ABSTRACTED FROM EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: This study has been commissioned by the Land Information Working Group (LIWG) in order to determine the extent to which Land Use Planning has alleviated poverty in, and strengthened the rights of, rural communities in Lao PDR, and how the positive impacts can be enhanced. A literature review, online survey, interviews and field visits examined this question according to the four key themes of participation, land tenure security, food and livelihood security and conservation.

Over the past decade, the Lao government has developed the policy of ‘Turning Land into Capital’ (TLIC), a strategy for generating revenue and economic value from ‘state land’. The 450 Year Road Project built along the periphery of the Laotian capital, Vientiane, linking the national highway with the Thai border, was financed using a TLIC model. Additional land to the side of the road was acquired to be resold at rates significantly higher than the compensation provided to landowners.

In Cambodia, the interactions between large-scale land investment and land titling gathered particular momentum in 2012–13, when the government initiated an unprecedented upland land titling programme in an attempt to address land tenure insecurity where large-scale land investment overlaps with land appropriated by peasants.

This paper uses panel data at commune, household, and plot levels to study the causes and effects of agricultural land fragmentation in rural Viet Nam. We focus on both inter-farm fragmentation (the division of land into many small farms) and intra-farm fragmentation (the division of each farm into many small plots). In both these dimensions, land holdings in Viet Nam are highly fragmented. Results show strong effects of both inter- and intra-farm fragmentation on labour input per hectare in agriculture.

The recent political and economic liberalization in Burma/Myanmar, while indicative of some positive steps toward democratization after decades of authoritarian rule, has simultaneously increased foreign and domestic investments and geared the economy toward industrialization and large-scale agriculture.

ABSTRACTED FROM INTRODUCTION: This report explores the relationships between land tenure security and food security in Laos, with comparison to other developing countries. The purpose of the study is to better understand these linkages in order to recommend pathways for policies and projects to improve food insecurity by increasing rural poor people's access and tenure security to land.

Women's empowerment is considered a ‘prerequisite’ to achieving global food security. Gender systems, however, are diverse and complex. The nature and extent of gender inequity and the conditions necessary to empower women vary across countries, communities and regions. The study of different gender systems is thus fundamental to capture cross-cultural variations in gender specific needs and constraints to effectively address gender gaps.

As Vietnam embraces the market economy, and a number of state policies promote reforestation and rural market integration, land use and land cover (LULC) changes are occurring in the country’s northern uplands in increasingly complex and fragmented ways. Yet understandings of the degree and consequences of LULC changes in this diverse agro-ecological region are incomplete. We conduct a systematic literature review of research reported in academic articles tracing and analysing LULC change in Vietnam’s northern regions.

This essay explores the changing landscape of food sovereignty politics in the shadow of the so-called ‘land grab’. While the food sovereignty movement emerged within a global agrarian crisis conjuncture triggered by northern dumping of foodstuffs, institutionalized in WTO trade rules, the twenty-first-century food, energy and financial crises intensify this crisis for the world’s rural poor (inflating prices of staple foods and agri-inputs) deepening the process of dispossession.

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 rubber tree is native to the humid tropics and has traditionally been cropped in the equatorial zone between 108Nand 108S; in mainland Southeast Asia this includes portions of southern Thailand, southeastern Vietnam, and southern Myanmar. In the early 1950s, the Chinese government began to invest in growing rubber in environments perceived to be ecologically marginal and eventually established state rubber plantations in areas that lie as far north as 228 north latitude.

Studies of land property rights usually focus on tenure security and transfer rights. Rights to determine how to use the land are regularly ignored. However, user rights are often limited. Relying on a unique Vietnamese panel data set at both household and plot levels, we show that crop choice restrictions are widespread and prevent crop diversification. Restrictions do not decrease household income, but restricted households work harder, and there are indications that they are supplied with higher quality inputs.