Land plays an important role in the economies of developing countries, and many theories connecting land inequality with different dimensions of economic development already exist. Even though efficacious land distribution allows societies to transition from poverty to a human capital-based developed economy, ongoing issues related to property rights, inequality, and the political economy of land distribution are unavoidable. The general objective of this paper is to explore the nexus between land distribution and economic development.

Based on cointegration analysis, a vector error correction model (VECM), and the impulse response function method, this paper empirically analyses the interaction among urban expansion, economic development, and population growth in China from 1980 to 2016. The results show that (I) there is a long-term equilibrium relationship among urban expansion, economic development and population growth, but there is an imbalance in the short term. When urban expansion deviates from the long-term equilibrium, it cannot be restored to equilibrium in the short term.

ABSTRACTED FROM EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: This briefing paper is designed to assist and build the capacities of those engaged in formulating an eventual peace agreement concerning the ongoing conflicts in Myanmar with options on how best to address the myriad HLP issues in the country based on similar experiences in other countries. It explores some of the fundamental HLP issues common to most conflicts, how these have played out in the Myanmar context, and how other countries have addressed these in various peace agreements and negotiated settlements.

Concessions granted to investors in Cambodia have generated a deep sense of insecurity in rural forested areas. Villagers are not confined to a passive “everyday resistance of the poor,” as mentioned by James Scott, insofar as they frequently engage in frontal strategies for recovering land. Such has been the case in the northeastern provinces, where indigenous livelihoods are recurrently threatened by foreign and national companies. But what happens when a land conflict ends up in a stakeholder dialogue?

In light of the urgency of both forest conservation and the recognition of indigenous communities’ rights to land and resources, along with the documented potential for creating conservation synergies through recognition of community rights, this study tries to look at the approaches to forest conservation taken in Myanmar so far, and to take stock of their achievements and impact with respect to both forest conservation and the rights and wellbeing of communities.

Armed conflicts create drastic socioeconomic shocks that lead to land use and land cover changes in ways that are not yet well understood. Several studies have used satellite imagery to detect such changes during periods of conflict. However, there has been an insufficient examination of older conflicts before the 1970s. By examining older conflicts, we can examine the effects of conflict on land use and land cover over a long time span.

ABSTRACTED FROM WEBSITE: What is happening with the land and natural wealth around the world, and to the people who depend on them? How are people responding to these trends, threats, and challenges?

ABSTRACTED FROM EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: This research analyses the ways in which current changes in land tenure, agrarian and socio-economic systems are reshaping resource allocations and transfers within households in indigenous communities in Ratanakiri Province, Cambodia. While other gendered aspects of the transformations occurring in indigenous societies have received more attention in recent years, the changes occurring in the customary laws that determine land access, ownership and inheritance alongside gender, as well as generational lines, have not been explored.

Since 2010, Myanmar has experienced unprecedented political and economic changes described in the literature as democratic transition or metamorphosis. The aim of this paper is to analyze the strategy of accumulation by dispossession in the frontier areas as a precondition and persistent element of Myanmar’s transition. Through this particular regime of dispossession – described as frontier capitalism – the periphery is turned into a supplier of resource revenues to fuel economic growth at the center.

ABSTRACTED FROM EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The aim of this report is to improve understanding of how to mainstream gender sensitivity into actions that seek to support communities to address land confiscations. It presents the synthesis of two two-day workshops with a group of 12 men and 12 women affected by land confiscations from Taungoo and Htantabin townships in eastern Bago Region and Thandaunggyi Township in Kayin State. Therefore, it is important to note that the small sample may not necessarily be representative of gendered experiences of land confiscation elsewhere in Myanmar.

We estimate whether a land reform program led to higher incomes for ethnic minority households. In 2002, in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, Program 132 directed the transfer of farm land to ethnic minority households that had less than one hectare of land. Using the 2002 Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey as a baseline, in 2008 we resurveyed over one-thousand households to provide a retrospective evaluation of the impact of their participation in Program 132.

Mainstream analysis of contemporary livelihood transformations and rural development in the upland regions of Southeast Asia has hitherto focused primarily on the role of agricultural commercialization and cash crops. This is reflected in policy narratives that conflate the fortunes of rural households to the expansion of a particular kind of entrepreneurial agriculture. In this article, we problematize the dynamics of economic and social change in the little-studied uplands of Chin State, Myanmar, against this policy backdrop.