This paper investigates the real financial consequences of investing in land with disputed tenure rights. It demonstrates that companies which ignore the issue of land tenure expose themselves to substantial, and in some cases extreme, risks. Using case study analysis, the paper connects ground-up financial thinking with empirical reality. In so doing, it makes a strong case for the need to integrate tenure-related risks more comprehensively into our financial architecture.

In Rubber Barons, Global Witness documents the devastating impact of Vietnam’s rush for rubber on local communities in Laos and Cambodia. The investigation also shows how international financiers Deutsche Bank and the International Finance Corporation were backing these land grabs – often in contravention of their own policies. In both Laos and Cambodia, national laws are supposed to protect forests, limit the size of foreign land concessions and require consultation with local communities over land use, but these laws are rarely enforced.

Large-scale international investments in developing country agriculture, especially acquisitions of agricultural land, continue to raise international concern. Certainly, complex and controversial issues – economic, political, institutional, legal and ethical – are raised in relation to food security, poverty reduction, rural development, technology and access to land and water resources. Yet at the same time, some developing countries are making strenuous efforts to attract foreign investment into their agricultural sectors.

In its Land Administration, Management and Distribution Program, the Royal Government of Cambodia proclaimed measures to strengthen the Cambodian land markets and tenure security. However, in the past, the country’s land markets suffered severe aberrations caused by price hikes. This affected both urban and rural areas, mainly due to a rollout of urban capital.

This publication is the product of a multi-year cluster analytical and advisory work on social and land conflict management of the World Bank office in Hanoi, which aimed to assist Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MoNRE) to improve the land acquisition and conversion process to achieve more sustainable development during the current rapid urbanization and industrialization process.

ABSTRACTED FROM INTRODUCTION: In April 2008, the Vietnamese corporation Hoàng Anh Gia Lai Joint (HAGL) signed a memorandum of understanding with the Government of Laos (GoL) agreeing to finance the construction of a $19 million athletes’ village. HAGL financed this property complex in support of the Southeast Asian (SEA) Games, a biennial regional sporting event that the GoL was hosting for the first time from December 9th to 18th, 2009, in the capital of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR), Vientiane.

Over the past decade the Myanmar government has increasingly promoted industrial agricultural production in the country, especially for rubber. With the lead up to the national elections, and now after political-economic reforms begin to set in, foreign investors are eager to make Myanmar into the next rubber production frontier. This report outlines the emerging political ecology of rubber production in Myanmar, with particular attention to the political economy and geography of rubber development taking root during Myanmar’s reform period.

ABSTRACTED FROM THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: In accordance to the land confiscation documented in this report, the Burmese military regime has not only constantly violated the domestic laws in Burma like the Nationalisation Act, the Land Acquisition Act and also Customary Law but also international law, such as the UDHR charter, CEDAW, CRC, ICESCR and farming protection rights.

The report, submitted in accordance with resolution 18/25 of 26 September 2011 of the Human Rights Council, is an assessment of the human rights impact of economic land concessions (ELCs) and other land concessions and major development projects in Cambodia (generally referred to as ―land concessions‖ throughout the report unless otherwise specified).

The Land Matrix project was set up to respond to the lack of widely available, reliable data on large-scale land transactions in the Global South. It collates and evaluates data from a wide range of sources on large transnational transactions in the agricultural sector and other sectors. This report represents the first thorough analysis of the Land Matrix database.

Community forests (CFs) in northern Burma have been gaining momentum since the mid-2000s, spearheaded by national NGOs, mostly in response to protect village land from encroaching agribusiness concessions. While the production of these new CF landscapes represents the material resistance against state-sponsored rubber, in effect it produces contested state authority by formalizing control of former customary swidden hills under the Forestry Department.

ABSTRACTED FROM EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: This paper seeks to add to the growing literature on land concessions by examining a recent, high-level concession as a means of understanding three aspects related to concessionary investments: (1) the process by which concessions are awarded and implemented; (2) the intricate relationship between land use, land tenure, and land ownership in the face of concessions; and (3) the way in which village and household livelihoods are impacted due to such massive land use and ownership changes.