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.

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.

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 the early 20th century, the scientific management of Myanmar’s natural forests under the Myanmar Selection System (MSS) was world-renown.1 By the 1970s, the MSS began to break down. Today, the application of scientific forestry in the country has been marginalized. Timber remains a significant source of revenue, although relatively less for the national Myanmar government as multi-billion dollar oil, gas, hydropower and other energy related contracts surge.

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.

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.

Vietnamese land-tenure policy reforms were embedded into general economic reforms (Doi Moi), enabling the country’s transition toward a market economy. Since 1998, they were implemented incrementally together with complementary instruments such as agricultural market liberalization and new economic incentives. Major steps included disentangling socialist producer cooperatives and assigning land-use rights to its former members, developing and adapting a national legal framework (Land Law), and enhancing tenure security through gender-balanced inheritable land-use certificates.

Building upon the technical paper containing a review of the existing literature on the potential costs and benefits of adaptation options (FCCC/TP/2009/2), this report synthesizes information contained in submissions from Parties and relevant organizations, and other relevant sources, on efforts undertaken to assess the costs and benefits of adaptation options. A summary of lessons learned and good practices is provided.

Over 943,069 hectares of land in rural Cambodia have been granted to private companies as economic land concessions, for the development of agro-industrial plantations. Thirty-six of these 59 concessions have been granted in favour of foreign business interests or prominent political and business figures. These statistics exclude smaller economic land concessions granted at the provincial level, for which information on numbers and ownership has not been disclosed.

Under the development paradigm of ‘Economic Concessions’ increasingly large areas of Cambodia’s land have been given over to establishing fast-wood plantations in recent years. Whilst proponents have argued that plantations are necessary for Cambodia’s economic development, opponents have argued that overall the rural poor do not benefit and that, in addition, there are numerous other negative social impacts and environmental consequences.

ABSTRACTED FROM THE MISSION STATEMENT: The primary purpose of his mission was for the Special Representative to update himself on the human rights situation in Cambodia for his report to the 61st session of the Commission on Human Rights. He paid particular attention to the management of land and natural resources, the continuing problem of impunity, and to corruption which impacts negatively on the realisation of a range of human rights and distorts the allocation of economic resources so as to further exacerbate existing inequalities.

The dramatic increase in migration and settlement in several areas where indigenous people live is leading to a multitude of problems for the original inhabitants. Lowland immigrants are taking advantage of the vulnerable situation of indigenous people, and the absence of regulations, to lay claim to the people’s traditional lands. Illegal land transactions are taking place at an alarming rate without thought of the problems that would result from widespread landlessness among indigenous peoples or the impact this is likely to have on the remaining forested areas.