A comunidade sertaneja de Forquilha está localizada entre os rios Paraíba e Balsas, município de Benedito Leite, Estado do Maranhão - Brasil. Formou-se no início do século XX, por causa da fartura de peixes e das terras férteis das margens dos rios, em pleno Cerrado. A comunidade, hoje conta com 19 Famílias em uma área de aproximadamente 504 hectares, que se auto identificam como sertanejos.

La investigación como un tejido de relaciones, complicidad y empatía
Ruth Bautista Durán

This is a case about innovative approach of Boonrueng wetland forest conservation against land conversion for Special Economic Zone. Boonrueng wetland forest is the largest seasonal flooded forest in the Ing watershed located in the North of Thailand. It provides the high ecological functions and qualities of the tributary in the downstream Ing River, out-flowing into the Mekong River. The conversion of land for the economic regionalization in Chiang Khong district is geared up in 2015 and Boonrueng wetland forest was identified as an area for Special Economic Zone.

This paper explores the political processes that activists engaged in contesting land grabbing have triggered to connect claims across borders and to international institutions, regimes and processes. Through a review of cases of land-grab resistance that have led to project cancelation or suspension, I argue that contextual elements of the land grab and shifting geopolitics highlight the need for adaptation and refinement of models of transnational advocacy, historically structured in North–South patterns.

ABSTRACTED FROM SUMMARY: Disputes over land remain one of the central challenges in Myanmar’s evolving reform process. Land confiscations and forced evictions were a major feature of decades of military rule and internal armed conflict. Small farmers bore the brunt as government officials, military commanders, and their cronies seized land for personal and institutional enrichment; authorities promoted development plans without regard for those affected; and the military and ethnic armed groups took advantage of fighting and displacement to grab vast swathes of territory.

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?

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 WEBSITE: Our new Research Brief The Implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas discusses the roles and responsibilities of governments, parliaments, domestic courts, National Human Rights Institutions, UN specialized agencies, funds and programmes, the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), regional organizations and human rights mechanisms, the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), and the Committee on World Food Security in implementing the UNDROP.

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: 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.

Forest landscape conflicts can be devastating on many levels – economic, environmental and social, from individual, to subnational, national and global levels. They are symptomatic of many issues revolving around weak governance. The problem is that seldom are they effectively addressed. The aim of the paper is to better understand how and why forest landscape conflicts are happening, who is addressing them, and what can be done to prevent conflict or improve conflict outcomes.

This study focuses on watershed management in Northern Thailand, where conflict over forest, land and water-use is a prevailing problem. A characteristic of watershed conflicts is that they are often multifaceted and involve multiple stakeholders with different interests and values, consequently requiring conflict management approaches that are sustainable in their outcomes, including addressing the underlying causes of the conflicts.