Starting in the 1990s, the Vietnamese state sought to expand and modernise the country’s urban system after four decades of anti-urban policies. This paper examines the reworking of the socialist land regime that followed from this shift.

Cambodia is currently experiencing profound processes of rural change, driven by an emerging trend of large-scale land deals.

To amend the Deeds Registries Act, 1937, so as to provide discretion in respect of the rectification of errors in the name of a person or the description of property mentioned in deeds and other documents; to provide for the issuing of certificates of registered title taking the place of deeds that have become incomplete or unserviceable; to substitute an obsolete reference; to substitute an ou

INTRODUCTION: Large-scale land acquisitions are a reality in most regions worldwide. Vast areas of land are leased to foreign as well as national investors on a long term basis of 30-99 years.

With a view to operationalizing the recently adopted Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Forests and Fisheries, this paper identifies gaps in existing World Bank safeguard policies with respect to tenure.

Through LMAP, and subsequent LASSP, Cambodia has made impressive progress in building a functioning cadastral system over the last ten years.

This paper uses four years of panel data on 793 households collected during 2001–11 to measure chronic poverty in rural Cambodia and to identify its key determinants. A household wealth index—a proxy for long-term welfare—constructed by polychoric principal component analysis is used as welfare indicator.

Land distribution to the poor is discussed in the broader context of the Cambodian land reform which is considered to follow a liberal approach based on the re-introduction of private property rights in land following Cambodia’s socialist period.

Land deals are frequently agreed in secret between governments and investors.

We draw on empirical results from three case studies of property rights change across forest and fisheries ecosystems in central Vietnam to investigate the circumstances under which collective property rights may make sense.

This paper investigates the real financial consequences of investing in land with disputed tenure rights. It demonstrates that companies which ignore the issue of land tenure expose themselves to substantial, and in some cases extreme, risks. Using case study analysis, the paper connects ground-up financial thinking with empirical reality.

Despite the tens of millions of dollars in aid and concessional loans being spent in Cambodia with the ostensible aim of securing land tenure and making the management of land and natural resources more equitable and sustainable, the evidence shows that tenure insecurity, forced evictions and large-scale land grabbing are escalating to alarming levels.