More Than 1 Billion People Fear Losing Their Land Within Five Years, UN-Backed Report Warns

By: Oyetola Owolabi S.

A house. A small farm. A patch of inherited soil.

For more than a billion people, it all feels uncertain.

A new global assessment by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Land Coalition and CIRAD paints a troubling picture: nearly one in four adults worldwide believe they could lose rights to their land or homes within the next five years.

That’s over 1.1 billion people living with what experts call “land insecurity.” Not hypothetical. Not abstract. A real fear of displacement.

And this is happening despite two decades of policy reforms, declarations and frameworks on land governance — especially across Africa and parts of Latin America. More than 70 countries have launched land reform efforts in that period. Still, progress is uneven. Slow in places.

According to the report, only 35 per cent of the world’s land has formally documented ownership, tenure or use rights. The rest? Customary claims. State ownership. Or simply unclear.

States legally own over 64 per cent of global land, although this often includes customary territories that are not formally documented. Private individuals and corporations own roughly 18 per cent — about 2.4 billion hectares. And for roughly 10 per cent of global land, tenure status remains unknown. Unknown.

When it comes to agriculture — which covers about 37 per cent of global land area — inequality sharpens. The top 10 per cent of the largest landholders operate nearly 90 per cent of cultivated land. Concentration at the top. Limited access at the bottom.

Regional differences are stark. In sub-Saharan Africa, about 73 per cent of land is held under customary tenure, yet only 1 per cent is formally recognised as such. In North America, 32 per cent is privately owned. In Latin America, 39 per cent. In Europe, excluding Russia, 55 per cent.

Indigenous Peoples and customary landholders occupy around 5.5 billion hectares — roughly 42 per cent of the world’s land surface. Yet only about one billion hectares of that is documented with secure ownership rights. The gap is wide.

Women, the report notes, are consistently less likely than men to have secure land rights. For housing. For farming. For inheritance. And without documentation, those rights can vanish quickly.

There’s also a climate angle. Roughly 4.2 billion hectares of customary land have been mapped globally, accounting for more than 32 per cent of Earth’s land mass (excluding Antarctica). These territories store an estimated 45 gigatons of irrecoverable carbon — about 37 per cent of the global total. If released, that carbon cannot be reabsorbed in time to prevent severe climate damage. That’s not a small number.

Yet these same lands face mounting pressure: urban expansion, mining, oil and gas extraction, industrial agriculture. Even some renewable energy and conservation projects are increasing competition over land, especially where legal protections are weak or absent.

Maximo Torero Cullen, FAO’s Chief Economist, described land insecurity as one of the most damaging forms of inequality. It affects productivity. Resilience. Nutrition. In short, survival and long-term food security.

Behind the percentages and hectares are families wondering if tomorrow, the land they depend on will still be theirs.

Policy frameworks exist. Commitments have been made.

But for a billion people, security still feels… fragile.