ABSTRACTED FROM EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The research on customary communal tenure in Chin and Shan States was carried out through two short site visits during 2013-14 by one international and three national researchers in the two states. The Land Core Group with LIFT funding was the sponsor of the study with support from its partners GRET in Chin State and CARE in Shan State. The study concentrated on two pilot villages in Northern Chin State, Haka township and two pilot villages in Northern Shan State, Lashio township. These villages agreed to take part in the study.

Since holding elections in 2010, Myanmar has transitioned from a direct military dictatorship to a formally democratic system and has embarked on a period of rapid economic reform. After two decades of military rule, the pace of change has startled almost everyone and led to a great deal of cautious optimism. To make sense of the transition and assess the case for optimism, this article explores the political economy of Myanmar’s dual transition from state socialism to capitalism and from dictatorship to democracy.

Cambodia is currently experiencing profound processes of rural change, driven by an emerging trend of large-scale land deals. This article discusses potential future pathways by analyzing two contrasting visions and realities of land use: the aim of the governmental elites to foster surplus-producing rural areas for overall economic growth, employment creation and ultimately poverty reduction, and the attempts of smallholders to maintain and create livelihoods based on largely self-sufficient rural systems.

Production of commodities for global markets is an increasingly important factor of tropical deforestation, taking over smallholders subsistence farming. Measures to reduce deforestation and convert shifting cultivation systems towards permanent crops have recently been strengthened in several countries. But these changes have variable environmental and social impacts, including on ethnic minorities. In Vietnam, although a forest transition - i.e.

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 paper critically examines theories of accumulation, dispossession and exclusion for analyzing the agrarian transformations that result from contemporary large-scale land acquisitions across the Global South. Building upon Marx's primitive accumulation, Harvey's accumulation by dispossession and Hall et al.'s Powers of Exclusion, conceptual lenses are developed through which to examine how land grabs transform property and social relationships of resource-based production.

This paper examines recent conflicts over freshwater fisheries in Cambodia using the notion of accumulation through dispossession as a conceptual starting point. Despite a recent material turn, theoretical literature on the political economy of the environment has only partially incorporated an ecologically nuanced view of nature into analyses of its transformation under processes of capital accumulation.

Over the last decade, forests have played an important role in the transition from war to peace in Cambodia. Forest exploitation financed the continuation of war beyond the Cold War and regional dynamics, yet it also stimulated co-operation between conflicting parties. Timber represented a key stake in the rapacious transition from the (benign) socialism of the post-Khmer Rouge period to (exclusionary) capitalism, thereby becoming the most politicized resource of a reconstruction process that has failed to be either as green or as democratic as the international community had hoped.

The emergence of social and environmental movements against plantation forestry in Southeast Asia positions rural development against local displacement and environmental degradation. Multi-scaled NGO networks have been active in promoting the notion that rural people in Southeast Asia uniformly oppose plantation development. There are potential pitfalls in this heightened attention to resistance however, as it has often lapsed into essentialist notions of timeless indigenous agricultural practices, and unproblematic local allegiances to common property and conservation.

Four years ago, I was part of a research team looking at access to land and basic services in informal settlements.

We conducted field interviews in Mukuru slums in Eastlands. We were amazed at the levels of development in the area. People were constructing permanent structures despite the fact that they were under the impression that informal settlements are characterised by temporary structures.

Four years later, there are ongoing discussions to address the plight of informal settlements. A fundamental starting point is to address issues of tenure security.

Mainland Southeast Asia (MSA) has seen sweeping upland land use changes in the past decades, with transition from primarily subsistence shifting cultivation to annual commodity cropping. This transition holds implications for local upland communities and ecosystems. Due to its particular political regime, Myanmar is at the tail of this development.

Why are the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests important?