Any activities aimed at rural area development should not disregard the inhabitants who are "the tools" that implement given mechanisms. To a large extent, the effectiveness of social activities is determined by the participants’ expectations towards the projects and their knowledge of the subject. Land consolidation projects are the ideal tools for rural development. Land consolidation may be described as the planned readjustment of land ownership patterns with the aim of creating larger and more rational land holdings.

The draft National Land Use Policy (NLUP) that was unveiled for public comment in October 2014 intends to create a clear national framework for managing land in Myanmar. This is a very important step for Myanmar, given the fundamental importance of land policy for any society – particularly those with recent and complex histories of political and armed conflict and protracted displaced populations. With 70% of Myanmar’s population living and working in rural areas, agriculture is a fundamental part of the country’s social and economic fabric.

Introduction: "1. Myanmar is a country where the various kinds of ethnic
nationalities are residing collectively and widely in 7 Regions, 7
States and Union Territory. The country is located in Southeast
Asia and is important geographically, economically and politically
in the region.
2. Moreover, Myanmar is a country that has rich natural resources and
environment, including valuable forests, fertile planes, natural gas
and mineral deposits, long coastline, mountain ranges, and rivers

၁။ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံသည် တိုင်းရင်းသားလူမျိုးပေါင်းစုံတို့ စုပေါင်းနေထိုင်လျှက်ရှိသော နိုင်ငံတစ်နိုင်ငံဖြစ်ပြီး၊ တိုင်းဒေသကြီး ရ ခု၊ ပြည်နယ် ရ ခုနှင့် ပြည်ထောင်စုနယ်မြေတို့တွင် ပြန့်နှံ့နေထိုင်လျက်ရှိသည်။ နိုင်ငံတော်သည် အရှေ့တောင်အာရှတွင် တည်ရှိပြီး ပထဝီအနေအထားအရသော်လည်းကောင်း၊ စီးပွားရေးအရသော်လည်းကောင်း၊ နိုင်ငံရေးအရသော်လည်းကောင်း အချက်အချာကျသည့်နိုင်ငံဖြစ်ပါသည်။

In addition to global developments and food policy changes, 2014 also saw important developments with potentially wide repercussions in individual countries and regions. This chapter offers perspectives on major food policy developments in various regions including Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, Central Asia, South Asia, East Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean.

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.

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 INTRODUCTION: This report was commissioned under CIFOR’s Global Comparative Study on REDD+, as part of a research module on multilevel governance and carbon management at the landscape scale. Its purpose is to describe the distribution of powers and responsibilities related to land use, forests, and ecosystem services and, by extension, to REDD+ among the dfferent levels and sectors of the Vietnamese government. To that end it reviews laws dealing explicitly with different sectors that affect land use and decentralization.

During Vietnam’s transition from a socialist to a market economy, household’s property rights over agricultural land were considerably strengthened through a land certification program. This resulted in active formal credit and land markets, either of which potentially affects consumption levels and volatility. This article evaluates the program impact with respect to consumption outcomes. In particular, it identifies the channel of impact through which improved property rights affect consumption volatility.

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.

ILMI Brown bag meeting, Thursday 15th October 2015, 12h30-14h00.