Conservation concessions or green grabbing? A critical perspective on mega conservation investments

1 Introduction

The concept of land grabbing was initially explored to describe the surge in (trans)national commercial land transactions and was primarily centered on the production and export of food, animal feed, biofuels, timber, and minerals (Borras and Franco, 2011). However, recent literature discusses the politics of changes in land use and property relations, and the links between them as key dimensions, albeit insufficiently explored. Globally, land grabbing has become a prominent term for describing and analyzing the current surge in large-scale commercial land acquisitions. Around the world, states, corporations, and civil society groups have reacted strongly. Some view land grabbing as a significant threat to the lives and livelihoods of the rural poor and therefore oppose such commercial land deals (Chappa et al., 2024). Others see economic opportunities for the rural poor, though they are concerned about the rising tide of corruption and its adverse consequences, and therefore call for improved land-market governance. Between these two positions lies a range of intermediate views offered by other groups (Borras, 2010).

Across the world, ecosystems are being revalued, repackaged, and sold, from the wind-swept plains of northeastern Brazil to the forest frontiers of Zambia and Malawi, and in the geothermal fields of eastern Indonesia. A quiet but consequential transformation is underway in which land and resources central to rural livelihoods are being reallocated in the name of environmental conservation (Scoones, 2009; Fahad et al., 2022). This phenomenon characterizes green grabbing, describing the appropriation of environmental resources legitimized by sustainability agendas, whether for biodiversity conservation, carbon sequestration, ecosystem services, ecotourism, or renewable energy production (Fairhead et al., 2012).

This paper addresses the following question: To what extent do contemporary conservation concessions represent a transformative form of green investment versus a novel form of green grabbing? We argue that while conservation concessions are discursively framed as apolitical and mutually beneficial, their implementation often replicates structural features of historical land grabs. Specifically, we examine whether conservation concessions function as a form of green grabbing in which environmental goals are used to legitimize the private appropriation of environmental resources, thereby displacing and marginalizing existing agrarian populations.

While land-grabbing research has examined changes in land use and property relations, the intersection of conservation agendas with these dynamics remains underexplored. The extent to which conservation concessions, promoted as green investments, replicate or diverge from historical patterns of resource alienation has not been systematically interrogated through a critical agrarian lens. We offer a preliminary analysis that proposes typologies for understanding the politics of land grabbing across scales, with particular attention to how environmental justifications reshape agrarian structures.

By synthesizing findings across multiple cases through a mixed-methods case-study approach, the framework moves beyond a binary verdict of green investment or land grabbing to produce a nuanced explanation of the conditions and mechanisms that lead to divergent agrarian and social outcomes.

2 The conceptual framework: from land grabbing to green grabbing

2.1 Origins and evolution of the debate

The concept of land grabbing originated to describe the surge in transnational commercial land transactions focused on food, animal feed, biofuels, timber, and minerals (Borras and Franco, 2011). The term first gained prominence in 2008 (Vidal, 2008) following the global food price crisis, which triggered a wave of large-scale land acquisitions in the Global South by foreign investors seeking to secure agricultural production.

However, as scholars have increasingly recognized, environmental agendas themselves have become core drivers of land appropriation, creating novel forms of valuation and accumulation (Fairhead et al., 2012; Suarez, 2022). The term green grabbing emerged to capture this phenomenon: the appropriation of land and resources justified by environmental rationales, whether for biodiversity conservation, carbon sequestration, ecosystem services, or renewable energy production.

Recent literature argues that climate change, biodiversity crises, food insecurity, water bankruptcy, and worsening economic growth have spurred an active search for scalable solutions (Suarez, 2022; Makwinja et al., 2025). These include a new wave of environmental governance centered on large-scale, finance-driven interventions such as the conservation concession model. This conservation model is presented as a pragmatic and efficient mechanism for protecting ecologically valuable landscapes. It involves payments from governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), or private entities to landholders, often in exchange for forgoing destructive activities and managing land for conservation. Proponents of this conservation model include major international financial institutions and conservation NGOs, who frame these concessions as a quintessential green investment, a win-win scenario that secures global public goods (e.g., biodiversity, carbon sequestration) while potentially generating economic benefits for host nations.

However, this optimistic narrative demands rigorous scrutiny. The historical precedent of extractive and agro-industrial concessions, which have often dispossessed rural communities and entrenched poverty, casts a long shadow (Akram-Lodhi, 2012). This paper argues that while conservation concessions are discursively framed as apolitical and mutually beneficial investments, their implementation often replicates the structural features of historical land grabs, displacing local resource rights, reconfiguring agrarian structures, and marginalizing existing, often more sustainable, socio-ecological practices.

2.2 Defining green grabbing

Green grabbing refers to the appropriation of land and resources legitimized by environmental agendas, whether for biodiversity conservation, carbon sequestration, ecosystem services, ecotourism, or renewable energy production (Fairhead et al., 2012). Unlike classical land grabs, which rely on overt coercion or market mechanisms alone, green grabbing operates through a distinctive mechanism in which environmental concerns provide compelling justifications for appropriation, disarming opposition and attracting support from constituencies unlikely to endorse conventional land dispossession (Gutiérrez-Arellano and Mulligan, 2018).

Key characteristics of green grabbing include: (i) distinct appropriation mechanisms extending beyond outright resource alienation to encompass institutional reconfigurations such as restrictive rules on access and use; (ii) dynamics of invisibility wherein communities may retain nominal access to lands while losing effective control over their use, as occurs when carbon forestry projects prohibit local communities from utilizing forest resources; and (iii) a legitimizing discourse wherein environmental narratives supply the moral authority for what might otherwise be recognized as dispossession.

To determine when a conservation intervention qualifies as green grabbing, we propose the following analytical criteria:

• Change in access rights: Are resource users experiencing restrictions on previously accessible resources?
• Dispossession or exclusion: Are land users being physically or effectively excluded from resource use?
• Lack of meaningful consent: Has Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) been genuinely obtained, or has consultation been substituted for consent?
• Benefit inequity: Are the costs of conservation being borne by local communities while benefits accrue to external actors?
• Transfer of control: Is decision-making authority being reallocated from customary institutions to external actors?

These criteria serve as the analytical lens through which we evaluate conservation concessions in the empirical sections of this paper.

2.3 The conservation concession model

Conservation concessions are contractual agreements in which a government or landholder transfers management rights over a specified territory to a concessionaire, typically a conservation NGO, private company, or hybrid entity, in exchange for payments or investments to achieve defined conservation outcomes.

Conservation concessions differ from other common conservation and natural resource management arrangements along several key operational and legal dimensions. First, unlike protected areas (e.g., nature reserves), which are characterized by a permanent legal designation under statutory conservation law, conservation concessions typically operate under fixed-term contracts. This temporal flexibility allows for periodic reassessment and adaptive management, in contrast to the often rigid, perpetual status of formally protected land (Foerster et al., 2011; Makwinja and Mkhwinba, 2025).

Second, it diverges from community-based natural resource management (CBNRM). While CBNRM explicitly vests local institutional authority over resources in community bodies, conservation concessions typically rely on external transfers of rights or responsibilities rather than devolving inherent or recognized local governance powers. Authority thus originates outside the community and is granted conditionally (Makwinja and Njiwawo, 2025).

Third, compared with payments for ecosystem services (PES), which involve conditional payments without any accompanying transfer of management authority, the conservation concession integrates both conditional incentives and a defined transfer of operational control (Orchard et al., 2015). PES compensates for specific land-use outcomes but leaves decision-making authority with the landowner or user; in conservation concessions, management authority is explicitly reallocated.

Finally, delegated management agreements share surface similarities with conservation concessions but are typically designed to operate within existing protected area legislation, serving as a contractual tool nested under pre-existing conservation statutes. In contrast, the conservation concession is not predicated on prior protected area status and functions independently of such legal designations, offering a distinct pathway for governance outside formal reserve systems.

Contemporary conservation concessions are increasingly funded not primarily by philanthropic donations but by anticipated revenues from carbon credit sales. This transforms the incentive structure from an ongoing donor subsidy to financial self-sufficiency through the commodification of forest carbon (McAfee, 1999; Corbera et al., 2007). However, we acknowledge that philanthropic funding remains important in some contexts and that the shift toward carbon-credit financing varies across regions.

3 Theoretical anchoring: critical agrarian studies and political economy

3.1 The critical agrarian studies perspective

This study is anchored in a Critical Agrarian Studies (CAS) perspective (Bernstein, 2023) that fundamentally shifts the inquiry from a simple assessment of ecological outcomes to a critical exploration of power, property, and social justice (Borras and Franco, 2011; Manahan et al., 2025). CAS interrogates the power relations, class dynamics, and control over resources that underpin agrarian change, extending this approach to environmental conservation as an integral part of ongoing struggles over land, territory, and sovereignty (Makwinja et al., 2023). Table 1 demonstrates how CAS concepts guide our analysis.

Table 1. Critical agrarian studies analytical framework.

Green grabbing encompasses not only outright resource alienation but also institutional reconfigurations, including restrictive rules governing access and use (Fairhead et al., 2012). Sometimes communities may retain nominal access to lands while losing effective control over their use, for example when conservation regulations criminalize traditional livelihood practices, such as carbon forestry projects that prohibit forest use by local communities.

To complement CAS's focus on power and property, we also draw on the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework (SLF) (Scoones, 1998) to understand how conservation interventions affect different livelihood assets (natural, social, human, physical, and financial capital). This dual theoretical lens allows us to examine both the structural transformations in property and class relations (through CAS) and the concrete impacts on household livelihoods (through SLF) (Salafsky and Wollenberg, 2000).

3.2 Analytical dimensions

Our framework examines whether conservation concessions constitute green grabbing across five interconnected dimensions:

Dimension 1: Political economy of the concession deal. This encompasses legal and financial structures, the legitimizing narratives employed by actors, and the allocation of rights to future resource streams.

Dimension 2: Transformation of property and access relations. This includes the reconfiguration of customary and formal land rights, processes of enclosure and dispossession, and the legal ambiguities that enable appropriation, which Franco and Borras (2019) term “gray areas in green grabbing.”

Dimension 3: Livelihood impacts. This considers changes in access to essential resources, class, gender, and ethnic differentiation, and the availability of viable alternatives to displaced activities (Makwinja, 2026).

Dimension 4: Politics of ecological governance and knowledge. This asks whose conservation model and expertise are privileged, how “success” is defined and measured, and what role local knowledge systems play (Makwinja and Kimengsi, 2026).

Dimension 5: Power, politics, and resistance. This focuses on how communities negotiate, adapt to, or challenge new regimes, the formal and informal resistance strategies they employ, and the conditions that enable genuine participation.

3.3 The state in green grabbing

A crucial theoretical insight concerns the state's role. Contrary to assumptions that green grabbing is exclusively neoliberal, our framework recognizes that governments do not operate with a single voice. Understanding requires unpacking the state into processes, people, and relationships involved in governance. The state may actively facilitate green grabbing through what Wolford et al. (2013) term concessionary politics (e.g., the strategic deployment of state authority to enable land transfers while maintaining formal ownership).

In the Malawian case, the state's role in the Mamaland concession exemplifies this dynamic. Despite the absence of legal frameworks for carbon rights, government authorities facilitated the agreement, creating “gray areas” that enabled the deal to proceed. The state simultaneously acts as a regulatory authority, a beneficiary of carbon revenues, and a facilitator of international investment, roles that may conflict with its responsibility to protect customary land rights. Authoritarian populist governments, as documented in the Brazilian Amazon, can enable green grabbing through policies framed as sustainable development while displacing traditional communities (Grandia, 2013; Tafese, 2023).

4 Methodological approach

4.1 Research design

This paper is a Perspective Article that synthesizes existing knowledge on green investment and land grabbing through a multi-country case-study approach focused on conservation concessions in the Global South. The analysis draws on the authors' extensive fieldwork experience (15 years for the first author) and on ethnographic research in forestry governance conducted by both authors.

The Sources of data include:

• Peer-reviewed journal articles (2000-present)
• Media outlets and news reports
• Books and book chapters
• Government policies and legal documents
• Organizational reports (NGOs, international organizations)
• Key informant interviews (n = 67)
• Focus group discussions (n = 12)
• Non-participant observation during field visits (December 2025-March 2026)

The Geographic scope includes the Global South, with particular attention to Sub-Saharan Africa, and comparative cases from Asia and Latin America.

4.2 Case study selection

We adopted a case study approach (Yin, 2014), drawing on multiple cases from Sub-Saharan Africa, where conservation concessions are rapidly expanding:

4.2.1 Primary case: Malawi

• Mamaland carbon concession (550,000 hectares, 40-year agreement): This is the most significant and controversial conservation concession in Malawi, announced in early 2026. The concession involves an agreement between the Portuguese construction conglomerate Mota-Engil (through its agroforestry subsidiary Mamaland) and the Singaporean commodity trader Trafigura to market carbon credits generated from 14 Malawian forest reserves. We draw on document analysis (public announcements, concession agreements, government policies) and key informant interviews (n = 25) with community leaders, government officials, and NGO representatives.
• Kulera REDD+ Programme: A community-based REDD+ programme operating in the Nyika and Vwaza landscapes. We draw on document analysis and interviews (n=12) with programme staff, community association members, and government officials.
• Majete Wildlife Reserve delegated management: A protected area managed by African Parks under a delegated management agreement. We draw on interviews (n = 8) with community members, park staff, and local leaders.

4.2.2 Comparative cases

• Tanzania: Masai pastoralist displacements from grazing lands designated as wildlife reserves (interviews n = 10)
• Liberia: Forest carbon schemes and community rights issues (document analysis, interviews n = 6)
• Madagascar: Integrated conservation projects and NGO-managed protected areas (interviews n = 6, document analysis)

Additional relevant cases in Asia (Indonesia, India) and Latin America (Brazil, Mexico, Colombia) are drawn from secondary literature.

4.3 Sampling and data collection

We employed purposive sampling to identify key informants with knowledge of conservation concessions, land rights, and community impacts. Snowball sampling was used to identify additional participants. Participant categories included:

• Community members (users of forest resources) (n = 28)
• Traditional leaders (chiefs, village headpersons) (n = 12)
• Government officials (forestry, land, environment departments) (n = 10)
• NGO staff (conservation organizations, development agencies) (n = 9)
• Conservation practitioners (park managers, concession representatives) (n = 8)

Semi-structured interview protocols covered: (i) knowledge and perceptions of conservation concessions; (ii) changes in resource access and use; (iii) livelihood impacts; (iv) consultation and participation processes; (v) benefit-sharing; and (vi) resistance and negotiation strategies.

Focus group discussions (n=12, 8-15 participants each) were conducted in communities surrounding the Mamaland concession areas and comparative sites. FGDs explored collective experiences, community decision-making processes, and perceptions of conservation interventions.

Non-participant observation was conducted during community meetings, village gatherings, and field visits to forest reserves (December 2025-March 2026).

4.4 Ethical considerations

Ethical approval was obtained from the relevant institutional review board. Informed consent was obtained from all participants prior to data collection. Participants were informed of the study's purpose, their right to withdraw, and the confidentiality of their responses. Data were anonymised, and identifying information was removed from analysis and reporting.

4.5 Data analysis

Transcripts were analyzed thematically using abductive reasoning (Creswell and Creswell, 2018; Makwinja et al., 2025). The analytical framework guided initial coding. The authors identified emerging themes through iterative reading and discussion. The authors triangulated primary data with document analysis and secondary literature to enhance validity.

5 Empirical evidence: conservation concessions as double-edged instruments

5.1 The divergent assessments

The scholarly literature presents fundamentally divergent assessments of conservation concessions. Proponents argue that conservation concessions: (i) mobilize private and philanthropic capital without requiring states to assume full management costs; (ii) provide flexible, performance-based arrangements adaptable to local contexts; and (iii) generate revenue streams supporting local development when benefit-sharing mechanisms are properly designed (Palmer et al., 2020).

Critical scholars argue that concessions systematically reproduce historical land grabs under a benevolent environmental lexicon, representing not a break from historical patterns of resource alienation but their intensification, enabled by new mechanisms of valuation and commodification (Fairhead et al., 2012; Ojeda, 2012; Borras and Franco, 2011).

Empirical evidence suggests that conservation concessions produce divergent outcomes depending on institutional design, governance capacity, and community engagement. However, evidence from multiple contexts indicates that problematic conditions, including inadequate consultation, opaque benefit-sharing, and insufficient safeguards, remain prevalent, particularly where legal frameworks are weak and community rights are poorly protected (Barnes et al., 2017; Suarez, 2022). Conservation concessions can, under specific conditions, achieve conservation outcomes while respecting community rights (Davé et al., 2025). However, our evidence from Malawi and comparative cases suggests that more commonly, concessions are negotiated in legal vacuums, with minimal community consultation, opaque benefit-sharing terms, and governance structures that bypass democratic local institutions (Table 2).

Table 2. Critical governance failures of the mamaland conservation concession.

5.2 Key design parameters of conservation concessions and their consequences

The structural architecture of conservation concessions reveals four critical dimensions of contemporary carbon forestry governance: temporal lock-in, geographic scale, use-restriction regimes, and benefit-sharing opacity.

First, regarding duration, conservation concessions typically bind land use across multi-decadal horizons, effectively spanning generations. The concessions amount to a de facto privatization of public environmental resources over periods that exceed standard cycles of democratic accountability, such as a 5-year term. In the Mamaland case, the 40-year agreement locks in land-use restrictions until 2066 with no provision for periodic renegotiation. Such temporal rigidity raises fundamental questions about procedural justice and the adaptability of long-term environmental contracts.

Second, in terms of geographic scope, most conservation concessions encompass large tracts of land. The Mamaland concession covers 550,000 hectares of forest reserves across multiple regions of Malawi. This spatial footprint not only governs immediate access to resources but also reverberates through the broader agrarian economy in which forest products circulate. The scale of land reclassified from multi-use commons to carbon reserve implies significant downstream effects on regional commodity chains, including agricultural inputs, fuel markets, and construction materials derived from forest sources.

Third, the use restrictions inherent to carbon-focused concessions are typically predicated on avoided deforestation. In practice, this model criminalizes traditional livelihood practices unless explicitly exempted (Hardin, 2011). Within the conservation concession framework, activities such as shifting cultivation, fuelwood collection, and the harvesting of non-timber forest products (e.g., medicinal plants, honey, thatch grass) risk being reclassified as illegal extraction. The agreement's silences or omissions regarding such exemptions are as consequential as its explicit prohibitions, given that these practices constitute the daily subsistence strategies of surrounding communities (Archibald et al., 2025).

Fourth, benefit-sharing provisions in conservation concessions exhibit a pronounced lack of transparency. In the Mamaland case, project revenues flow to the investor, yet the terms governing the government's fiscal share and the entitlements accruing to local communities remain publicly unspecified. The government's framework suggests a 5% community entitlement, but the application is unclear. The absence of codified, transparent benefit flows thus undermines the distributive justice claims often advanced by proponents of market-based conservation mechanisms.

5.3 Global patterns of green grabbing

To provide a broader comparative context for understanding green grabbing, we briefly examine patterns across multiple sectors and regions. These cases show that environmental justifications are used across sectors to legitimize land appropriation, even if not all involve conservation concessions.

5.3.1 Latin America

In Mexico's Istmo de Tehuantepec region, transnational corporations have erected thousands of wind turbines, with corporations and the state ignoring agrarian laws and indigenous rights. In Brazil, the Italian energy company Enel has become one of the country's largest wind and solar companies, acquiring public land occupied by residents and deploying private security to deny access (Davis and Rulli, 2015).

5.3.2 Asia

In Indonesia, the Wae Sano geothermal project encompasses settlements, water sources, agricultural land, and traditional sites, prompting consistent resistance since 2018. In India, the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission involves the dispossession of agropastoralists from lands classified as government-owned “wastelands” forcibly converted into solar parks.

Biofuel-driven green grabbing: The International Land Coalition estimated that biofuels accounted for 59% of land grabs between 2000 and 2010 (Akram-Lodhi, 2012). Evictions linked to palm oil biofuel have displaced millions in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Malaysia, and India. Colombia, the fifth-largest palm oil producer globally, expanded production due to the forced displacement of the local population by paramilitary groups (Maynard et al., 2021).

5.3.3 Africa

In Tanzania, Masai pastoralists have experienced progressive exclusion from grazing lands as areas were designated as wildlife reserves, then essentially sold off to private companies marketing the ecotourism value of wildlife (Ojeda, 2012). In Liberia, a British company's attempt to secure forest carbon rights was carried out through contracts that made no mention of what would happen to the local people living in and around the forest (Suarez, 2022).

While these examples encompass renewable energy and biofuel development rather than conservation concessions specifically, they illustrate the broader pattern of green grabbing in which environmental justifications, whether climate mitigation, biodiversity conservation, or renewable energy, legitimize land appropriation. We return to conservation concessions specifically in the following section.

5.4 The mamaland conservation concession: a case study in contemporary green grabbing

The Mamaland conservation concession emerged as the most significant and controversial initiative in Malawi's conservation pathway (Table 2). In early 2026, the Portuguese construction conglomerate Mota-Engil, through its agroforestry subsidiary Mamaland, announced a 40-year exclusive agreement with the Singaporean commodity trader Trafigura to market carbon credits generated from 14 Malawian forest reserves, including South Viphya, Dwambazi, Dzalanyama, Michiru, and Chimaliro.

The concession has faced significant criticism on multiple grounds:

• Legal vacuum: Malawi's Forestry Act and Land Act contain no reference to carbon rights. The ownership of carbon sequestered on forest reserves remains untested and potentially subject to dispute. Under the prevailing operational assumption that land or tree ownership confers carbon ownership, the concession effectively claims rights to ecosystem services that were never explicitly allocated through any legislative process.
• Benefit-sharing opacity: No publicly disclosed terms exist for benefit-sharing. The government's framework suggests a 5% community entitlement, but the application is unclear. As one key informant observed, “We don't know what we are entitled to, when we will receive it, or how it will be calculated.”
• FPIC failure: Community leaders reported meetings that could not adequately explain key details of the concession. As one village headperson stated: “They came to tell us about the project, but they could not explain how long the land would remain under concession or what share of revenue would return to us. We were asked to agree to something we did not understand.”
• Lock-in without safeguards: The 40-year term has no review clause for renegotiation as carbon prices evolve. This locks in communities and government to a fixed arrangement over a period that exceeds the standard cycles of democratic accountability.

The Kulera experience demonstrates that inclusive benefit-sharing is operationally feasible when communities are structured as partners rather than passive beneficiaries. The Nyika-Vwaza Association and Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve Association employ their own staff, participate in carbon credit pricing decisions, and engage in participatory budgeting (Table 3).

Table 3. Comparison between the mamaland conservation concession and Kulera REDD+.

6 Synthesis: how conservation concessions function as green grabbing

6.1 Reconfiguring property and access relations

Our evidence reveals systematic transformation of property and access regimes. In Majete Wildlife Reserve, the African Parks Network established Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) accountable to the concession holder, effectively bypassing existing Village Development Committees (VDCs) and Area Development Committees (ADCs). As one VDC member explained in an interview (March 2026):

“They created new committees that report to the park managers, not to us. We are the elected leaders of the community, but we were not consulted about this. It is a parallel governance system.”

This structure produced what community members termed “parallel governance” that report to external managers rather than to democratically constituted local bodies. Similar patterns were reported in multiple villages surrounding Majete, suggesting this is a broader pattern rather than an isolated account.

The carbon rights lacuna creates gray areas in green grabbing, such as legal ambiguities that enable appropriation while shielding it from accountability (Franco and Borras, 2019). Under the prevailing operational assumption that land or tree ownership confers carbon ownership, concessions effectively claim rights to ecosystem services that were never explicitly allocated through any legislative process.

Even when communities retain nominal access, regulatory restrictions for carbon preservation fundamentally alter the terms of that access. As one key informant observed during a community meeting:

“If we fence people out to ‘protect' the carbon, we haven't created a project, we have created a conflict.”

6.2 Creating new labor relations and class dynamics

Conservation concessions create new, often precarious, labor relations that fail to provide viable alternatives to displaced smallholders (Wang et al., 2022). In Majete, local elites benefit from employment as park guards or from contracts with the concession manager, while poorer households—who rely more directly on common-pool resources for subsistence and safety nets- are disproportionately harmed by access restrictions. Interview data from Majete indicate that employment opportunities are concentrated among those with formal education or political connections, while most community members report losing access to resources without receiving compensation or alternative livelihoods.

This pattern of differentiated dispossession (Borras and Franco, 2011) reconfigures rural class dynamics, empowering a new cadre of conservation-oriented elites while marginalizing the agrarian poor. In Madagascar, the collapse of state capacity led to North American NGOs contracting to manage protected areas, creating an internal division between the high-status, high-paid jobs of North American workers and the low-wage work of Malagasy workers (Duffy et al., 2016). Interviews with conservation practitioners in Madagascar confirmed that this class differentiation persists, with Malagasy staff reporting limited advancement opportunities despite higher qualifications.

6.3 The biomass dependency constraint

With over 96% of Malawian households relying on biomass for cooking fuel (Makwinja et al., 2025), restrictions on forest access for carbon preservation impose immediate costs on the most vulnerable populations. This aligns with the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework (Scoones, 1998), which emphasizes that environmental interventions must account for the multiple activities through which rural people sustain themselves (Oumer and Neergaard, 2010). The 96% figure represents the national average biomass dependence; in rural communities surrounding forest reserves, dependence is often even higher, with limited access to alternative energy sources.

When conservation concessions fail to provide viable alternatives, they risk not only exacerbating poverty but also generating local resistance that undermines long-term conservation outcomes (Barnes et al., 2017; Su et al., 2018). In the Mamaland concession areas, community members reported that without access to forest resources for fuelwood, they would have no alternative source of cooking energy.

6.4 The participation paradox

Despite rhetorical commitments to community participation, conservation concessions often substitute consultation for genuine decision-making authority. Our research reveals what Ribot and Peluso (2003) term decentralization without practical democracy: delegation of administrative functions to local bodies that lack authority to set terms or hold managers accountable.

In the Mamaland case, community engagement operated within spaces created and controlled by project proponents. Concession representatives convened community meetings and presented the project as a fait accompli rather than an open negotiation. As one community leader reported: “They came to tell us what would happen, not to ask us what we wanted. They said the project was already approved by the government, so we had no choice.” This shows that consultation replaced genuine consent, a pattern documented in multiple concession areas.

Genuine participation requires recognizing that local knowledge, stewardship, and cultural practices are part of the solution, not obstacles to be overcome (Nshimbi and Vinya, 2014). The distinction between “invited” and “claimed” spaces of participation is critical: when participation occurs in spaces created and controlled by project proponents, it is fundamentally constrained.

6.5 Resistance and alternative pathways

Despite structural power asymmetries, communities demonstrate forms of resistance and negotiation. Documented resistance strategies in concession areas include:

• Deliberate non-compliance with access restrictions: Community members reported continued collection of non-timber forest products, fuelwood, and medicinal plants despite restrictions.
• Continued resource use: In several villages, households continued using forest resources for subsistence needs, arguing that their customary rights outweighed concession restrictions.
• Vocal opposition at community meetings: Community leaders reported expressing concerns and demanding transparent information at project meetings.
• Refusal to participate in consultation processes: Some communities boycotted consultation meetings in protest of perceived lack of genuine engagement.
• Social ostracism: Community members perceived as collaborating with concession managers faced social sanctions from neighbors.

In Majete, some VDC members continue to assert authority over resource governance despite the existence of parallel CBO structures. Around Michiru forest reserve, one of the earmarked Mamaland concession areas, village leaders expressed skepticism and demanded transparent information (Scott, 1985). As one village headperson stated: “We are not against conservation, but we will not accept something that takes our land without telling us the truth about what it means for us.”

The Kulera REDD+ Program offers a model of how community associations can exercise genuine governance authority when structured as partners. The Nyika-Vwaza Association and Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve Association employ their own staff, participate in carbon credit pricing decisions, and engage in participatory budgeting. This demonstrates that inclusive, accountable conservation is operationally feasible under appropriate institutional conditions (Chowdhury et al., 2022).

7 Implications and future directions

7.1 Theoretical contributions

This perspective advances green grabbing theory in several respects: First, we demonstrate that conservation concessions represent a symptomatic response of capitalism to its own ecological contradictions. The approach positions nature as a new frontier for commodification and financialization. The shift toward carbon-linked concessions fundamentally alters incentive structures, creating pressure for long-term lock-in that exceeds democratic accountability. This extends existing green-grabbing theory by demonstrating the specific mechanisms, particularly temporal lock-in and carbon commodification, through which conservation-driven accumulation operates.

Second, we challenge assumptions that green grabbing is exclusively neoliberal. The Malawian state's active role in facilitating the Mamaland concession, despite the absence of legal frameworks for carbon rights, demonstrates concessionary politics across diverse political formations. This adds to Wolford et al.'s (2013) concept of concessionary politics by demonstrating its application to conservation contexts.

Third, we extend Critical Agrarian Studies to environmental conservation, viewing it not as a separate domain but as integral to ongoing struggles over land, territory, and sovereignty. Previous CAS scholarship has primarily focused on agricultural and extractive land grabs; our analysis demonstrates the applicability of CAS concepts to conservation-driven land appropriation, revealing how class dynamics, property relations, and labor regimes are reconfigured through environmental governance.

Fourth, we identify a previously under-theorized dimension of green grabbing: the role of temporal lock-in through multi-decadal agreements. This dimension of green grabbing, the ability to bind land use across generations through contracts that exceed democratic accountability cycles, has not been adequately addressed in existing literature.

7.2 Policy recommendations

The foregoing analysis of the Mamaland concession's temporal, spatial, and distributive asymmetries necessitates a correspondingly structured set of remedial actions. These are organized below into three analytical tiers: immediate procedural remedies, structural governance reforms, and evaluative criteria for future conservation investments.

7.2.1 Immediate procedural remedies for the mamaland concession

Four discrete actions are urgently required to address the most proximate deficits in the existing agreement:

First, public disclosure of benefit-sharing terms is required immediately. This is a prerequisite for any assessment of distributive justice; without transparency regarding revenue flows to the Government of Malawi and local communities, the concession operates as a private contractual arrangement over public resources.

Second, the concession must establish price-adjustment mechanisms to prevent temporal lock-in at 2024 carbon prices through the agreement's terminal year of 2066. Such mechanisms should index compensation to internationally recognized carbon markets or floor prices adjusted for inflation and ecological performance.

Third, an independent verification of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) is required and must be conducted by a mandated body with no financial interest in the project's continuation. This verification must assess whether communities genuinely understood the terms of the agreement and had the opportunity to withhold consent.

Fourth, legal clarification of carbon rights ownership must precede any further implementation, resolving ambiguity as to whether carbon sequestered on customary land is the property of the state, the concessionaire, or resident communities.

7.2.2 Structural reforms for long-term governance

The Mamaland case exposes systemic weaknesses requiring foundational legal and institutional reform. Paramount among these is radical land tenure security, recognizing customary rights and moving from nominal acknowledgment to legally enforceable ownership over ancestral territories (Makwinja and Kimengsi, 2026). Complementing this, community-led forest governance must be instituted with genuine decision-making authority, including veto power over proposed conservation activities and autonomous management of community benefit funds. Furthermore, an integration of livelihoods with landscape management from an agroecological perspective is essential, treating agricultural production and forest conservation as complementary rather than oppositional objectives. Finally, legal frameworks should mandate participatory budgeting for carbon revenues, requiring that community assemblies, rather than external project managers or distant government officials, determine how funds derived from local land use are allocated.

7.2.3 Evaluative criteria for future conservation investments

Based on our analysis, we propose the following criteria as a framework for assessing conservation investments. These criteria are derived from the empirical patterns identified in our case studies. Any proposed conservation investment should be assessed against these threshold questions prior to approval:

First, does the intervention respect existing governance structures or create parallel institutions? Interventions that supersede chiefly authorities, village natural resource committees, or customary decision-making bodies risk institutional erosion and long-term illegitimacy. Second, are benefit-sharing terms publicly disclosed and legally enforceable? Undisclosed or merely discretionary provisions are functionally equivalent to no benefit-sharing at all. Third, have affected communities exercised genuine decision-making authority beyond mere consultation? Consultation (a process in which communities may voice concerns but lack binding influence) must be distinguished from consent, in which communities hold decisive power. Fourth, does the intervention provide viable alternatives to displaced livelihood activities? Replacing shifting cultivation, fuelwood collection, or non-timber forest product harvesting requires demonstrable, accessible, and culturally appropriate livelihood substitutes, not merely promises of future compensation.

We argue that conservation investments failing to satisfy all four criteria should be subject to heightened scrutiny and should not be approved without significant remedial measures.

7.3 A foundational shift toward sustainability transformation

The choice is not between conservation and development, but between a model of exclusionary control and one of inclusive, place-based stewardship. The 40-year lock-in period of the Mamaland concession means decisions made without adequate safeguards today will shape Malawian forests and livelihoods until 2066. Whether this legacy is judged as climate leadership or carbon colonialism, a situation in which carbon-focused conservation interventions impose external control over land and resources, replicating historical patterns of colonial resource extraction through new, environmentally justified mechanisms, depends on actions taken in the immediate window to retrofit transparency, accountability, and genuine inclusion into agreements that remain dangerously opaque.

The IPBES Global Assessment found that biodiversity declines less rapidly on lands managed by Indigenous Peoples and local communities than on protected areas managed by states or private actors in many documented cases (Díaz et al., 2019; Leadley et al., 2022). This evidence challenges the assumption that conservation requires exclusionary control. A pragmatic approach would channel green investments not into acquiring control over land, but into strengthening the capacity, rights, and governance systems of those who already steward these ecosystems (Palmer et al., 2020).

8 Conclusion

Conservation concessions are discursively framed as apolitical, mutually beneficial investments that align environmental protection with economic rationality. However, empirical evidence shows that within prevailing capitalist frameworks, these concessions risk becoming a novel form of green grabbing.

Our findings reveal patterns observed across our case studies, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, with contextual variations. Conservation concessions can restructure property and access rights, alienating customary users from their means of subsistence. They can create precarious labor relations, fail to provide viable alternatives for displaced communities, and reconfigure rural class dynamics in ways that empower conservation-oriented elites while marginalizing the agrarian poor (MNISI, 2023).

This paper does not argue against conservation efforts but calls for a critical re-evaluation of the conservation concession model. When designed without a thorough understanding of local agrarian realities and power dynamics, these interventions risk exacerbating poverty and social conflict and may fail to achieve long-term conservation goals due to local resistance. However, we also acknowledge that under appropriate institutional conditions, as demonstrated by the Kulera REDD+ Programme, more inclusive and accountable conservation models are operationally feasible.

9 Limitations

This perspective piece draws primarily on evidence from Malawi, with comparative cases providing broader context. The detailed evidence base is concentrated on Sub-Saharan Africa, and further comparative research is needed to assess whether similar patterns hold in other regions. The Mamaland concession was announced in early 2026 and is currently in the negotiation/establishment phase; longer-term follow-up will be necessary to assess actual implementation and outcomes. The rapidly evolving policy and legal context for carbon concessions means that governance frameworks may change, potentially affecting the patterns we observe.

How conservation is financed matters as much as how much is spent. Who decides ultimately determines who benefits. This perspective contributes to a more just pathway toward socio-ecological sustainability by advancing a more inclusive agenda that subjects market-based instruments to rigorous scrutiny while centring the rights, knowledge, and agency of communities on the front lines of both conservation and dispossession.

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Footnotes

Edited by: Naser Valizadeh, Shiraz University, Iran

Reviewed by: Josephat Kemei, Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology, Kenya