This paper investigates how climate change strategies and resource conflicts are shaping each other in the Greater Aural region of western Cambodia. Agro-industrial projects linked to climate change goals are reshaping both social and ecological dynamics, by altering patterns of access to land…
Our efforts to research the land grab in Cambodia were thwarted on multiple fronts. This article emerges from our collective experiences of fear and intimidation to reconsider land grabs as a project that produces fear and is reliant on fear. Recent literature on resource conflict focuses on…
The central objective of this working paper produced by Jean-Christophe Diepart and Thol Sem, is to examine the recognition and formalisation of peasants’ land rights against the backdrop of Cambodian history and political economy of land and agrarian change.
It aims to understand how…
The Mekong region has undergone rapid socio-economic growth over the past two decades alongside pronounced transformations in a number of key sectors and relations between the rural majority and increasingly-affluent urban centres. Land—as both a foundation for national development and the…
The Mekong region – Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam – is in the midst of profound social and environmental change. Despite rapid urbanization, the region remains predominantly rural. More than 60 per cent of its population live in rural areas, and the vast majority of these…
Vietnam, which has a long history of theft of timber from neighbouring Laos and Cambodia, recently initialled a timber trade agreement with the European Union. This will see Vietnam implement legislation to address imports of illegally harvested or traded timber, in return for timber exports to…
Goal 5 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) “Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls” recognizes the fundamental role of women in achieving poverty reduction, food security and nutrition. Target 5.a aims to “Undertake reforms to give women equal rights to economic…
Access to safe water and sanitation and sound management of freshwater ecosystems are at the core of sustainable development. This is the aim of Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6), which includes approaches to water management such as environmental flow requirements, international…
Facing land grabs and eviction in the name of development, women worldwide increasingly join land rights struggles despite often deeply engrained images of female domesticity and conventional gender norms. Yet, the literature on female agency in the context of land struggles has remained largely…
Much has been written on land deals, their impact and challenges of contestation in the Global South. Multiple studies show that communities are high-spirited as long as they oppose the actual conversion of their land. My findings illustrate, however, how companies, local authorities,…
Available evidence indicates that pastoral destitution in Ethiopia is principally driven by feed and water scarcity. Feed resources ought to be considered in the broader perspective and not predominantly during emergency as is the case now. Feed inventory and balance is therefore requisite such…
This river basin overview describes the state of the water resources and water use, as well as the state of agricultural water management in the Mekong basin. The aim of this report is to describe the particularities of this transboundary river basin and the problems met in the development of…