In Laos land concessions have increased dramatically over the last decade. To provide a window into the concessions landscape, we conducted a nationwide inventory between 2007 and 2011. In response to an order by the Lao Government to its ministries, we developed a methodology to update the inventory and complement existing data with a systematic assessment of investment quality in 2014. We investigated aspects of compliance as well as impacts on livelihoods and the environment.

In a widely read paper, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, World Bank and others propose systematic property rights formalization as a key step in addressing the problems of irresponsible agricultural investment. This paper examines the case of Cambodia, one of a number of countries where systematic land titling and large-scale land concessions have proceeded in parallel in recent years.

Political reactions ‘from below’ to global land grabbing have been vastly more varied and complex than is usually assumed. This essay introduces a collection of ground- breaking studies that discuss responses that range from various types of organized and everyday resistance to demands for incorporation or for better terms of incorporation into land deals. Initiatives ‘from below’ in response to land deals have involved local and transnational alliances and the use of legal and extra-legal methods, and have brought victories and defeats.

This symposium introduction brings together two debates; the debate on global food prices and speculation, and the debate on so‐called global ‘land investment’ or ‘land grabbing’. Both debates are examining two sides of the same phenomenon – the growing role of private financial investors in the global agri‐food value chains and the myriad consequences of it. The symposium moves beyond the identification of finance as an exogenous factor to the trends in the sector.

The global rush for land has provoked diverse policy responses from host countries. While some governments are facilitating ‘land grabs’ within their borders, others have restricted land acquisitions by foreigners. Drawing from the Brazilian case, I argue that such restrictive regulations may be limited in their effectiveness because they apply a state‐centric geopolitical logic to a threat that is largely de‐territorialized and financialized.

Large-scale land acquisition are not new in the Mekong region but have been encouraged and have gathered momentum since the end of the 90s, particularly Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar. These acquisitions are realized by national and foreign companies from the region, particularly China, Vietnam, and Thailand in a movement strongly associated with economic globalization and neo-liberal policies which promote free flow of capital at the regional and global level and the adaptation of national spaces to the requirement of liberal and global markets (Peemans, 2013).

Comments on the IDRC workshop on LSLAs and accountability in Africa, Dakar, 24-25 November 2015. The current IDRC programme supports 5 action research projects across 10 countries in West, East and Southern Africa. They investigate how to build accountability over land governance. This requires a multi-level strategy at both policy and community level. The most contentious debate was about valuation, benefit-sharing and compensation because compensation almost always fails to take full account of the real value of natural resources in people’s lives.

Investment in agricultural land in the developing world has rapidly increased in the past two decades. In Cambodia, there has been a surge in economic land concessions, in which long-term leases are provided to foreign and domestic investors for economic development. More than two million hectares have been leased so far, sparking debate over the consequences for local communities and the environment.

With a focus on the Lower Mekong countries, this study considers the intersecting issues of land access, livelihoods, management of risk and poverty for men and women smallholder farmers, the land poor and the landless, and how these issues might be addressed in policy and practice. While there has recently been insightful analysis concerning land access, livelihoods, and global land insecurity, we know much less regarding specific mechanisms that keep rural agricultural smallholders and the landless or land poor struggling and it is these issues that we address within this report

In 1992 the Asian Development Bank coordinated a meeting between government representatives from China, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam to discuss regional economic integration. From that meeting the Greater Mekong Subregion was formed to promote peace and prosperity within the Mekong countries. Yet, despite more than more than USD 14 billion being spent on facilitating trade, development and infrastructural ties between these nations, poverty remains widespread.

As BRICS-led foreign investment in agriculture has increased dramatically worldwide in recent years, China in particular, has begun to secure huge quantities of foreign land as an additional measure for securing future food and energy supplies. While an increasing amount of academic research has been conducted on the expansion of land deals in Latin America and Africa in recent years, Southeast Asian cases are just beginning to receive significant attention and have become the focus of some emerging academic and non-academic research.

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.