Those who led southern African states to independence promised to redress the inequalities of settler colonialism by returning the land to the people. A generation later the rural poor are still waiting. Many lack access and full rights to agricultural land and, as developments in Zimbabwe and South Africa show, they are getting angry. Where did post-independence land reform policy go wrong?

The Kol tribals of Chitrakoot district live a life of abject poverty, exploitation and almost complete subjugation to the feudal landowners, locally known as Dadus. A local civil society organisation, the Akhil Bhartiya Samaj Sewa Sansthan (ABSSS) has adopted a multi-pronged approach to simultaneously address three sets of issues which it felt were crucial for improving the lot of the Kols.

This brief paper argues that through co-ownership, co-operatives offer a significant pathway for poor beneficiaries to secure land, wealth and financial resources - with benefits being augmented through sound institutions, human capital development and grant support.

ABSTRACTED FROM EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: During the critical years following the 2012 land reforms undertaken in the midst of Myanmar’s political transition, Gret conducted an in-depth study combining qualitative and quantitative surveys in nine villages of Bogale and Mawlamyinegyun townships (Delta) and nine villages in Monywa and Yinmabin townships (Dry Zone). The full report and the synthesis are the result of more than two years in-depth research and 13 months of eldwork that involved an inter-disciplinary team of 11 international and Myanmar researchers.

ABSTRACTED FROM EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Land rights systems in Southeast Asia are in constant flux; they respond to various socioeconomic and political pressures and to changes in statutory and customary law. Over the last decade, Southeast Asia has become one of the hotspots of the global land grab phenomenon, accounting for about 30 percent of transnational land grabs globally. Land grabs by domestic urban elites, the military or government actors are also common in many Southeast Asian countries.

Cambodia has long had a difficult mix of resource wealth and weak land governance, a function of its legacy of enduring postwar conflict and neoliberal development policies of the 1990s. Since 2012, however, its government has undertaken a series of self-described ‘deep reforms’ aimed at overcoming the poverty, land conflict, and unequal rural landholdings created during the 2000s, when over 2 million hectares of economic land concessions were allocated to private companies.

This paper uses five waves of the Vietnam Access to Resources Household Survey (VARHS) to analyse land issues in Viet Nam from a number of different angles. The VARHS provides panel data at plot as well as household level and I use this rich data set to present descriptive results on landlessness, land fragmentation, land market activities, and land property rights. I use plot level, fixed effects regressions to investigate the effects of land titles (Land Use Certificates) on household investment.

In the complex agro-ecological conditions of Vietnam's northern borderlands, attempts by ethnic minority farmers to create sustainable livelihoods, along with the impacts of state development policies, have direct consequences for land use and land cover (LULC) change. In this paper we analyse the degree to which LULC has changed and diversified from 1999 to 2009 in Lào Cai Province and the underlying relationships with ethnic minority livelihood diversification strategies.

Since holding elections in 2010, Myanmar has transitioned from a direct military dictatorship to a formally democratic system and has embarked on a period of rapid economic reform. After two decades of military rule, the pace of change has startled almost everyone and led to a great deal of cautious optimism. To make sense of the transition and assess the case for optimism, this article explores the political economy of Myanmar’s dual transition from state socialism to capitalism and from dictatorship to democracy.

Starting in the 1990s, the Vietnamese state sought to expand and modernise the country’s urban system after four decades of anti-urban policies. This paper examines the reworking of the socialist land regime that followed from this shift. It begins by explaining how new legislation and institutions combined market and socialist principles to lure domestic enterprises into realising the state’s new urban ambitions. It then shows how this hybrid reordering of policy triggered local experiments with periurban land redevelopment and new forms of alliances between the state and private capital.

In 2012, Vietnam will celebrate 25 years of economic reform and structural re-adjustment from a largely centralized, subsidized economy to one based on market principles. A major component of these reforms has involved establishing land and property rights, thereby giving individuals and organizations secure title to the property they occupy and use. The passing of various Land Laws has given legislative support to the concept of private property rights. This represents a significant ideological change, given that land in Vietnam has always been considered to belong to the State.

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?