After 50 years of military rule, in 2011 the Thein Sein government’s reforms in Myanmar (Burma) entailed a reengagement with the international community, including major international financial organizations, donors, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and civil society organizations (CSOs). The government’s social and economic development policies, which were strongly influenced by this engagement, encouraged private domestic and foreign investment in agriculture to create wealth and reduce poverty.

We estimate whether a land reform program led to higher incomes for ethnic minority households. In 2002, in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, Program 132 directed the transfer of farm land to ethnic minority households that had less than one hectare of land. Using the 2002 Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey as a baseline, in 2008 we resurveyed over one-thousand households to provide a retrospective evaluation of the impact of their participation in Program 132.

Land use decision making is influenced by various factors including tenure security, natural disasters and farm characteristics. Smallholder farmers operate under different land tenure systems, which influences their crop combinations. This paper investigates smallholder farmers’ crop combinations under different land tenure systems in Thailand in the context of the 2011 flood and government policy on rice.

INTRODUCTION: Myanmar stands at a historic crossroads: one where the optimism of a "critical juncture" that is "more promising than at any time in recent memory" meets apprehension over what could happen if a "host of social crises that have long blighted our country" go unaddressed. After more than sixty years of civil war and ‘social crises’, land grabbing figures are high. New legislation is designed to move land out of the hands of rural working people and into the hands of ‘modern farmers’ and foreign and domestic big business actors.

ABSTRACTED FROM EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: More than ten years after its original formulation, the Lao government is now questioning the effectiveness of the “Turning Land into Capital” (kan han thi din pen theun) policy in generating economic value from the commercialization of land, facilitating local economic development, and reducing state spending on infrastructure.

Over the past decade, the Lao government has developed the policy of ‘Turning Land into Capital’ (TLIC), a strategy for generating revenue and economic value from ‘state land’. The 450 Year Road Project built along the periphery of the Laotian capital, Vientiane, linking the national highway with the Thai border, was financed using a TLIC model. Additional land to the side of the road was acquired to be resold at rates significantly higher than the compensation provided to landowners.

This article describes and analyses the tensions, ambivalence, and hybridity that prevail in the nexus between discourses of gender and the legal pluralism of the new, formalized, and customary ways of handling land titles. Based on empirical research in Cambodia, it reveals a number of mechanisms, challenges, and inconsistencies in the practice of land-titling.

This paper explores assumptions about the drivers of forest cover change in a Payments for Environmental Services (PES) and Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) context in the Lam Dong Province in Vietnam. In policy discourses, deforestation is often linked to'poor' and 'ethnic minority' households and their unsustainable practices such as the expansion of coffee production (and other agricultural activities) into forest areas.

Political and economic transitions have had substantial impacts on forest conservation. Where transitions are underway or anticipated, historical precedent and methods for systematically assessing future trends should be used to anticipate likely threats to forest conservation and design appropriate and prescient policy measures to counteract them. Myanmar is transitioning from an authoritarian, centralized state with a highly regulated economy to a more decentralized and economically liberal democracy and is working to end a long-running civil war.

This paper deepens the economic analysis of the effects of land consolidation – reduction of land fragmentation. It does this in the context of rural Vietnam, studying whether land consolidation promotes or hinders the Vietnamese government's policy objectives of encouraging agricultural mechanization and stimulating the off-farm rural economy. The analysis views land consolidation as a form of technical change, making it possible to apply the rich insights developed in the economic literature on that subject.

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.

ABSTRACTED FROM CONTEXT SECTION: A study was commissioned by the Mekong Region Land Governance Project (MRLG) to investigate the origins and the implications of implementing the 70 percent forestland policy, and to outline policy considerations. This discussion note aims to provide a more nuanced understanding of the origin, rationale, geography and tenure implications of the 70 percent policies.