Resource information
Outline of a Pilot Approach towards Cadastral Registration of Customary
Communal Land Tenure in Myanmar....."...The objectives of the study were to identify legal ways using the Farmland Law 2012 and
Association Law 2014 to protect through land registration the untitled agricultural uplands,
including the fallows of upland shifting cultivation that are possessed by ethnic nationalities
that manage their lands under customary communal tenure. The risk of possible alienation of
the fallows through agribusiness concessions posed by the Vacant, Fallow and Virgin Lands
Management Law, 2012 (VFV) spurred the study. Customary communal rights in Myanmar are
enforceable by customary law in areas, where no outside interference takes place. In the future
it may be given a legal backing in statutory law, if the intentions of the draft Land Use Policy
of mid 2015 are operationalised ensuring equity in access to land and protection of upland
cultures and livelihood.
Customary land management of rotating fallow agriculture or shifting cultivation constitutes
land management at the landscape level. It secures preservation of cultural identity and in most
places it establishes access rights of all resident villagers to shares of the land and leaves no one
landless. Rotational fallow management is an institutionalized resource management technology
at a species, ecosystem, and landscape level, ensuring ecological security and food security
and providing a social safety net. Fallows are important for wildlife and biodiversity, for production
of non timber forest products, for watershed hydrology, and for carbon sequestration.
Communal tenure can provide security of tenure as well as the institutional mechanisms for
future sustainable land use planning and climate change mitigation initiatives.
The study has focused on cultivated and fallow land in the uplands. It did not include a study
of customary communal tenure of forests and grazing lands. A customary land registration of
these ecosystems so far would need to be pursued under different laws. The study has covered
only the customary communal tenure of rotating fallow agriculture in Chin State and the more
permanent land combined with shifting cultivation use in Northern Shan State. A major limitation
of the study has been the fieldwork’s short duration...
