WEBSITE INTRODUCTION: This book examines large-scale land acquisitions, or ‘land grabbing’, with a focus on South-East Asia. Thematic papers and detailed case studies put this phenomenon into specific historical and institutional contexts, analysing transformations in livelihoods, human rights impacts, and potential remedies.

Cambodia has long had a difficult mix of resource wealth and weak land governance, a function of its legacy of enduring postwar conflict and neoliberal development policies of the 1990s. Since 2012, however, its government has undertaken a series of self-described ‘deep reforms’ aimed at overcoming the poverty, land conflict, and unequal rural landholdings created during the 2000s, when over 2 million hectares of economic land concessions were allocated to private companies.

WEBSITE INTRODUCTION: This paper aims to provide keys that will help us understand contemporary land dynamics in these four countries. In order to do so it highlights their similarities and differences, both in the long history that shaped today’s local land situations and in more recent reforms implemented in the context of greater economic openness. The first part of the paper sets the cultural and historical context, with an overview of the diverse ways that the political authorities and different groups within the region have related to land.

ABSTRACTED FROM EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The research on customary communal tenure in Chin and Shan States was carried out through two short site visits during 2013-14 by one international and three national researchers in the two states. The Land Core Group with LIFT funding was the sponsor of the study with support from its partners GRET in Chin State and CARE in Shan State. The study concentrated on two pilot villages in Northern Chin State, Haka township and two pilot villages in Northern Shan State, Lashio township. These villages agreed to take part in the study.

Cambodia is currently experiencing profound processes of rural change, driven by an emerging trend of large-scale land deals. This article discusses potential future pathways by analyzing two contrasting visions and realities of land use: the aim of the governmental elites to foster surplus-producing rural areas for overall economic growth, employment creation and ultimately poverty reduction, and the attempts of smallholders to maintain and create livelihoods based on largely self-sufficient rural systems.

Over the last decade, forests have played an important role in the transition from war to peace in Cambodia. Forest exploitation financed the continuation of war beyond the Cold War and regional dynamics, yet it also stimulated co-operation between conflicting parties. Timber represented a key stake in the rapacious transition from the (benign) socialism of the post-Khmer Rouge period to (exclusionary) capitalism, thereby becoming the most politicized resource of a reconstruction process that has failed to be either as green or as democratic as the international community had hoped.

In Cambodia there is an increasing trend of large land acquisitions, inadequate protection of land rights, and a high incidence of land disputes. About 1.04 million hectares were approved as Economic Land Concessions (ELC) for foreign and domestic companies in 2010, as a means of increasing economic growth and employment. Much of this land is located in the North-eastern provinces, home to indigenous communities that may seriously be aff ected as a result

The Netherlands is an important actor in the floriculture sector worldwide. Many Dutch flower companies have in recent years established businesses in the Global South as a result of favourable climatic conditions, available land and water resources, and the presence of cheap labour. With the aim to stimulate investments in developing countries (e.g., in the context of the Private Sector Investment programme) some companies were further incentivized by the Dutch government to start up their business through development-related subsidies or favourable loans.

markdownabstractOver the past two decades, industrial tree plantations (ITPs), typically large-scale, intensively managed, even-age monoculture plantations, mostly exotic trees like fast-growing eucalyptus, pine and acacia species, but also rubber and oil palm, all destined for industrial processe s to produce paper, palm oil and rubber products, increased their area in the global South about fourfold.

The aim of this special issue is to push forward the frontier of development studies by analysing local livelihoods from a ‘flows of capital/people’ perspective. In development studies, and especially in livelihood research, local development has long been defined in terms of local people’s agency and the importance of capitals and capabilities. Over the last decade, however, the context of local development has undergone considerable change.

El libro expone historias que incomodan de muchas maneras. Incomoda el mismo título que lleva el trabajo. El ciclo inaugurado en 1996 pocas veces ha sido considerado como una verdadera segunda Reforma Agraria debido a que, en términos legales, tiene hilos de continuidad con la histórica Reforma Agraria de 1953 y, en términos políticos, tanto los gremios corporativos como los movimientos sociales del campo han resistido su aplicación, con excepción de los pueblos indígenas de las tierras bajas y su defensa de las Tierras Comunitarias de Origen (TCO).

La problemática de la tierra: a 18 años de la Ley INRA La primera colección de cuatro estudios sobre temas relacionados con territorios, minifundio e individualización. El primer trabajo de Pablo Regalsky gira en torno a los derechos territoriales de la TCO Ayopaya,una de las demandas de titulación colectiva y reivindicación territorial más importantes en la zona andina que hacia el final del proceso se encuentra en una encrucijada:la disputa por el control de fuentes de agua en el marco del proyecto Misicuni de Cochabamba.