Contested land grabbing in Belgium: Port expansion,nature compensation,and the impact on farming in the Antwerp Left Bank

Abstract

To unravel the nuances of the concept and process of land and green grabbing and shed more light on Western European cases, this article focuses on the planning process for expanding the Antwerp port on the Left Bank of the river Scheldt and nature compensation in the adjacent agricultural area. The research mobilizes the strategic-relational institutionalist approach enhanced with the framework of ecological and economic crisis moments seeing planning instruments as politicized social processes embedded in social discourses and institutional changes. It draws on semi-structured interviews and document analysis to address the question: To what extent do actors and institutions involved in nature compensations in the Left Bank enable double land grabbing? In the planning process for the port's expansion, running from 1997 to 2022, the authors identify four dominant institutional fields, three significant crisis moments, and six relevant social groups and the mobilized discourses that played a role in either enabling or obstructing the grabbing process. This influenced the rise of crisis moments, marked by three major judicial cases involving the Council of State, which structured the shifts from one institutional field to the other. As four planning episodes on nature compensations unfolded, including several spatial plans, a complex process, and a negotiation phase, these institutional fields ultimately enabled a double land grab, combining land appropriation for both spatial development and environmental purposes, by giving primacy to pro-compensation discourses and allies. Overall, this study shows the importance of understanding ‘grabbing’ as a nuanced, transformative, and gradually institutionalizing social process.