King Charles, The Catholic Church, and the Inuit People of Nunavut

August 7, 2023 9:38 AM

Who Owns the Most Land in the World?
posted by chavenet (46 comments total)

It's Australians all the way down [under]!

I often forget how big Australia is: it's 2.9 million square miles to North America's 9.6 million square miles -- but with waaaay fewer people (like 5% compared to N.A.) and thus much more concentrated land ownership.
posted by wenestvedt at 9:45 AM on August 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

Regarding the first two landholders, ahem, time to quote Ice Cube, "Off with their head, off with their head I say!"
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 9:47 AM on August 7, 2023 [4 favorites]

Not to be a killjoy, but its worth pointing out that most of the land 'owned' by the British monarchy isn't actually private in any conventional sense of the word. Most places that have Crown land treat it in the same way the USA treats federal land (i.e. as government property which can be licensed for private use). In Britain it's mostly government mangaged with the sweetner that the monarchy gets 25% of any profits generated from the land. The British monarchy does have significant private holdings including the patchwork of properties that form the duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster, but nothing like 1/6th of the world's property.
posted by nangua at 10:05 AM on August 7, 2023 [22 favorites]

He technically owns Canadian Crown land, but it is in no way at his personal disposal and could be taken away at any time without him having any say.
posted by Meatbomb at 10:06 AM on August 7, 2023 [4 favorites]

By my reading, this infographic claims that the Crown owns 90% of Canada and that a separate party (the Inuit people) owns Nunavut, which comprises 20% of Canada's land area. Someone — possibly me — is deeply confused about something.
posted by Johnny Assay at 10:09 AM on August 7, 2023 [31 favorites]

Just for comparison, the US Govt owns 640 million acres, so less than that stated for Charles but more than for the Catholic Church.
posted by hydropsyche at 10:09 AM on August 7, 2023 [4 favorites]

Maybe it should be taken away at any time without him having any say. Just not a fan of monarchies or Catholicism (because I was raised in the Church, and my family suffered greatly).
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 10:10 AM on August 7, 2023 [4 favorites]

By my reading, this infographic claims that the Crown owns 90% of Canada and that a separate party (the Inuit people) owns Nunavut, which comprises 20% of Canada's land area. Someone — possibly me — is deeply confused about something.

Canada is a land of geographic miracles.
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:12 AM on August 7, 2023 [16 favorites]

Colonial holdings man. In the immortal words of Jane Elliot, you can't discover a place where people are already living. And yes, I live on treaty land.

He technically owns Canadian Crown land, but it is in no way at his personal disposal and could be taken away at any time without him having any say.

I'm not sure about the taken away.

Someone — possibly me — is deeply confused about something.

It's complicated.

Canada is a land of geographic miracles.

Legal miracles.
posted by warriorqueen at 10:14 AM on August 7, 2023 [5 favorites]

They're not legally identical, but saying that Charles owns 90% of Canada is functionally a lot like saying Joe Biden owns most of Wyoming.
posted by praemunire at 10:23 AM on August 7, 2023 [8 favorites]

wait you mean there's a legacy of exploitation extending from the colonial era that still affects our modern day understanding of how land can and should be used and is more than enough justification for mass reparations programs from colonizers?

hmm, you make an excellent point, a very excellent point
posted by paimapi at 10:45 AM on August 7, 2023 [9 favorites]

They're not legally identical, but saying that Charles owns 90% of Canada is functionally a lot like saying Joe Biden owns most of Wyoming.

Well this is good to know, because after I saw the 90% stat I was wondering wtf is left for anyone else.
posted by freakazoid at 10:46 AM on August 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

Canada, like every Commonwealth realm, can convert at will to a republic, expropriating the King's (in any event already nominal, because he doesn't control it or earn on it) ownership of public lands. The Royal Family would retain any Canadian property in their private portfolios or owned by the Duchies of Cornwall or Lancaster.

The land of the UK Crown Estate and of the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster are pretty different. First, the Royal Family gets tens of millions of pounds a year income off them (via the Royal Grant for the Crown Estate), and second, the Royal Family does control the Duchy lands in practical effect.
posted by MattD at 10:47 AM on August 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

Do they control the ducal levies and any men at arms stationed there? I'm afraid my ideas about how geopolitics work may now be irrevocably damaged by playing Crusader Kings 3 too much.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 10:51 AM on August 7, 2023 [8 favorites]

This helps explain why 56% of the population of Australia lives in four cities.
posted by box at 10:52 AM on August 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

The LDS Church through its shell companies (y'know, structuring real estate transactions like Jesus recommended) is thought to own about 2 million acres in the U.S.
posted by credulous at 10:53 AM on August 7, 2023 [4 favorites]

They're not legally identical, but saying that Charles owns 90% of Canada is functionally a lot like saying Joe Biden owns most of Wyoming.

That's true, although Charles does profit from his "ownership" of British land - for example, he receives some proportion of the profits from the use of the British seafloor for wind farms; the money given to Charles based on earnings from the Crown Estate was £86.3m last year.
posted by nightcoast at 11:01 AM on August 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

I'd like to understand more about the nature of Inuit and Inuvialuit ownership of their territories. Is it based on colonial-era treaties? How is Nunavut's ownership by its residents different from, say, Alberta's?

It's amazing how the Catholic Church is both the second largest land owner in the world and yet also their local franchises keep declaring bankruptcy to avoid paying restitution to its victims.
posted by Nelson at 11:03 AM on August 7, 2023 [9 favorites]

Is it based on colonial-era treaties?

I'm not an expert either on First Nations or on Canadian property law in general, but my understanding is that this is (for most Mefites anyway) a relatively recent development, from the mid-90s. Obviously based on pre-colonization occupation, though.
posted by praemunire at 11:11 AM on August 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

Charles III also owns large chunks of the Transylvanian village of Viscri, which he visits whenever he wants to cosplay as a paean.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:14 AM on August 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

the money given to Charles based on earnings from the Crown Estate was £86.3m last year

It's still attached to the office, though, as the part of the arrangement where the elected government controls the land but gives the monarchy part of the revenues to fund being the monarchy. (Classic English wishy-washyness!) If he abdicated, he wouldn't be entitled to any of the money (as distinct from the property he inherited from his mom personally). Here in the U.S., Joe Biden doesn't personally fund the maintenance of the White House, his security, most (all?) of his personal staff, public ceremonies at which he appears, etc. A better deal for Charles, though, to be sure.
posted by praemunire at 11:17 AM on August 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

Tangential but related, here are two articles (Curbed, New Yorker) about Molly Burhans, a young Catholic whose "mission is to create an ecological land-use plan for the Catholic Church" by mapping all of the land and, um, traveling to the Vatican and trying to convince the old men there to take her project seriously.

I really recommend both articles! They are interesting.

One thing they both touch on a bit is the limited meaning of the idea that "the Catholic Church" is the largest landowner in the world in some coherent way. From the Curbed article: "No one knows exactly how much land the church owns because while the institution is centralized in terms of its doctrine, legally, it is quite diffuse. The Vatican doesn’t actually own church buildings in, say, Vermont or California. Decisions about acquisition or disposition are largely made at the diocesan level."

I think in the same way that Church leadership has used its extensive bureaucratization to shift around blame for the sex abuse crisis while simultaneously worsening/causing it, Burhans is encountering the way in which its bureaucracy makes her work very difficult. Still and again, recommended reading.
posted by kensington314 at 11:18 AM on August 7, 2023 [6 favorites]

(What is a paean in this context?)
posted by praemunire at 11:18 AM on August 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

It's a voice to text misspelling of "peon." Peasant.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:25 AM on August 7, 2023 [6 favorites]

The misspelling did make it seem like I was trying to be poetic in some way, but really, I was just saying he was cosplaying as a regular human.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:34 AM on August 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

the US Govt owns 640 million acres, so less than that stated for Charles but more than for the Catholic Church.

Hang on, why isn't the US Govt. listed in this infographic in that case?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:10 PM on August 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

Because the list maker wanted to be click baity and include the royal family as a person rather than counting it as government owned land. You could just as easily have included the Russian goverment, or any other large country. They're not technically wrong but as others have pointed out the concept of crown lands is different from what we would think of as normal private property.
posted by Wretch729 at 12:32 PM on August 7, 2023 [7 favorites]

There are so many legally shrouded private corporations buying up land now days that one person could own almost the entire planet and we'd never know it. It certainly isn't going to show up on charts like this.
posted by eye of newt at 12:39 PM on August 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

>is thought to own about 2 million acres in the U.S.

those 10% tithes gotta go somewhere . . . (this is mentioned in passing in Mark Arax's semi-excellent The Dreamt Land)
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 12:49 PM on August 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

>duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster

on a War of the Roses kick now, so boo! (yeay?!) . . . crazy that the crown was just relieved from Richard III by the new Henry VII on some random battlefield.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 12:51 PM on August 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

Very disturbing to find no Indigenous Australians (collectively, I suppose) as landowners in a country where apparently giant chunks are held by individuals. I suppose outside of northern Canada the same is true the world over.
posted by maxwelton at 12:57 PM on August 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

The first private owner on that list then is Gina Rinehart from Australia and the wealthiest individual in the country, in a strange coincidence!

I've never heard of her, lemme check Wikipedia, cause I'm sure she's fine.

She ... has sponsored the trips of prominent climate change denier Christopher Monckton to Australia. In October 2021, Rinehart garnered controversy after expressing climate change denialist views during a speech at her childhood primary school.

..ok...hmm

Rinehart is a supporter of Donald Trump.

yeah...no
posted by jeremias at 12:58 PM on August 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

I was genuinely suprised at how massive the Australian cattle farms are.
posted by PinkMoose at 1:03 PM on August 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

Imagine having extreme wealth inextricably tied to massive farmland in Australia and publicly rejecting the reality of climate change.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:22 PM on August 7, 2023 [7 favorites]

New Yorker profile of gina Rinehart
posted by nikoniko at 1:27 PM on August 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

The Canadian Monarch derives no benefits personally from Canadian Crown ownership. There is no money paid either to the UK government or to the monarch themselves for any Canadian Crown revenues or profits.

The federal government does pay for any trips (and other things like security) the royals make in our country. This was a bit of an issue when Harry and co. were still royals and looking for a while at least to stay in Canada. No one was sure how much that was going to cost or if the Canadian public would be on the hook for it or for how long. Still not a question that in principle has an answer other than the Canadian public would just pay for everything.
posted by bonehead at 1:29 PM on August 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

Just returned from Gen Con and nobody was cosplaying as a paean, although I did spy three odes and a filthy filk.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:36 PM on August 7, 2023 [5 favorites]

I was genuinely suprised at how massive the Australian cattle farms are.

In the most recent iteration of the Civilization game series, Australia claims extra land every time it establishes a cattle ranch improvement. It's very useful for increasing your territory early on.
posted by Etrigan at 1:46 PM on August 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

The Australian situation of land ‘ownership’ is in fact more complex than this article makes out. Many of those cattle farms are in the form of pastoral leases, long term arrangements with the Crown rather than private holdings. That includes those run by Rinehart, who is invested in pastoralism but mostly in coal and minerals; mining leases being another form of quasi-ownership.

A good proportion of the land mass is also covered by Native Title, a formal means the courts and Parliament have come up with to recognise the simple fact that it’s all, in the end, Aboriginal land.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 2:53 PM on August 7, 2023 [5 favorites]

“To prove legal title to land, one must trace it back to the man who stole it.” – David Lloyd George
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 2:55 PM on August 7, 2023 [10 favorites]

This is inaccurate about Nunavut, so I wouldn't trust the rest of it.

Nunavut is about 20% of Canada's land, but only about 18% of that is owned and managed by the Inuit people (the remainder is almost all Crown land). Here's a map with figures.

But also, the Inuit are a people with a government (in fact, multiple levels of government), so it's kind of weird to say they own the land in some way that is fundamentally different here than, for example, the people of Russia owning a whole lot of land because Russia belongs to the Russian people. It's obviously a different situation because there is a complicated relationship between the Crown and First Nations governments in Canada, but to reduce Inuit self-government to land ownership is strange and could be somewhat insulting.
posted by ssg at 3:08 PM on August 7, 2023 [13 favorites]

→ Gina Rinehart

Rinehart funded anti-wind power groups around a decade ago, and the groups were extremely well coordinated around the world. Just when the Power Workers Union-funded groups in Canada started to quiet down of an evening, the Rinehart-funded groups in Australia would start yelling at us. 24/7 screaming echo chamber. I'm glad I'm out of it.
posted by scruss at 6:11 PM on August 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

I was genuinely surprised at how massive the Australian cattle farms are.

Basically - if you have a lot of land that isn't fertile enough for intensive cultivation of wheat, corn or soybean, and there DEFINITELY isn't enough water for that kind of agriculture either because it's mostly desert... what can you grow? Grass, that's what.

But humans can't eat grass... so we just turn loose millions of cattle, which eat the grass, which then turns it into calories. Grass fed cattle turns water into calories very efficiently - an extreme example would be a serve of lamb (5.5 litres) versus a cup of rice (124 litres). Even a serve of potato crisps takes over 20 litres of water.

Doing this is a lot cheaper than feedlot cattle production - the first step of which is often "cut down rainforest in the Amazon to grow soybean", then ship it overseas to your feedlot operation, and you have to build the feedlots too.

In parts of the world where soil is poor and water is scarce (which then tends to have low human population and lots of empty land anyway), a meat based diet may be more practical.

Something like 4% of cattle in the US is grass fed, while 97% of cattle in Australia is grass fed.
posted by xdvesper at 6:41 PM on August 7, 2023 [7 favorites]

I've never heard of her, lemme check Wikipedia, cause I'm sure she's fine.

I’m sure the poetry makes up for the climate-vandalism, buying up (ok, even ‘funding’ from my perspective really) the National Party, and other various attempts to subvert democracy.

…tbh the whole everybody-in-the-family-suing-everybody-else episode over their utterly undeserved wealth was the best thing she’s done, because at least it entertained me a bit.

Give her land to King Charles and the world would likely be better off.
posted by pompomtom at 2:23 AM on August 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

In the US there is a National Park named Theodore Roosevelt National Park. It's in North Dakota. The Crown Land in Canada no more belongs to King Charles than Theodore Roosevelt National Park belongs to the Roosevelt family. Sure it's got the name on it, but there's a big difference between having your name on something, and owning it.

The thing about King Charles is that he is considered the personification of the State, the same way that Uncle Sam is considered the personification of the United States. Uncle Sam has very nearly as much legal power and control over property and land as King Charles does. And when I say Uncle Sam, I mean that guy with the top hat, the long white goatee and the red and white striped pants, not the government which he represents, nor the people whom he represents.

You know what an Entail is? Crown Land is basically entailed. It titularly belongs to King Charles, who can't sell it, rent it or transfer it to anyone on his own initiative; when he dies it will automatically be transferred to whoever inherits from him, probably Prince William, but maybe Prince George if Prince William gets killed playing polo or something before King Charles dies. The Ministers of the Crown have full control over all the Crown Land in Canada and the greatest part of the Crown Land in the UK, not King Charles. If the appropriate Ministers of the Crown advise (legal term) the king to do so, (eg. tell him he's going to do it; he doesn't get to say no) it can be sold or assigned to someone else. His only role in this is to sign where he is told to, for purely ceremonial reasons.

This is how Inuit People of Nunavut ended up with their chunk of land - A few documents were signed and now the land, which was previously Crown Land, has an official new owner. And while yes, there were fees paid when the land changed hands - Capital transfer payments of $1.9 billion over 15 years and a $13 million Trust Fund - the money in question didn't go to Queen Elizabeth in exchange for the Crown Land she was signing away, but went to the Inuit People of Nunavut so they had cash on hand to cover expenses inherent in becoming a major landowner, not just a title deed. They needed it.

A jar of tomato sauce or small package of bacon costs about $14 because of how expensive it is to ship supplies up North where there are no roads, and the port is only open to ships between July and October before it becomes blocked by ice. Sure we're talking about massive acreage, but it's terrible land where it is really hard to survive. Nunavut is such a horrible place to live, (what with no topsoil, no farming, almost no trees except scrub, and no sunlight for months during the winter,) that the population of Inuit living in Nunavut is less than 31,000 people. That's less than half the capacity of the Superdome. How much is the land worth? Let's just say that you have to pay really high salaries to get people to spend time there. You can't build anything, because the shipping costs for materials are too high, and anyway any building you do construct, gets rapidly overrun with black mold, because of condensation.


41% is of the Crown Land in Canada is federal Crown Land and 48% is Provincial Crown Land. Most federal Crown Land is in the territories (Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and Yukon) and is administered by Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada and is considered to be held in Trust, for the benefit of the Indigenous people. While there is some Crown Land in Britain of the type that the monarch can collect rents from, none of the land in Canada is that type of Crown Land. The thing that makes it confusing is that there are multiple sorts of Crown Land. One type of Crown Land is land and property that has for centuries provided the monarch with a private income, but there's very little of that sort of land, compared to the sort that belongs to the King in name only. The type the King owns personally is not the sort of Crown Land the Ministers of the Crown can “advise” the King to sign away, anymore than they can demand you sign away your house. The vast majority of Crown Land is land under the administration of a national government, Canadian or British. Only a fraction is actually the property of the Monarch.

So getting offended about King Charles owning 90% of the land in Canada, is a lot like getting offended that there is a National Park that belongs to the Roosevelt family. Now if you want to get mad that King Charles III and his family are wealthy and got wealthy from inherited wealth, I don't see why you can't. But the King of Thailand ,and the Sultan of Brunei and the Prince of Lichtenstein, the King of Spain (abdicated) and the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, as well as a number of Sheikhs and Emirs all have personal fortunes greater than King Charles does.

There's a huge difference between what the man owns and controls, and what is owned and controlled in his name. The article has chosen to conflate The Crown with King Charles and put his name at the top of the list. But The Crown in question is also the British Government and the Canadian Government. They've lumped them all together because they all use the words “The Crown” to describe who owns it or controls it. Conflating them was probably a choice they made to try and make you indignant, because there is such a patently huge difference between The Crown and Charles Mountbatten-Windsor. They want to excite your anti-monarch sentiment.

Despite what the article is insinuating, King Charles' personal possessions, in acreage of land, or in net worth are definitely lower than that of Brett Blundy or of Cleveland Agriculture, two of the names at the bottom of that list. But the chances are you didn't read that far because the claim that King Charles owns more land than any other entity in the world is so outrageous.

The United Kingdom's net worth is estimated to be 10 trillion pounds, while Canada's net worth is $17,291.6 billion, according to the latest figures released by the Canadian Government. Charles' personal net worth, including any income he makes from Crown Land, is somewhere under two billion dollars, putting him well behind the guy who invented MineCraft and sold it for 2.5 billion.
posted by Jane the Brown at 9:39 AM on August 8, 2023 [9 favorites]

Well explained, Jane the Brown. Would just add that we are in any case talking about the King of Canada, who formally sits on the throne of Canada, and so lumping him in (as the graphic does) as part of "the British throne" is inaccurate.
posted by senor biggles at 2:34 PM on August 9, 2023 [2 favorites]