The report, submitted in accordance with resolution 18/25 of 26 September 2011 of the Human Rights Council, is an assessment of the human rights impact of economic land concessions (ELCs) and other land concessions and major development projects in Cambodia (generally referred to as ―land concessions‖ throughout the report unless otherwise specified).

The Land Matrix project was set up to respond to the lack of widely available, reliable data on large-scale land transactions in the Global South. It collates and evaluates data from a wide range of sources on large transnational transactions in the agricultural sector and other sectors. This report represents the first thorough analysis of the Land Matrix database.

Large-scale international investments in developing country agriculture, especially acquisitions of agricultural land, continue to raise international concern. Certainly, complex and controversial issues – economic, political, institutional, legal and ethical – are raised in relation to food security, poverty reduction, rural development, technology and access to land and water resources. Yet at the same time, some developing countries are making strenuous efforts to attract foreign investment into their agricultural sectors.

A submission from EarthRights International regarding the Paperwork Review Act approval process for the reporting requirements. On July 11, 2012, the U.S. Government announced a partial waiver of the ban on new investments in Myanmar. Americans are now allowed to invest in Myanmar but will be required to provide annual reports on their policies and procedures for human rights, environmental management, labor standards, land acquisition, and anti-corruption.

PUBLISHER'S ABSTRACT: This report discusses the political, economic and social opportunities and constraints that will influence the design and implementation of REDD+ in Vietnam. In particular, four major direct drivers (land conversion for agriculture; infrastructure development; logging (illegal and legal); forest fire) and three indirect drivers (pressure of population growth and migration; the state's weak forest management capacity; the limited funding available for forest protection) of deforestation and degradation in Vietnam are discussed, along with their implications for REDD+.

ABSTRACTED FROM THE PROGRAM DESCRIPTION: In recent years, various actors, from big foreign and domestic corporate business and finance to governments, have initiated a large-scale worldwide enclosure of agricultural lands, mostly in the Global South but also elsewhere. This is done for large-scale industrial and industrial agriculture ventures and often packaged as large-scale investment for rural development.

Discusses two agricultural investments in Zambia. Both projects started as state-led, development-oriented initiatives in the 1970s and early 1980s, and were later privatised. This long implementation history provides an opportunity to assess the longer-term socio-economic outcomes of agricultural investments, and to distil insights on practical ways to include lower-income groups in investment processes. Includes national context, design and implementation of the investment projects, and socio-economic outcomes.

On the basis of the policy on strengthening of the land management, distribution and use stipulated in the Rectangular Strategy, the 2ndPhase of the RGC and also on the basis of the plenary session of the Council of Ministers dated 27 April 2012, especially seeing the need and urgency ahead in order to equity, strengthen and increase the effectiveness of ELCs Management the RGC issues the order for ministries, institutions and competent authorities concerned to implement as follows:

This article seeks to draw connections between a political ecology of global investment in resource sector development and a culturally informed understanding of rural out-migration across the Lao–Thai border. The author highlights how the departures of rural youth for wage labor in Thailand and the remittances they return to sending villages are becoming important for understanding agrarian transformations in Laos today. In the first section the author introduces the contemporary context of cross-border migrations across the Lao–Thai Mekong border.

This paper uses data collected in Thailand among permanent rural-urban migrants to analyse the motivations in land temporary transfers such as free loans or rentals. Land transfers are here looked at in a continuum and categorized according to three characteristics: the nature of the relationship between the parties of the exchange, the monetary nature of the payment as well as its explicit or imlicit nature. This methodology allows a richer typology than traditionnally used in empiric literature, and distinguishes between various loans that are not always free.

China’s plans to build a giant industrial
zone at the terminal of its Shwe gas
and oil pipelines on the Arakan coast
will damage the livelihoods of tens of
thousands of islanders and spell doom
for Burma’s second largest mangrove
forest.
The 120 sq km “Kyauk Phyu Special
Economic Zone” (SEZ) will be managed
by Chinese state-owned CITIC group
on Ramree island, where China is
constructing a deep sea port for
ships bringing oil from the Middle
East and Africa. An 800-km railway

ABSTRACTED FROM THE OBJECTIVES SECTION: These Voluntary Guidelines seek to improve governance of tenure of land*, fisheries and forests. They seek to do so for the benefit of all, with an emphasis on vulnerable and marginalized people, with the goals of food security and progressive realization of the right to adequate food, poverty eradication, sustainable livelihoods, social stability, housing security, rural development, environmental protection and sustainable social and economic development.