Lao PDR's economic outlook remains favorable, with continued strong growth. Gross domestic product (GDP) growth remained at above 7 percent in 2007. Output expanded in mining, newly emerging processing industries, agriculture, and new construction of hydropower projects, tourism and other services. Non-resource sectors contributed over 5 percent to this growth, and the resource sector around 2.5 percent.

This report focuses on the dimensions of poverty, and how to create a better world, free of poverty. The analysis explores the nature, and evolution of poverty, and its causes, to present a framework for action.

The Lao PDR economy continues to grow, but at a relatively slower pace as the impacts of the global financial turmoil are starting to be felt. Real gross domestic product (GDP) growth is expected to slow in 2008 to about 7 percent as result of the impacts of the global financial crisis. GDP growth is also projected to slow to between 5 and 6 percent in 2009. However, growth remains fairly strong and still driven by the ongoing hydropower projects as well as agro processing industries, construction and other services.

This paper reviews the literature to identify the relationship between tenure security and food security. The literatures on tenure issues and food security issues are not well connected and the scientific evidence on the causal links between tenure security and food security is very limited. The paper explores the conceptual linkages between land tenure reforms, tenure security and food security and illustrates how these vary across diverse contexts.

ABSTRACTED FROM THE INTRODUCTION: This working paper is an examination of current land formalization processes against the backdrop of Cambodian history and the political economy of land and agrarian change. I... critique the land property right formalisation processes at play under the current land reforms. I present their rationales, mechanisms and influences on Cambodian peasants. I then detail the dynamics of land differentiation in the central rice plain and reveal how it has initiated a large migration to the peripheral uplands.

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.

ABSTRACTED FROM EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Half a decade into the global land rush, land-intensive investment throughout Southeast Asia continues to confront social and environmental issues such as land conflict and improperly regulated forest conversion. This study uses publicly available financial and spatial data to examine the geography of land-intensive investment in Southeast Asia, and to identify the limits imposed by problems with data availability.

ABSTRACTED FROM THE 'APPROACH' SECTION: The national inventory of land purchases and leases in Lao PDR is unique in providing comprehensive in-depth analysis of the extent and impacts of large scale land acquisitions across the country. It represents a major contribution to achieving greater transparency in what has previously been a very opaque field of business, and could serve as a model for other countries. Its major asset is the systematic and spatially-referenced compilation of data on the location, extent and implementation status of land-based investments.

This paper presents the case of World Bank support to the mass titling component of the Cambodia Land Management and Administration Project. This was a project for which there was clear national demand, as evidenced by the fact that the Cambodian government had already attempted to implement mass titling a decade previously, but had lacked the human and technical resources to complete it. The case describes a consensus between donors and a host nation government during the planning and approval of the intervention, which dissolves into conflict during implementation.

Vietnam’s 1993 Land Law created a land market by granting households land-use rights which could be exchanged, leased, inherited, sold or mortgaged. This study uses quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze whether increased land titling led to discernible improvements in the economic security of households, and whether land titles in women’s names had markedly different effects as compared to titles held by men.

Recently concerns have been raised regarding the potential for the Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) framework to recentralize forests, potentially setting back efforts to institute localized and decentralized forms of natural resource management. Here, I apply a political ecology approach to consider access and exclusion to land and natural resources in the contexts of three emerging REDD projects in Cambodia and Laos.

Change is taking place in Myanmar. Since this ethnically and geographically diverse country elected its first civilian government in 2010, a series of rapid and dramatic reforms have taken place to allow freedom of expression, an opening of the economy and the consolidation of peace. The government has also taken the first tentative steps toward decentralization. In October 2013, Mercy Corps conducted a combined economic, governance and conflict assessment that focused on Myanmar’s southern Shan State as a microcosm of the issues present throughout the country.