The purpose of this study is to provide in one place a set of papers that were written at various points in time over the last four years on poverty and the response to the recent economic crisis in Liberia. More precisely, the objective of the study is twofold. First it is to provide a basic diagnostic of both consumption-based poverty and human development (especially education and health) in the country using the 2007 CWIQ (Core Welfare Indicators Questionnaire) survey.

In response to numerous reports and
claims of poor quality or fake fertilizer that were
extensively reported by farmers, fertilizer dealers, and
government officials of the Ministry of Agriculture,
Forestry, and Fisheries (MAFF) over the past three years,
the World Bank, in support of the Royal Government of
Cambodia and in response to the food crisis through the
smallholder agricultural and social protection support

This report brings together lessons from previous studies, supplemented by new analysis. It frames the challenges facing the rural and agri-food sector in the Western Balkans to illustrate the directions for policies, now and in the future. Part one looks at the characteristics of the rural and agri-food sector today, its potential and its obstacles. Part two looks at the future of the agri-food sector and rural space.

This paper reviews the literature to identify the relationship between tenure security and food security. The literatures on tenure issues and food security issues are not well connected and the scientific evidence on the causal links between tenure security and food security is very limited. The paper explores the conceptual linkages between land tenure reforms, tenure security and food security and illustrates how these vary across diverse contexts.

The type of agrarian structure employed to produce tropical commodities affects many dimensions of land use, such as ownership inequality, overlapping land rights and conflicts, and land use changes. I conduct a literature review of historical changes in agrarian structures of commodities grown on the upland frontier of mainland Southeast and South Asia, using a case study approach, of tea, rubber, oil palm and cassava.

Rural change in Cambodia manifests itself in rapidly declining land availability for the smallholder sector, posing the question of how farmers may be able to deal with limited access to land. In this paper, we discuss with a case study village and household livelihood strategies of smallholders currently operating under land-constrained conditions. Based on an integrated assessment of a smallholder village in Kampot province, we illustrate in quantitative terms how land shortage is creating problems of surplus generation and liquidity issues in monetary and non-monetary flows.

PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION: An exclusive new analysis reveals that the Government of Myanmar has allocated at least 5.2 million acres and plans to allocate another 11 million acres of Southeast Asia’s last remaining biodiversity-rich high-value forests to make way for large-scale, private agribusiness projects that often never materialize. Many of these forest areas overlap with historical land claims made by Myanmar’s ethnic minority groups who will now permanently lose their land, further enflaming decades-old armed conflicts with the national government.

ABSTRACTED FROM THE INTRODUCTION: ...the book includes 10 chapters. The first chapter provides the overview of the conceptual approach of the program and a synthesis of key findings. The core of the book consist of eight chapters which have been grouped thematically in four sections: water management and agriculture; agricultural innovation and food security; land use change and food security strategies in communities of indigenous people; and environmental change in fishing communites.

To date, REDD+ projects in Laos have made relatively conservative choices on driver engagement, focusing on smallholder-related drivers like shifting cultivation and small-scale agricultural expansion, to the exclusion of drivers like agro-industrial concessions, mining concessions and energy and transportation infrastructure. While these choices have been based on calculated decisions made in the context of project areas, they have created a pair of challenges that REDD+ practitioners must currently confront. The first is lost opportunity.

The Government of Vietnam has identified the conversion of forests to plantations of industrial crops such as rubber as one of the five drivers of deforestation and degradation in the country. Presently, Vietnam is actively participating in various international initiatives such as the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) and Forest Law Enforcement, Governance, and Trade (FLEGT) programmes.

For centuries, farmers in the mountainous region of mainland Southeast Asia have practiced shifting cultivation, with plots of land cultivated temporarily and then allowed to revert to secondary forest for a fallow period. Today, more than one million hectares have been converted to rubber plantation. By 2050, the area under rubber trees in the montane regions of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, and China's Yunnan Province is predicted to increase fourfold.

This briefing note presents the findings of seven case studies conducted from May to June 2014. The studies were conducted in Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Laos, Nepal and Thailand and looked into the livelihood and food security among indigenous shifting cultivation communities in South and Southeast Asia. The briefing note provides a summary of the main findings of the case studies and the common recommendations from a multi-stakeholders consultation held August 28-29 in Chiang Mai, Thailand.