Via the Financial Times, commentary on how climate change and population pressures are beginning to drive a new surge of competition over territory:
As the world’s climate changes, scientists observe that the southern Californian rainy season is starting later and ending earlier, lining up the peak of the dry season closely with the period of Santa Ana winds. The raging fires that consumed parts of Los Angeles earlier this month show the tragic result. At the same time, global warming is melting ice and opening up the Arctic in unprecedented ways. Arctic shipping has increased 37 per cent over the past decade, and the US, Russia and China are all eyeing new northern shipping routes that pass alongside Greenland. The geostrategic considerations and future mining opportunities are driving US President Donald Trump’s interest in acquiring the territory.
These two disparate trends show the push and pull of a coming global land reshuffle. As the world’s population grows, the planet warms and resources dwindle, land is poised to change hands and uses at an increasing rate.
In many areas of the globe, land is going to become less productive and less habitable. Regions such as north-eastern Brazil, the American south-west and the Sahel are already suffering longer droughts and land degradation that will only worsen as the climate heats up.
The Los Angeles fires reflect a similar trend. Homebuilding and population growth at the wildland-urban interface in recent decades, just as the dry season has extended, have rendered whole neighbourhoods at risk.
Coastal and flood-prone areas will also be transformed. Bangladesh is anticipated to lose 17 per cent of its land to rising sea levels by 2050 and nearly a third of its agricultural land while its population continues to grow. Miami-Dade and Broward counties in Florida are expected to be 60 per cent submerged by 2060 and entirely submerged by 2100. Some coastal regions of Florida may opt for expensive seawalls to hold the tides at bay, but that option is unfeasible or out of reach elsewhere.
As these areas come under more pressure, land elsewhere is simultaneously becoming more attractive. The share of Canada’s farmland suitable for agriculture could expand dramatically in coming decades as temperatures rise. Greenland is another expected climate winner. In addition to being located along anticipated future international shipping routes and hosting a more temperate climate, it is believed to be home to valuable untapped mineral resources including iron ore, lead, gold, rare earth elements, uranium and oil. While only small parts of the island have been explored so far, mineral exploration and mining concessions are increasing as the ice melts. Large-scale mining is on the horizon and could be a key in making the transition to green industries.
The result of all this is going to be rising climate and population-induced migration and an associated reshuffling of land. The US Federal Emergency Management Agency has launched a preventive programme to entirely relocate communities at risk of grave climate-related threats. It has funded the relocation to higher ground of communities such as the Newtok Village in Alaska and the Quinault Indian Nation in Washington state that face increasing coastal erosion, river flooding and degrading permafrost. Afghanistan and Pakistan both had more than 1mn climate refugees displaced in 2023 alone. Rural and urban land alike on the frontline of these trends is changing hands, as is the land at target destinations.
Humans have long moved around on the land. Colonialism entailed mass migrations across entire continents in the US, Canada and Australia in part of what I call the “Great Reshuffle”. Domestic reshufflings, like land reallocation and collectivisation in communist China and Russia, or the settlement of former marshland in Italy under Mussolini and Spain under General Franco, similarly involved major population relocations.
Some of that land reshuffling has settled in recent decades. The postwar order dismantled the most ambitious international colonialism and muffled territorial land grabs between countries. The spread of democracy and markets has shackled government efforts to rearrange land ownership at a society-wide scale.
The greater territorial stability of the postwar era is an anomaly that is now set to end. Climate change and population pressures are beginning to drive a new surge of competition over land and resources, and with that, efforts to acquire — whether by purchase or force — and exploit promising new territories. It’s time to prepare for a coming global land reshuffle.