Research indicates that key parameters of “land grabbing” differ across regions (e.g., ILC 2012) – particularly in view of who invests and/or when the bulk of investments occurred. At the same time, my review of the “land grab” literature since 2008 reveals that hardly any comparative assessments of “land grabbing” from a home country perspective exist that study whether and/or in which way and why “land grabs” of a single investor country differ across regions.

Over the last decade, the highlands of Ratanakiri province in northeastern Cambodia have witnessed massive land acquisitions and profound land use changes, mostly from forest covers to rubber plantation, which has contributed to rapidly and profoundly transform the livelihoods of smallholders relying primarily on family-based farming. Based on village- and households-level case studies in two districts of the province, this paper analyses this process and its mid-term consequences on local livelihoods. We first look at who has acquired land, where, how and at what pace.

Recent research highlights the potential for climate change mitigation projects and large-scale land deals to produce conflicts over land and resources. However, this literature generally views climate change policies and land grabbing as separate processes, and focuses on discrete areas where displacement or contested claims occur. We argue that additional research strategies are needed to understand the social and ecological spill-over effects that take place within larger areas where land-based climate change projects (e.g.

Chongjom border is a contested area which reflects power-related relationship between center and its marginal space. From deserted borderland in the buffer zone during Khmer Rouge period, Chongjom becomes an emerging 4th ranking of cross-border trading between Thailand and Cambodia, where value of exporting goods have been increased up to 224.05 % in 2013. The politics of changes in land use and property relations change lead to widen of land grabbing in the area.

In rural Cambodia indiscriminate, illegitimate and often violent land grabs in the form of Economic Land Concessions (ELCs) have triggered myriad local responses by peasants facing evictions from private and communal lands. Drawing on fieldwork in Kratie and Koh Kong provinces, this chapter looks at the various forms of local resistance to government-sanctioned dispossession and displacement and discusses their effectiveness in bringing about socio-political and institutional change.

ABSTRACTED FROM EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The research on customary communal tenure in Chin and Shan States was carried out through two short site visits during 2013-14 by one international and three national researchers in the two states. The Land Core Group with LIFT funding was the sponsor of the study with support from its partners GRET in Chin State and CARE in Shan State. The study concentrated on two pilot villages in Northern Chin State, Haka township and two pilot villages in Northern Shan State, Lashio township. These villages agreed to take part in the study.

The granting of economic land concessions (ELCs) over large parts of Cambodia has begun to attract global attention. It has also become a key focal point for civil society mobilization in Cambodia as well as for transnational activism directed at targets both within and outside Cambodia.

Despite the increasing acknowledgment of scholars and practitioners that many large-scale agricultural land acquisitions in developing countries fail or never materialize, empirical evidence about how and why they fail to date is still scarce. Too often, land deals are portrayed as straightforward investments and their success is taken for granted. Looking at the coffee sector in Laos, the authors of this article explore dimensions of the land grab debate that have not yet been sufficiently examined.

This essay explores the changing landscape of food sovereignty politics in the shadow of the so-called ‘land grab’. While the food sovereignty movement emerged within a global agrarian crisis conjuncture triggered by northern dumping of foodstuffs, institutionalized in WTO trade rules, the twenty-first-century food, energy and financial crises intensify this crisis for the world’s rural poor (inflating prices of staple foods and agri-inputs) deepening the process of dispossession.

Over the past 10 years, transnational land grabs for rubber tree plantations have proliferated across Laos. Plantation concessions are being established on village lands that are represented as ‘degraded’ and legally classified as ‘state forests’, expropriated by government officials in the name of poverty alleviation with promises that plantations will provide new wage labour opportunities for those dispossessed.

2014 was a year in which many citizens around the world lost hope and trust in conventional leaders’ abilities to solve national and global challenges.

The Complaint Letter below was written by the Shwegyin Karen Baptist Association, a missionary association from Kyaukkyi Town, Kyaukkyi Township, Nyaunglebin District, and sent to the chairman of the Burma/Myanmar government Kyaukkyi Township Land Management Committee, on November 5th 2015. The letter concerns the Burma/Myanmar government’s construction of buildings on a Christian church compound. According to the letter, the compound has belonged to the church for 55 years.