many African countries, including Ethiopia and Tanzania, to an extent, operate what is known as a developmental state model, which grants the state uncontested power to lead economic development. The consensus among many development economists is that Africa’s comparative advantage for development lies in the abundance of its land resources, rather than in labor, which was the case in Southeast Asia, if you think about the four Asian tigers.

For purposes of ensuring economic growth, African developmental states in the past 30, 40, or 50 years or so have engaged in large-scale land appropriation, taking the land from locals and dispossessing them, giving it out to international corporations for foreign direct investments in commercial agriculture, industrialization, or other land uses.

This same economic development motif was used to justify land grabbing in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial and food crisis and during the biofuel boom period, where biofuel was seen as the new source of energy that would replace fossil fuels and be good for the climate. In these instances, land was sourced for food production to feed rich but land-poor developed countries and for the production of biofuel feedstocks, such as sugarcane, oil palm, and jatropha.

At the time, the media reported, for example, how Chinese companies acquired over 2.8 million hectares in the DRC for oil palm production. One of the main land-grabbing issues that broke the news in the media was how Daewoo logistics, a South Korean company, leased 1.3 million hectares of land in Madagascar for maize production.

Today we’re seeing a new angle of contract-based or proxy land grabs. For example, in Tanzania in 2023, the president announced the availability of 690,000 hectares of mostly forcibly acquired land for block farming, where farmers produce specific crops on contracts for agribusiness companies. With this new approach, Long Peng, a Chinese company, has pledged to invest over $200 million to improve soybean production and exports from Tanzania because they’re interested in having better control of their supply chain.

This new contract-based model of land grabs means that hundreds and thousands of hectares of land are dedicated to specific commodities that are going to be bought by this company. Farmers have no right to vary their production; they just have to keep on producing that same crop, no matter what.

Millions of people have been displaced through this process of taking a lot of land away from the locals and viewing it as marginal and underutilized. The heavy-handedness of the state and private actors within this process has led to the weakening of what would be the traditional customary institutions that protect land assets for the local communities.

The second thing I’d like to highlight is green grabbing. That is basically the latest stage of land grabbing, where the land is taken from locals for climate and environmentally positive investments, such as carbon forestry or renewable energy investments. At its onset, green grabbing was seen as a small price to pay for fixing the climate crisis. But we know today that it has severe consequences for local livelihoods.

At the moment, as we speak, 1 billion hectares of land—about 83 percent of the total cropland we have available now—has been promised by states as part of their nationally determined contributions to halting the climate crisis. But we need to stop and think about where this land is going to come from. It’s probably going to come from so-called marginal land that other groups are sitting on, land that supports the livelihoods of farmers and pastoralists today.

Lands are being degraded every day, and the world will need more new lands to bring into cultivation for agriculture. But these marginal lands are the ones that we are promising for climate gains.

Recently, in terms of this green grabbing situation, 25 million hectares of land in five African countries have been granted to Blue Carbon, a company in the Gulf States, for carbon offsets for close to 30 years. This sort of allocation makes up about 20 percent of the total land area of Zimbabwe, which is 7.5 million hectares, and 10 percent of the total land area of Liberia, including forest, not just marginal lands, dedicated to one company.

What we see is that this company is likely to sell these carbon credits to oil and gas companies in the Gulf States—in UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, and other Gulf States. So these carbon forestry projects, while they seem good in the sense that they’re trying to do the right thing for the climate, have given unscrupulous groups license to expropriate people from their lands.

TG: Thank you, Selorm. I think what you’ve set out there, and it’s a very bleak story that you portray, goes precisely against what each of you set out at the beginning in reflecting on what land means to each of you, which is that it’s so much more than space.

Your kind of blunt summary—that Africa’s greatest economic asset is seen often externally as being its land, not its labor, not its people—speaks directly to that. And as you say, the economic model cuts across all of your concerns.

So I’d like to pivot our conversation if we can. And I’d like to keep with you, Selorm, because the picture that you’ve painted of state-led development in Africa is so visible in our minds. Maybe you could share a bit on the hope that you draw for positive changes in land use, land restoration where you’re working.

SK: Thanks, Toby.

As I see it, the main challenge is competing land uses between different groups and agendas. But I draw hope from the emergence of hybrid land management institutions, where customary actors—who have a duty to protect the local people and their land rights—have started working together with state institutions and actors to safeguard land for local communities while making resources available for farmers, even if they have to be resettled elsewhere.

The idea here is that we can support economic development without having to expropriate local people. But we need to do that rightly by understanding their customary views of land and bringing the state’s views on land use together, coming to a consensus.

Another positive trend is the increased interest in community- and group-based land title registration at the statutory level. Before, land registration was individual, privatizing land. But now, community-based processes are gaining traction, aligning more closely with the customary protection of land.

Finally, I’d mention the movement to reduce the antagonistic narratives between different land uses. For example, the FAO’s recent agenda focuses on increasing the interactions between forests and agriculture, which have long been viewed as antagonistic. This shift can help create more harmonious relationships between land uses rather than framing them as opposing forces.

TG: And FAO is the Food and Agricultural Organization for those not familiar with that acronym. So, Selorm, that last example, that’s kind of big-picture and global in nature, but back to your early examples of where you’re drawing hope around hybrid land systems and customary rights. Do you drive by examples that really remind you that some of these ideas are actually grounded in places and people? Maybe you could tell us about one or two.

SK: There is something that has been established in what is the Ashanti region of Ghana, now known as the Customary Land Secretariat, which sits under the chief or the King of the region, known as the Asantehene. He’s one of the most powerful monarchs in West Africa and perhaps even globally.

The Customary Land Secretariat works alongside the state land management agency. If anyone wants access to land, they first interact with the secretariat, which ensures that the values of the local people are respected, that their customary rights are upheld, and that any protections or needs required for that land are considered. Only after this process does the state step in to formalize the transaction.

This has created a balance, removing the notion that land can be entirely bought or sold, which doesn’t exist in the customary system. Instead, it reinforces the idea that land use must align with the needs of the community and future generations.

TG: Thank you. That gives it a bit more color. And of course, the challenge is how to replicate, scale, and emulate such experiences. Mónica, now that we’ve turned the page to optimism and hope, where do you draw your own sources of inspiration in your work?

MT: Yes, Toby, thank you. My hope comes from the momentum around the bioeconomy worldwide.

The bioeconomy is being recognized as a strategy for delivering solutions to the triple global crisis of biodiversity loss, climate change, and land degradation. By bioeconomy, I mean an economic model based on the sustainable use of biodiversity, agriculture, forestry, organic waste, and other bioresources.

This model is disruptive because it aims to replace the fossil economy and unsustainable practices with high-value-added bioproducts, leveraging science, technology, and innovation while following principles of sustainability. That last part is critical.

The bioeconomy isn’t perfect. It’s under construction, and we must adapt it to our contexts. But there’s great momentum. More than seven countries in Latin America have launched bioeconomy strategies and policies across different levels and sectors. There’s also strong dynamism at the global level.

Recently, at COP16, the bioeconomy was recognized as the model to follow for the Amazon. Several countries have included it in their biodiversity action plans. ACTO, the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization, is currently designing a bioeconomy strategy for the Amazon biome. This moment of coordination and collective action gives me hope.

TG: Thank you so much, Mónica. Irene, I know that you’ve worked on both mandated international environmental agreements and voluntary commitments by non-state actors—both of which can provide hope and despair. Where are you drawing your own inspiration and hope from in your work?

ISP: Thank you, Toby.

First, I’ll say I draw hope from a more spiritual belief—that there is an awakening happening. We are becoming more aware that we are nature and that we should care for it. This awareness of the impacts we all see in our countries and on the news raises the importance of action.

This concern fuels the opportunity and necessity for transformation because we can transform. Agriculture and land use, which are currently significant sources of emissions, can become major carbon sinks. They are sources of resilience and wellbeing.

I’ll give examples of movements, initiatives, and technologies that fuel my hope, both from governments and non-state actors.

On the government side, we’ve seen 196 countries agree to halt and reverse deforestation and degradation by 2030. That’s significant. The adoption of multi-sectoral solutions—such as protecting and restoring ecosystems and promoting sustainable agriculture and resilient food systems—is another positive step. These decisions are now guiding governments as they update their national climate plans.

For non-state actors, I’m inspired by the tools and data platforms we have at our fingertips. Tools like ENCORE, Trase, Global Forest Watch, and RESTORE provide incredible insights to drive transformation in land use and agriculture. There’s no longer an excuse for inaction, especially for businesses and financial institutions with significant forest, land use, or agriculture investments.

Transparency is also growing. We see increased adoption of frameworks like TCFD (Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures), ISSB, and TNFD (Task Force on Nature-related Financial Disclosures). Regulations and climate/nature reporting are becoming more widespread.

Additionally, non-state actors are stepping up. Over 11,000 organizations—businesses, financial institutions, and cities from 116 countries—have committed to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Financial institutions are beginning to include deforestation policies in their transition plans, and civil society can play a role in holding them accountable.

TG: Thank you so much, Irene. It’s not just the words you bring but the passion with which you deliver them that conveys genuine optimism.

Let’s fast forward to wrap this up with a quickfire round. What does genuine success look like for each of you by 2030? Mónica, let’s start with you.

MT: Success means moving quickly to change business-as-usual practices and adopting new economic strategies for ecosystems that are both rich and fragile. It’s about making standing forests and biodiversity more profitable or preferred than monoculture or mining.

We need to transform supply chains into value chains that generate employment and income for local communities while fostering sustainability. Diversity, rather than scale, should be the measure of success in these ecosystems.

TG: Selorm, what does success look like to you?

SK: For me, success means creating a world where Indigenous groups are treated as key actors and beneficiaries of large-scale investments, not marginalized. It’s also about balancing environmental objectives with livelihood concerns, ensuring that vulnerable groups aren’t sacrificed for climate goals.

Finally, success looks like a landscape where multiple land uses coexist harmoniously—forests alongside agriculture, alongside mining, without being overly disruptive.

TG: And Irene, what’s your vision of success?

ISP: Success would mean mainstreaming and internalizing the narrative of opportunity. Depolarizing the climate narrative, embracing solutions that make sense for everyone in the present, medium-term, and long-term, would be transformative.

TG: Thank you so much to all of you. We’ve demonstrated today that we are not lacking information, nor perspective. By grounding our understanding in human experiences and recognizing the interconnectedness of our systems, we can indeed mainstream this narrative of opportunity. 

TG: By grounding our understanding in human experiences and recognizing the interconnectedness of our systems, we can indeed mainstream this narrative of opportunity.

What stands out from this conversation is the shared understanding that while challenges are immense, we have the tools, the knowledge, and the collective power to address them. It’s clear from the examples you’ve shared that hope is not a naive outlook but a call to action grounded in reality.

Thank you, Irene, Mónica, and Selorm, for your candid reflections, expertise, and passion. To all our listeners, thank you for joining us in this episode of SEI’s Ground for Change podcast series. We hope this dialogue has sparked thought, inspiration, and perhaps a sense of shared responsibility.

Please join us again for our next conversation as we continue to explore sustainability challenges with fresh perspectives and honest dialogue. Until then, stay connected and stay inspired.

Thank you all, and goodbye.