The Mekong Region Land Governance (MRLG) project, MLIKE (Mekong Land Information and Knowledge Exchange),  and the Land Portal co-facilitated an online dialogue on “Responsible Large Scale Agricultural Investments in the Mekong Region” on 09-27 October 2017. The full dialogue can be read here. This report delineates the key messages emerging from the dialogue.

A special economic zone (SEZ) is an area in which business and trade laws are different from rest of the country. SEZs are located within a country's national borders, and their aims include: increased trade, increased investment, job creation and effective administration. To encourage businesses to set up in the zone, financial policies are introduced.

This paper examines 30 years of experience in zones, reviewing development patterns and economic impacts of zones worldwide. The experience shows that while zones have been effective in addressing economic growth and development objectives, they have not been uniformly successful; successes in East Asia and Latin America have been difficult to replicate, particularly in Africa, and many zones have failed.

Impact Assessment Study of Socio-Economic Development Programmes in Himachal Pradesh, sponsored by the Planning Commission, Government of India has been conducted by Asia pacific Socio-Economic Research Institute, New Delhi from December 1999 to February 2000. 

This guide has been produced by the Interlaken Group, with steering support from the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI). The Interlaken Group is a multi-stakeholder forum composed of representatives from companies, investors, international organizations, and civil society groups.

Large-scale agricultural land investments in Africa are often considered solely from the land perspective. Yet land, water and other natural resources are closely interlinked in agricultural production and in sustaining rural livelihoods. Such investments involving irrigation will potentially have implications for water availability and utilization by other users, making it imperative to regard water as an economic rather than a free good.

Ever since the oil, financial and food crises of 2008, sub-Saharan Africa has witnessed a marked increase in large-scale investment in agricultural land. The drivers of this investment are varied and include growing food, water and energy insecurity as well as social and economic interests of investors and recipient countries. The shape of these investments and their eventual outcomes are equally influenced by the existing land and water governance systems in the host countries.

This article is an extract from the bigger document. This articles briefly highlights that the land distribution remains highly unequal in some regions,  Productivity growth of high-input agriculture has slowed down, Increased awareness regarding the detrimental effects of DDT has led to its elimination in many countries, Land under organic farming is increasing but remains concentrated in a few countries.

This paper focuses on one community in Cambodia that won back land from a large land deal by grabbing onto the rupture in property relations initiated by a one-year land titling campaign. I document the struggle between competing legibility and illegibility projects which I examine through two moments, one of the state choosing to see its population and their relations to territory, and another in which the state’s excuses for not recognizing smallholders’ claims began to falter.

This article focuses on two cases where companies have sought to develop more socially benign––and, they believe, more profitable and sustainable––plantation concessions in a context that is still marred by extensive land conflict. The first is the Mong Reththy Investment Cambodia Oil Palm (MRICOP) Company (Preah Sihanouk province); the second is the Grandis Timber Company (Kampong Speu province).

This article focuses on how climate change mitigation policies and economic land and mining concessions in Prey Lang, Cambodia, accommodate and facilitate each other physically, discursively and economically. Maps and project descriptions reveal that climate-related policies and extraction coexist in the same landscape, even the same projects. Knowledge co-produced by the authors and affected individuals suggests that climate change mitigation initiatives are not only intimately linked to economic intensification in Prey Lang, but they also contribute to conflict and dispossession.

A discussion note from Mekong Region Land governance (MRLG) summarizing findings and recommendations of a multi-stakeholder initiative and study tour conducted in Southern Laos, to study the social and environmental practices of two large scale companies holding large scale concessions in Lao PDR, published by MRLG in January 2017.