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The Transnational Institute (TNI) is an international research and advocacy institute committed to building a just, democratic and sustainable world. For more than 40 years, TNI has served as a unique nexus between social movements, engaged scholars and policy makers.
The Transnational Institute (TNI) is an international research and advocacy institute committed to building a just, democratic and sustainable world.
Founded in 1974 as a network of ‘activist scholars’, TNI continues to be a unique nexus between social movements, engaged scholars and policy makers.
TNI has gained an international reputation for carrying out well researched and radical critiques and anticipating and producing informed work on key issues long before they become mainstream concerns, for example, our work on food and hunger, third world debt, transnational corporations, trade, and carbon trading.
As a non-sectarian institute, TNI has also consistently advocated alternatives that are both just and pragmatic, for example developing alternative approaches to international drugs policy and providing support for the practical detailed work of public water services reform.
TNI's Projects
TNI works on a wide range of interlinking issues. The constant interaction between fellows and projects gives TNI a unique, broad and informed perspective and enables a cross-disciplinary approach to complex global problems.
TNI's work currently includes:
- Leadership as a respected global voice on drugs policy, promoting a pragmatic approach to tackling illegal drugs based on harm reduction principles.
- Supporting a dynamic international network involved in building participatory, public sector water as the best way to achieve the goal of water for all
- Confronting the dogma of trade liberalisation, which like financial liberalisation has led to increased inequality, and helping to construct regional alternatives, such as the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, based on regional cooperation and solidarity
- Analysing and exposing the democratic dangers posed by the concentration of corporate power and proposing new legal frameworks of accountability for transnational corporations.
- Engaging with democratic innovations and experiments undertaken by social movements, progressive political parties and governments worldwide helping to empower communities to gain control over their lives and environment
- Drawing together and analysing the links between the different elements of the systemic crisis —financial, environmental and social.
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Resources
Displaying 21 - 25 of 53Resistance to Land Grabbing and Displacement in Rural Cambodia
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.
Land Acquisitions in Northeastern Cambodia: Space and Time matters
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.
Politics of Land Grabbing in the Borderland: A Case Study of Chongjom Border Market, Kabcheong District, Surin Province
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.
Different Regions, Different Reasons? Comparing Chinese land-consuming outward investments in Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa
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.
The neoliberal agricultural modernization model: A fundamental cause for large‐scale land acquisition and counter land reform policies in the Mekong region
Large-scale land acquisition are not new in the Mekong region but have been encouraged and have gathered momentum since the end of the 90s, particularly Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar. These acquisitions are realized by national and foreign companies from the region, particularly China, Vietnam, and Thailand in a movement strongly associated with economic globalization and neo-liberal policies which promote free flow of capital at the regional and global level and the adaptation of national spaces to the requirement of liberal and global markets (Peemans, 2013).