Despite the tens of millions of dollars in aid and concessional loans being spent in Cambodia with the ostensible aim of securing land tenure and making the management of land and natural resources more equitable and sustainable, the evidence shows that tenure insecurity, forced evictions and large-scale land grabbing are escalating to alarming levels.

Land Tenure Working Paper 20 presents an overview of the distinctive features of communal tenure in different community-based land and natural resource management systems. Two models of communal tenure are presented in the paper; these models differ in terms of the function of the state, the length of tenure and the characteristics of the resource system concerned.

Most of the land reforms of recent decades have followed an approach of “formalization and capitalization” of individual land titles (de Soto 2000). However, within the privatization agenda, benefits of unimproved land (such as land rents and value capture) are reaped privately by well-organized actors, whereas the costs of valorization (e.g., infrastructure) or opportunity costs of land use changes are shifted onto poorly organized groups. Consequences of capitalization and formalization include rent seeking and land grabbing.

It has proved much easier to observe the stark divide between the ‘professional optimists’ in the development industry and the ‘professional pessimists’ in academic development studies than it has to disrupt these roles or to explain them in ways that prevent them remaining entrenched. This paper will present and discuss the “Geographies of Evasion” hypothesis which claims to explain how and why rights-based development interventions in particular fail.

ABSTRACTED FROM THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Myanmar faces an unprecedented scale of structural landlessness in rural areas, increasing displacement threats to farmers as a result of growing investment interest by both national and international firms, expanding speculation in land and real estate, and grossly inadequate housing conditions facing significant sections of both the urban and rural population. Legal and other protections afforded by the current legal framework, the new Farmland Law and other newly enacted legislation are wholly inadequate.

ABSTRACTED FROM THE SUMMARY: Notwithstanding progress both nationally and locally, there is not yet evidence of sufficient support either internationally or nationally for REDD to effectively neutralise either the top-down or the bottom-up drivers of deforestation in Cambodia. This report reviews official documents and research reports over the 2009-2012 period, supplemented by field visits in 2010 and 2011, in order to summarise lessons learned from Cambodia’s early engagement with REDD from the viewpoint of poverty reduction.

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).

Vietnam's rapid and sustained economic growth and poverty reduction in the last two decades benefitted from the policy and legal reforms embodied in the Land Laws of 1987, 1993 and 2003 and subsequent related legal acts. This note outlines reforms related to four main themes. The first relates to the needed reform for agriculture land use to create opportunity to enhance effectiveness of land use as well as to secure farmers' rights in land use. Prolonging the duration of agricultural land tenure would give land users greater incentives to invest and care for the land.

This expanded edition presents regional and country perspectives on access to land for the rural poor from the eight countries-Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines and Sri Lanka. It makes assessments of land reforms and their implementation, and the legal frameworks and conditions necessary to advance land rights. The publication also examines the changing roles of government, the private sector, NGOs and civil society in influencing agrarian reform and sustainable development for the rural poor.

Corruption in land management from the perspective of a simple risk framework. These risk factors and forms of corruption spring from more general shortcomings in the integrity framework. In this regard, this report argues that corruption is most likely to occur when an official or office has a monopoly, when the official or office has a great deal of discretion over how the decision is taken, and when there is little accountability for that decision or transparency, which might make it harder for the corruption to proceed unabated.

The purpose of this dissertation was to discover possible shortcomings in the land registration processes and to indentify minimal adjustments for a successful land registration initiative in Cambodia. The enjoyment of collective ownership from 1979 to 1989 witnessed the failure of this system and therefore the country signalized a need of a new property system. Consequently, Cambodia introduced land privatization in 1989 in which Cambodian citizens could have a right of ownership over residential land and a right of possession over agricultural land.

Debates and critiques around land policy often focus on the neo-liberal agenda of formalising land as alienable property, most notably through land titling schemes. Sometimes these schemes are posited against alternatives such as land reform and community land holding under common property arrangements. Claims and counter- claims are made for land titling as a means to boost smallholder security in the face of involuntary or otherwise unfair alienation of land sometimes under the rubric of land grabbing.