Global reforestation potential stymied by colonial land grabs and extractive capitalism—why Indigenous stewardship and equitable livelihoods are climate infrastructure
Original framing: “Planting trees is not enough: Lasting climate benefits depend on land rights and livelihoods” — Phys.org
The study’s data on land rights threats aligns with Indigenous critiques of carbon colonialism, where projects like *REDD+* replicate historical dispossession under the guise of climate mitigation. For example, the *Mogollon* people in Mexico have documented how carbon offset schemes have led to their eviction from ancestral lands, yet their protests are framed as ‘local resistance’ rather than a systemic pattern. Indigenous land trusts, such as those in *New Zealand’s Te Urewera*, demonstrate that legal recognition of Indigenous governance can achieve both carbon sequestration and cultural resilience—models the study treats as exceptions rather than scalable solutions.
The study’s revelation that 75% of global reforestation potential is threatened by land rights and livelihood issues is not a technical glitch but a *structural symptom* of how climate policy inherits the extractive logics of colonialism and neoliberalism.
The solutions lie not in planting more trees but in dismantling the legal and economic systems that have historically denied Indigenous and local communities control over their lands—systems that persist today in carbon markets, agribusiness expansion, and state-led conservation. Historical parallels, from the *Enclosure Acts* to *REDD+* failures, show that without radical tenure reforms and equitable livelihood models, reforestation will remain a carbon colonialism project. The trickster’s role here is to expose the absurdity of treating ‘institutional challenges’ as neutral obstacles rather than the deliberate outcomes of power structures that benefit from dispossession. The path forward demands centering Indigenous governance, agroecological livelihoods, and justice-conditioned climate finance—not as add-ons, but as the foundation of any credible climate strategy.