This paper investigates the real financial consequences of investing in land with disputed tenure rights. It demonstrates that companies which ignore the issue of land tenure expose themselves to substantial, and in some cases extreme, risks. Using case study analysis, the paper connects ground-up financial thinking with empirical reality. In so doing, it makes a strong case for the need to integrate tenure-related risks more comprehensively into our financial architecture.

The issue of women’s access to land is often framed in the context of oppression, emancipation, or Vietnamese uniqueness. This study report examines contemporary women’s access to land across ten provinces outside of these traditional narratives. Ten selected research sites reflected a diveristy of rural-urban locations, lineage patterns, and ethnic diversity.

With a view to operationalizing the recently adopted Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Forests and Fisheries, this paper identifies gaps in existing World Bank safeguard policies with respect to tenure.

Despite the tens of millions of dollars in aid and concessional loans being spent in Cambodia with the ostensible aim of securing land tenure and making the management of land and natural resources more equitable and sustainable, the evidence shows that tenure insecurity, forced evictions and large-scale land grabbing are escalating to alarming levels.

INTRODUCTION: Large-scale land acquisitions are a reality in most regions worldwide. Vast areas of land are leased to foreign as well as national investors on a long term basis of 30-99 years. A growing number of reports, referring to this practice as ‘land grabbing’, show that these mostly very intransparent deals tend to go along with corruption, forced evictions and other human rights violations as well as enhanced competition over water.

Through LMAP, and subsequent LASSP, Cambodia has made impressive progress in building a functioning cadastral system over the last ten years. This process has proved complex and challenging, but since commencing, the land registration teams have successfully issued over 1.7 million land titles, a strong legal framework has been developed for the functioning of the land administration bodies and mechanism, institutions have been built and strengthened, and a dispute resolution process has been established for dealing with disputes over unregistered land.

Most of the land reforms of recent decades have followed an approach of “formalization and capitalization” of individual land titles (de Soto 2000). However, within the privatization agenda, benefits of unimproved land (such as land rents and value capture) are reaped privately by well-organized actors, whereas the costs of valorization (e.g., infrastructure) or opportunity costs of land use changes are shifted onto poorly organized groups. Consequences of capitalization and formalization include rent seeking and land grabbing.

It has proved much easier to observe the stark divide between the ‘professional optimists’ in the development industry and the ‘professional pessimists’ in academic development studies than it has to disrupt these roles or to explain them in ways that prevent them remaining entrenched. This paper will present and discuss the “Geographies of Evasion” hypothesis which claims to explain how and why rights-based development interventions in particular fail.

ABSTRACTED FROM THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Myanmar faces an unprecedented scale of structural landlessness in rural areas, increasing displacement threats to farmers as a result of growing investment interest by both national and international firms, expanding speculation in land and real estate, and grossly inadequate housing conditions facing significant sections of both the urban and rural population. Legal and other protections afforded by the current legal framework, the new Farmland Law and other newly enacted legislation are wholly inadequate.

ABSTRACTED FROM THE SUMMARY: Notwithstanding progress both nationally and locally, there is not yet evidence of sufficient support either internationally or nationally for REDD to effectively neutralise either the top-down or the bottom-up drivers of deforestation in Cambodia. This report reviews official documents and research reports over the 2009-2012 period, supplemented by field visits in 2010 and 2011, in order to summarise lessons learned from Cambodia’s early engagement with REDD from the viewpoint of poverty reduction.

The report, submitted in accordance with resolution 18/25 of 26 September 2011 of the Human Rights Council, is an assessment of the human rights impact of economic land concessions (ELCs) and other land concessions and major development projects in Cambodia (generally referred to as ―land concessions‖ throughout the report unless otherwise specified).

Vietnam's rapid and sustained economic growth and poverty reduction in the last two decades benefitted from the policy and legal reforms embodied in the Land Laws of 1987, 1993 and 2003 and subsequent related legal acts. This note outlines reforms related to four main themes. The first relates to the needed reform for agriculture land use to create opportunity to enhance effectiveness of land use as well as to secure farmers' rights in land use. Prolonging the duration of agricultural land tenure would give land users greater incentives to invest and care for the land.