This article examines changing contexts and emerging processes related to “land grabbing”. In particular, it uses the case of Laos to analyze the driving forces behind land takings, how such drivers are implied in land policies, and how affected people respond depending on their socio-economic assets and political connections.

Climate change projections internationally accepted as being reliable indicate that most countries in the Pacific region will suffer large-scale negative impacts from climate change. These impacts are likely to include elevated air and sea-surface temperatures, increasingly unpredictable rainfall patterns, rising sea levels, and intensification of extreme weather events such as tropical cyclones and El Niño-related droughts.

This paper explores the effect of land titling on agricultural productivity in Vietnam and the productivity effects of single versus joint titling for husband and wife. Using a plot-fixed-effects approach our results show that obtaining a land title is associated with higher yields, for both individually and jointly held titles. We conclude that there is no trade-off between joint titling and productivity, and so joint titles are potentially an effective way to improve women’s bargaining power within the household with no associated efficiency losses.

To disentangle the issue concerning which dimensions of land rights, among security, tradability and pledgeability, affect agricultural outcomes, this paper exploits a unique partial land rights entitlement programme in Thailand, which guarantees only security, allows a limited access to credit, and prohibits any land sale. Based on an instrumental variable strategy, I find that the entitlement increases (1) second rice but not major rice productivity, (2) land use intensity, and leads to changes in (3) land use pattern, (4) land-related investment, and (5) better soil quality.

The Lao Land and Forest Allocation Policy (LFAP) was intended to provide clearer property rights for swidden farmers living in mountainous areas. These lands are legally defined as “State” forests but are under various forms of customary tenure. The policy involves demarcating village territorial boundaries, ecological zoning of lands within village territories, and finally allocating a limited number of individual land parcels to specific households for farming.

Sustainable land management requires scientists to provide reliable data on diversity distribution patterns. Resource restrictions limit the affordable sampling effort, both with respect to number of survey sites and amount of effort per site. We compared different levels of survey effort in a case study in Central Romania, varying the number of repeats per site and number of survey sites. Target taxa were plants, birds and butterflies. For plants, we surveyed three 10 m²plots and ten plots of 1 m²at each site.