Through LMAP, and subsequent LASSP, Cambodia has made impressive progress in building a functioning cadastral system over the last ten years. This process has proved complex and challenging, but since commencing, the land registration teams have successfully issued over 1.7 million land titles, a strong legal framework has been developed for the functioning of the land administration bodies and mechanism, institutions have been built and strengthened, and a dispute resolution process has been established for dealing with disputes over unregistered land.

INTRODUCTION: Throughout 2012, villagers in eastern Myanmar described land confiscation and forced displacement occurring without consultation, compensation, or, often, notification. Such displacements have taken place most frequently around natural resource extraction, industry and development projects. These include hydropower dam construction, infrastructure development, logging, mining and plantation agriculture projects that are undertaken or facilitated by various civil and military State authorities, foreign and domestic companies and armed ethnic groups.

Land deals are frequently agreed in secret between governments and investors. This lack of transparency in the allocation of land fosters an environment where elite capture of natural assets becomes the norm, where human rights are routinely abused with impunity, where environmental destruction is ignored and where investment incentives are stacked against companies willing to adhere to ethical and legal principles.

Part of a 3 year collaboration among the national human rights institutions of the region. Each of 8 national studies aims to pull together in a simple form, updated information about large-scale land acquisitions in the region, with the aim of identifying trends, common threats, divergences and possible solutions. As well as summarising trends in investment, trade, crop development and land tenure arrangements, the studies focus on the land tenure and human rights challenges.

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.

Under the motto “old policies - new action”, in June 2012 the Cambodian Prime Minister initiated a massive land registration campaign on untitled former forest land. Unauthorised settlers and other long- term users of these lands, including those inside Economic Land Concessions, had been considered illegal before. Those of them who are poor now receive full property title by way of donation. The campaign was planned for 12 months and targets 470,000 families on 700,000 parcels comprising a total of 1,8 Mio hectares. The campaign might be extended though into the year of 2014.

Northern Burma’s borderlands have undergone dramatic changes in the last two decades. Three main and interconnected developments are simultaneously taking place in Shan State and Kachin State: (1) the increase in opium cultivation in Burma since 2006 after a decade of steady decline; (2) the increase at about the same time in Chinese agricultural investments in northern Burma under China’s opium substitution programme, especially in rubber; and (3) the related increase in dispossession of local communities’ land and livelihoods in Burma’s northern borderlands.

In rural Cambodia the rampant allocation of state land to political elites and foreign investors in the form of ‘‘Economic Land Concessions (ELCs)’’— estimated to cover an area equivalent to more than 50% of the country’s arable land—has been associated with encroachment on farmland, community forests and indigenous territories and has contributed to a rapid increase of rural landlessness. By contrast, less than 7,000 ha of land have been allotted to land-poor and landless farmers under the pilot project for ‘‘Social Land Concessions (SLCs)’’ supported by various donor agencies.

ABSTRACTED FROM THE INTRODUCTION: Foreign investment in agriculture has expanded since 2005, although the figures remain modest. The Cambodian government has prioritized investment in the sector, and an important part of the government strategy has been its policies on land concessions. A 2005 sub-decree sets out the procedures, mechanisms and institutional arrangements for offering economic land concessions (ELCs), with the objective of improving crop diversity, productivity, and employment, among other benefits. By 2009, just over a third of ELCs had gone to foreign investors.

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.

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.

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.