With demand for land remaining high in the agricultural sector, large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) continue to reshape rural landscapes and communities in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). In the last years, however, a critical but often underestimated new force has added further pressure to land: the growth of carbon markets. Their expansion—in particular of the voluntary carbon market (VCM)—has picked up pace in the recent decade, driven by the implementation of nature-based solutions as carbon offsets in the Global South, although their integrity has been called into question due to overestimation of emission reductions. Crucially, while such land-based investments can generate environmental and socioeconomic co-benefits, they require extensive land resources, which are frequently obtained through the acquisition of large tracts of land that are seldom genuinely idle. This practice poses significant risks to the land rights of smallholders, pastoralists, and Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPs & LCs) that depend on secure access to land for their livelihoods.