Why is there so much conflict over people, land, and resources? How can we rethink capitalism and land ownership to create a fairer, more equitable society?
Audrea Lim is a Brooklyn-based freelance writer and journalist whose work focuses on land, energy, and the environment. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Rolling Stone, the New York Times, the Guardian, the New Republic, and The Nation. Lim is the editor of The World We Need and the author of Free The Land: How We Can Fight Poverty and Climate Chaos. She is a visiting scholar at the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at New York University and was a 2022 Macdowell fellow.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
So, we've really been enjoying your book, Free the Land, which couldn't have come at a more relevant time. Today, what's going on in the news
truly highlights how American ideas about land ownership contribute to social injustice. Your book does a wonderful job of showing just how complicated the topic of private property can be while offering an alternative to land ownership practices, aiming to build more equitable systems of housing, agriculture, and community.
We know from history that humans have died and suffered over man's need to possess more and more land, which you really highlight throughout your book. I believe most wars are about land and its resources. With the Trump presidency, there seems to be a new statement every day—let's take Greenland and Canada, for instance, or the idea of them becoming a 51st state. Not to mention the Panama Canal, Ukraine, and Israel as focal points of contention. On the day we’re recording this, Putin and Trump are having a meeting to discuss dividing up land, and we see 80-plus years of conflict with Palestinians, with their land and lives continually diminished, losing both their lives and their homes. It's been a real driver of hostile and destructive obsessions for dominance and control. This is a really important topic to write about. What drew you to unpack this complicated topic and inspire us to free ourselves from the idea of needing to own land, instead pursuing a more balanced relationship with Earth?
AUDREA LIM
I think it's been a very long journey for me to come to this topic and the ideas I discuss in the book. It probably started about 10 years ago when I was a journalist reporting on the climate crisis and the social movements that were coalescing around it.
Ten years ago, the anti-gentrification movement was really gaining momentum. At that time, the loudest part of that narrative was that gentrification was basically white people moving into poor neighborhoods of color and bringing in their matcha oat milk lattes and pretentious $25 cocktails. But as I went to protests and started listening to housing activists and people involved in the struggle, what I repeatedly heard was a slightly different, more complex story. Gentrification was about long-time residents of a neighborhood being evicted or priced out of their apartments, a process they had no control over as tenants. These tenants were often ignored when they raised concerns over new luxury developments being proposed just down the street. These communities had no control over the land they had lived on for decades, sometimes longer if their families had roots in the area.
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Of course, land is everything. It's our home; it's how we provide for ourselves; it's our shelter. We can't take it for granted, and we often think we should own it. Indigenous belief systems propose that living in harmony with the land does not mean owning it. Usually, you can't own the land. To go back to my point about gentrification, I've read studies showing that children who've been uprooted due to gentrification develop PTSD-like reactions when they see trees being planted because it reminds them they may have to move again. A community shouldn't be wary of better school systems because those improvements attract gentrification, leading to them being priced out of their homes. Everyone deserves the basic human right to have a good place to live.
I often wonder how we will wean ourselves off this idea of mastering and controlling the planet. In reality, we can't own land perpetually. As Chief Seattle said, “eventually, the grass covers everything.” We often forget that our time on this earth is limited. What makes you hopeful that we can overcome the psychological barriers to change?
LIM
I started working on this book during the first Trump administration, and there were moments when it felt somewhat similar, honestly. At the time, I felt people were asking me how I could report on the climate movement and maintain my sanity, avoiding spiraling into deep depression. I realized that my job primarily consists of going around and talking to activists and community groups about their work. I’m interested not just in the very big problems we face as a society, economy, and political system, but also in how people are trying to think through solutions or approaches to those problems.
In recent years, there's been a significant boom in community land trusts, a model where a community buys or owns a large swath of land and holds it in trust, meaning it's community-owned and community-controlled. The things built on it—homes, farms, businesses—can be privately owned, allowing individuals to earn equity and have a place to call their own. This idea became popular in the housing movement but was actually pioneered by civil rights activists in the U.S. during the late 60s and 70s.
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I bring up this example of community land trusts because it's amazing what grassroots, local solutions can accomplish with relatively little. We often believe that capitalism will solve everything, but there's an immense power in collective action.
I want to touch on the disproportionate ownership you mentioned. You provided some mind-boggling statistics, stating that 97 percent of farmland in America is owned by white farmers, while 40 percent of land in the U.S. is publicly owned. It makes me wonder why the Native American population was decimated. If you can have 40 percent of land in public ownership, there could have been a more equitable distribution without the need for that history of violence.
I spend a lot of time around people who are thinking through these solutions and trying new ideas or tweaking existing models to help their communities. They understand they have been dealing with the existing capitalist system for so long that they recognize the root of the problem. The solutions they're coming up with are often more sustainable, democratic, and equitable, granting more control to people within the community.
There's a lot of public land in the U.S. and Canada, but it's also connected to the question of who belongs to the public. In America, the only citizens who could buy and own property were white men at the beginning of its history. Black people could not own land or even themselves until the mid to late 19th century. This foundation is part of why we see drastic, almost unthinkable inequalities in access to private land.
This passage I’ve chosen also points to how much can be done with public lands and how a government decides to manage or use those lands depends heavily on who they think they are doing it for and who deserves to utilize, enjoy, and benefit from that land. Historically, that has not included Indigenous people, Black people, or people of color in America.
Not all properties owned and managed by the government are intended for public use; military bases, for instance, are tightly guarded. However, national parks remind us that our nations are tied to the land, and our governments should steward these parks for the people. In democratic nations, these governments are accountable to their citizens, distinguishing them from land trusts or private landowners. We, the people, have some control over how we use and benefit from public lands.
National parks make up only 3 percent of Canada's landmass and 4 percent of America's, but their symbolic value far exceeds their acreage. Once, out of curiosity, I asked my Malaysian dad how a poor immigrant from the Asian tropics became interested in hiking and downhill skiing. He chuckled and remarked that these activities are very Western and only accessible to people with money. I felt a bit smaller, realizing that my relationship with these spaces says more about my place in the world than it does about the land.
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I want to join this fight, but environmental justice can feel so heavy, especially in environmental science, where the global issues we face are complex. Where do you even start? Hearing how you are getting involved made me feel lighter, knowing that there are ways to get involved and make a difference, regardless of how hopeless things may seem.
Thank you for your work; it inspires younger people with your book, Free the Land. On that note, I noticed some things about how you chose to structure your book. I’d love for you to elaborate on that.
I observed that both Parts 1 and 2 end with stories showcasing community resilience and action, while Part 3 introduces larger environmental concepts.
LIM
When I first started writing this book, it really foregrounded the problems within our land ownership system, which treats land as a commodity. The way we talk about land and issues like racial and food justice reflects this. We tend to focus on the problems, attaching big concepts to them, such as racial justice or environmental justice. But, furthest from that, I realized that it's easier for readers and for myself to connect with ideas and what's happening in the world through stories of people who are actively engaging with these issues—community groups that have been fighting for housing or environmental justice for a long time.
The bigger realization was that I spent a lot of time reading about problems, and when I felt hopeless about everything I had read, it seemed there was no alternative vision for progressives to work toward. The fact that there are many alternative ideas and individuals dedicated to finding and working with them has given me hope. It proves that there are numerous paths we could take, and it’s a political choice not to explore them.
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It's interesting that you mention alternative futures and pathways. I often think about what our world would look like if we placed different voices and knowledge systems at the center. You mentioned speaking with Indigenous activists and descendants of former slaves. What do you gain or learn when you prioritize those perspectives in conversations that have historically been dominated by wealthy white landowners?
LIM
When talking to many Indigenous folks in the book—those who manage forests in the Pacific Northwest or farm in the high deserts of New Mexico—their families and ancestors have been working with and living off the land for generations, sometimes spanning many centuries. Much knowledge accumulates over that time. If I spend one season gardening in my backyard, I learn so much about the environment. A farmer working the land for an entire season acquires tremendous knowledge and skill, let alone a millennium's worth of learning as an entire community interacts with the land through phases of abundance and fallowness.
While there is value in Western scientific approaches to land, our society and economy have overwhelmingly emphasized them. This focus has not just ignored but sometimes destroyed and decimated other forms of knowledge that are critical to our local environments. We lose so much understanding about living with and on the land, knowledge that is increasingly relevant.
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Yes, prioritizing scientific knowledge is essential, but there’s so much intergenerational knowledge—things that weren't even written down but are deeply ingrained in people's bones. They can sense changes in the weather, recognize whether seasons will be good or bad, and even employ unique methods of farming that resonate with the rhythm of nature.
I know you are not only a writer and editor but also a musician. How does that aspect of your identity contribute to how you connect with nature or engage with other cultures?
LIM
For me, making music engages a different part of my brain or body than writing and thinking through ideas. It taps into something different—perhaps a different kind of force. While I was writing this book, I drifted away from music a bit and started surfing, which took its place. I needed something outside of writing that demanded my attention but was not about thinking.
Surfing helped me meet my writing goals because it forces you to disengage from yourself; you must tune into nature and the ocean. You can't dictate when to ride the waves; you have to adapt to whatever comes your way.
It's sometimes hard to pinpoint what aspects of my identity shape my thinking because I live within it. However, I have often felt like an outsider looking in, which has heightened my awareness of how precarious everything can be.
There are moments in work and life when things feel overwhelmingly daunting, like an impossible situation, and sometimes you just have to ride it out. It's acceptable to feel bad or depressed about the world or your life. Acknowledging those feelings is good; at the same time, you have to keep moving forward.
