In the two decades since the 1992 Rio Conference, Land-Use Planning (LUP) has become recognized as a key instrument in putting discourses on sustainable development into practice. In Lao PDR, despite the implementation problems, it is still seen as a lever for securing land tenure, rationalizing extension services provision, and more recently, for implementing ‘Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation’ (REDD) schemes. Impact assessments of past LUP have revealed weaknesses of local institutions in the effective implementation of land policies.

ABSTRACTED FROM CHAPTER INTRODUCTION: This paper was originally commissioned by IGES to review the Community Forest Act, 2007 “from a rights perspective” and to assess its impacts (or at least its predicted impacts) on livelihoods. However, the task has been a moving target. While ratification was pending the focus shifted towards assessing the potential impacts of the “Act” on the assumption that it would be passed. Now, as there seems little chance that community forestry legislation will be resurrected in the foreseeable future, the focus has again shifted.

BACK COVER: This book is a case study of Vietnam’s efforts to fight poverty using market-oriented land reforms. In the 1980s and 1990s, the country undertook major institutional reforms, and an impressive reduction in poverty followed. But what role did the reforms play? Did the efficiency gains from reform come at a cost to equity? Were there both winners and losers? Was rising rural landlessness in the wake of reforms a sign of success or failure?

The concept of Community Forest Management (CFM) was officially recognized for the first time in Vietnam with the implementation of the Law on Forest Protection and Development (2004).

Over the last decade, following the doi moi reforms, the Vietnamese government has formally recognised the household as the basic unit of production and allocated land use rights to households. Under the 1993 Land Law these rights can be transferred, exchanged, leased, inherited, and mortgaged. A land market is emerging in Vietnam but is still constrained for various reasons. Additionally, lack of flexibility of land use is an issue.

The analysis of `ambiguous lands' and the people who inhabit them is most revealing for understanding environmental deterioration in Thailand. `Ambiguous lands' are those which are legally owned by the state, but are used and cultivated by local people. Land with an ambiguous property status attracts many different actors: villagers hungry for unoccupied arable lands in the frontiers; government departments looking for new project sites; and conservation agencies searching for new areas to be protected.

Over the last decade, forests have played an important role in the transition from war to peace in Cambodia. Forest exploitation financed the continuation of war beyond the Cold War and regional dynamics, yet it also stimulated co-operation between conflicting parties. Timber represented a key stake in the rapacious transition from the (benign) socialism of the post-Khmer Rouge period to (exclusionary) capitalism, thereby becoming the most politicized resource of a reconstruction process that has failed to be either as green or as democratic as the international community had hoped.

This paper argues that conflicts in the northern Thai highlands are a clear case of the politics of environmental discourse in the sense that conservation has played a role in lending legitimacy to both government agencies and ethnic communities in their struggle for the control of forest resources. Underlying such conflicts is the official line of negative thinking about ethnic minorities in the hills by associating them with various vices, namely as enemies of the forest, opium producers, and a threat to national security.

ABSTRACTED FROM INTRODUCTION: In this article, we aim to outline the emergence of territoriality in state power in Thailand, formerly called Siam. In particular, we examine the use of what we call internal territorialization in establishing control over natural resources and the people who use them.

One of the most anticipated parts of a truth commission report is always the commission’s findings and recommendations. This Chapter provides a catalogue of the Commission’s findings and recommendations. 2. The Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Act (TJR Act) required the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (the Commission) to make findings in respect of gross violations of human rights inflicted on persons by the State, public institutions and holders of public office, both serving and retired, between 12 December 1963 and 28 February 2008.

This past week, one of the local dailies ran a story narrating how many county and national government institutions are squatters on what used to be public property, and even face eviction by new owners. It described how in Meru for instance, land meant for the most critical public institutions — police stations, hospitals, government offices, roads, even sensitive installations like the County Commissioner’s residence — has been allocated to individuals. Land grabbing and irregular land allocation is commonplace in Kenya.

The central objective of this working paper produced by Jean-Christophe Diepart and Thol Sem, is to examine the recognition and formalisation of peasants’ land rights against the backdrop of Cambodian history and political economy of land and agrarian change.

It aims to understand how colonialism, war, socialism and the regional integration against a neoliberal background have shaped the land rights of smallholder farmers in contemporary Cambodia.