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The purpose of the Mekong Land Research Forum online site is to provide structured access to published and unpublished research on land issues in the Mekong Region. It is based on the premise that debates and decisions around land governance can be enhanced by drawing on the considerable volume of research, documented experience and action-based reflection that is available. The online site seeks to organise the combined work of many researchers, practitioners and policy advocates around key themes relevant to the land security, and hence well-being, of smallholders in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.
The research material on this site is mounted at three levels:
First, a selection of journal articles, reports and other materials is provided and organised thematically to assist researchers, practitioners and policy advocates to draw on one another’s work and hence build up a collective body of knowledge. This is the most “passive” presentation of the research material; our contribution is to find and select the most relevant material and to organise it into key themes. In some cases the entire article is available. In others, for copyright reasons, only an abstract or summary is available and users will need to access documents through the relevant journal or organisation.
Second, a sub-set of the articles has been annotated, with overall commentary on the significance of the article and the research on which it is based, plus commentary relevant to each of the key themes addressed by the article.
Third, the findings and key messages of the annotated articles are synthesised into summaries of each of fourteen key themes. For each key theme, there is a one-page overall summary. Extended summaries are being developed progressively for each theme as part of the Forum's ongoing activity.
Overall, we intend that this online site will contribute toward evidence-based progressive policy reform in the key area of land governance. We further hope that it will thereby contribute toward to the well-being of the rural poor, ethnic minorities and women in particular, who face disadvantage in making a living as a result of insecure land tenure.
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Resources
Displaying 6 - 10 of 564Linking land tenure security with food security: Unpacking farm households’ perceptions and strategies in the rural uplands of Laos
Land tenure, or access and rights to land, is essential to sustain people’s livelihoods. This paper looks at how farm households perceive land tenure (in)security in relation to food (in)security, and how these perceptions evolve throughout different policy periods in Laos. The paper highlights the centrality of farmers’ strategies in configuring the dynamic relationships between tenure (in)security and food (in)security, by demonstrating how farmers’ perceived and de facto land tenure insecurity shapes their decisions to diversify livelihood options to ensure food security.
Economic Globalization Impacts on the Ecological Environment of Inland Developing Countries: A Case Study of Laos from the Perspective of the Land Use/Cover Change
Economic globalization promotes the economic development of underdeveloped regions but also influences the ecological environments of these regions, such as natural forest degradation. For inland developing regions with underdeveloped traffic routes, are the effects on the ecological environment also as obvious?
Is Land Ownership a Key Factor in the Choice of Livelihood in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam?
Our main objective in this research was to examine the role of land ownership in the choice of household livelihood in the rural Mekong Delta region, Vietnam. Using secondary data on rural households in the Mekong Delta region, we use cluster analysis techniques to classify livelihoods currently adopted by rural households. Using Bonferroni pairwise tests and quantile functions (Pen’s parades), we then compare the income levels of identified livelihoods. Finally, we employ a multinomial logit model to examine different factors affecting the choice of livelihoods.
Rethinking 'Success’: The politics of payment for forest ecosystem services in Vietnam
In 2010, the Vietnamese government implemented a national payment for ecosystem services (PES) policy. In promoting the policy, the government has conveyed PES as a successful policy that has achieved multiple objectives, including forest protection and poverty alleviation. Contrary to these claims, however, critical studies of PES in Vietnam have found a weak relationship between PES and forest protection, the continuing dominance, rather than retreat, of the state in forest management, and no clear evidence that PES assists the poor in the near-universal manner purported.
Assessing forest governance in the countries of the Greater Mekong Subregion
The forest landscapes of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) are changing dramatically, with a multitude of impacts from local to global levels. These changes invariably have their foundations in forest governance. The aim of this paper is to assess perceptions of key stakeholders regarding the state of forest governance in the countries of the GMS. The work is based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the perceptions of forest governance in the five GMS countries, involving 762 representatives from government, civil society, news media, and rural communities.