On land loss and the restoration of “home”

October 21, 2021

The law sets the rules for what is a fair distribution of resources after a dispute, particularly after some sort of offense has been committed. But the solutions proposed by the law are rarely creative. They don’t address the issues of healing and restoration.

I have written elsewhere about the Milieudefensie case, in which a group of Nigerian farmers sued Shell for the damage caused to their land by a series of oil pipeline leaks. But the more I think about it, the less I think of it as a victory.

It’s certainly a step towards victory, but it shouldn’t take 13 years for farmers to receive a formal recognition that their land and livelihoods were destroyed. And the much bigger issue is that a compensatory-driven approach will not provide long-term healing. Indeed, the financial benefits of land ownership are small in comparison to the human benefits.

So what is the impact of loss of land? I’m sure there have been many doctoral theses that have sought to answer this question.

The first thing relates to emotional well-being. It’s humiliating to lose land. You lose dignity, pride and self-esteem. Grief and trauma are created, generating long-term health damage.

There is also loss of sustenance and shelter. The loss of agriculture, crops, water and forestry. The loss of income. The threat of starvation.

Then, there is a loss of “home.” This is the most difficult to describe, but home is a place for cultivating spirituality, language, culture and connection to ancestors. Land is mother.

All of these losses are cascaded over generations. The biggest impacts are certainly related to health. Stress goes up and life-expectancy goes down. But how can you quantify the long-term impact of loss of “home”? You can’t.

Indeed, loss of land often leads to migrations, which makes the concept of restoration even more difficult. So while the Milieudefensie case goes towards financially compensating farmers for their loss, it will necessarily fall short.

But how can we restore emotional well-being after land is lost or destroyed? How can we restore sustenance, spirituality, language and culture?

This is where art comes in.

CPM