Can we protect land for nature and carbon by simply buying it up?
whoownsengland.org
Can we protect land for nature and carbon by simply buying it up?
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Re: Can we protect land for nature and carbon by simply buying it up?
#2James Hetfield of Metallica was doing something like this in Marin:
https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/metallica-james-he...
Re: Can we protect land for nature and carbon by simply buying it up?
#3No. Most places have 'immanent domain' type laws were the gov can essentially seize your property (forcing a sale) to give to someone else. A rich developer could see all that sweet sweet natural land and make a strong case (with lobbying, backroom deals, the usual) that it would be better used with a new condo or factory or strip mine and get it anyway.
Re: Can we protect land for nature and carbon by simply buying it up?
#4Re: Can we protect land for nature and carbon by simply buying it up?
#5No. Most places have 'immanent domain' type laws were the gov can essentially seize your property (forcing a sale) to give to someone else. A rich developer could see all that sweet sweet natural land and make a strong case (with lobbying, backroom deals, the usual) that it would be better used with a new condo or factory or strip mine and get it anyway.
The reverse also works.
People see a block of land that's "unused" so they simply move there and start "developing" it. Sometimes they'll legally own the land ("adverse possession") but usually it doesn't matter. It's theirs because they're there and they're willing to defend themselves and "their" land even if they don't have a deed.
So sure, go ahead and buy a bunch of land, in the USA or elsewhere; you'll need to be prepared to enforce your ownership stake or lose it.
Re: Can we protect land for nature and carbon by simply buying it up?
#6No. Most places have 'immanent domain' type laws were the gov can essentially seize your property (forcing a sale) to give to someone else. A rich developer could see all that sweet sweet natural land and make a strong case (with lobbying, backroom deals, the usual) that it would be better used with a new condo or factory or strip mine and get it anyway.
Which is why it is important for the states to pass laws forbidding this activity after the Supreme Court deemed it legal (or not prohibited by the constitution) a few years ago.
And there’s a bunch of land for sale outside of the UK which can be bought and let to go back to prairie or whatever. You can get 10,000+ acre ranches for a few million in places like Nebraska and just let some buffalo lounge around.
Re: Can we protect land for nature and carbon by simply buying it up?
#7In the United States, the American Prairie Reserve [1] is doing something along these lines in the area around the Wyoming/Montana border. In particular, their purchases (which often include private ranches that come up for sale) focus on building those corridors between existing public lands, effectively creating much larger continuous ecosystems that this article mentioned.
It's probably easier to do in the United States (a lot more land than in England, and with fewer entrenched ownership considerations), but I'd really be interested to see if similar projects would work in other parts of the country that are more densely populated, or in areas like the California central basin to where public water resources are being abused to farm a desert.
Re: Can we protect land for nature and carbon by simply buying it up?
#8This is one issue like others where we have gone wrong a long time ago and don't have an easy way back. I think Scotland got it right when they passed a law that required a landowner to sell to a not-for-profit at the market rate if they were selling and they couldn't be outbid by a private buyer.
I would be interested to know the proportion of non-wilded land and how much is private farming land, national parks, private estates etc. and realistically how much of each would need turning back to nature to make it worthwhile. I don't think that buying from farmers is impossible, there must be plenty who would happily sell for market rate + 25% or something, something that could easily be done by a combination of crowd-funding and government grants.
Re: Can we protect land for nature and carbon by simply buying it up?
#9Re: Can we protect land for nature and carbon by simply buying it up?
#10No. Most places have 'immanent domain' type laws were the gov can essentially seize your property (forcing a sale) to give to someone else. A rich developer could see all that sweet sweet natural land and make a strong case (with lobbying, backroom deals, the usual) that it would be better used with a new condo or factory or strip mine and get it anyway.
That is a problem of immanent domain and lobby. Remove that and private reserves work perfectly fine.