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The purpose of the Mekong Land Research Forum online site is to provide structured access to published and unpublished research on land issues in the Mekong Region. It is based on the premise that debates and decisions around land governance can be enhanced by drawing on the considerable volume of research, documented experience and action-based reflection that is available. The online site seeks to organise the combined work of many researchers, practitioners and policy advocates around key themes relevant to the land security, and hence well-being, of smallholders in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.
The research material on this site is mounted at three levels:
First, a selection of journal articles, reports and other materials is provided and organised thematically to assist researchers, practitioners and policy advocates to draw on one another’s work and hence build up a collective body of knowledge. This is the most “passive” presentation of the research material; our contribution is to find and select the most relevant material and to organise it into key themes. In some cases the entire article is available. In others, for copyright reasons, only an abstract or summary is available and users will need to access documents through the relevant journal or organisation.
Second, a sub-set of the articles has been annotated, with overall commentary on the significance of the article and the research on which it is based, plus commentary relevant to each of the key themes addressed by the article.
Third, the findings and key messages of the annotated articles are synthesised into summaries of each of fourteen key themes. For each key theme, there is a one-page overall summary. Extended summaries are being developed progressively for each theme as part of the Forum's ongoing activity.
Overall, we intend that this online site will contribute toward evidence-based progressive policy reform in the key area of land governance. We further hope that it will thereby contribute toward to the well-being of the rural poor, ethnic minorities and women in particular, who face disadvantage in making a living as a result of insecure land tenure.
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Resources
Displaying 326 - 330 of 564Land Tenure and PES in Northern Thailand: A case study of Maesa-Kogma Man and Biosphere Reserve
ABSTRACTED FROM SUMMARY: Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) is a direct approach for environmental conservation whereby service providers receive payments that are conditional on acceptable conservation performance. An enabling legal framework is an essential prerequisite for successful PES implementation. Before drafting new legal instruments, the current legal framework should be assessed for potential opportunities and bottlenecks. This policy review therefore aims to analyze the existing policies and legislations that are relevant to PES implementation in Northern Thailand.
The Relevance of Tenure and Forest Governance for Incentive Based Mechanisms: Implementing Payments for Ecosystem Services in Doi Mae Salong
WEBSITE ABSTRACT: The report aims to contribute to the establishment of a PES scheme that promotes sound environmental management, contributes to poverty reduction and tenure security, and taps into payments for carbon sequestration. IUCN’s work on PES at Doi Mae Salong builds on the achievements of the Livelihoods and Landscapes Strategy (LLS) between 2007 and 2010, and its successor, the Poverty Reduction in Doi Mae Salong initiative (PRDMS), launched in April 2010.
Plantation rubber, land grabbing and social-property transformation in southern Laos
This paper critically examines theories of accumulation, dispossession and exclusion for analyzing the agrarian transformations that result from contemporary large-scale land acquisitions across the Global South. Building upon Marx's primitive accumulation, Harvey's accumulation by dispossession and Hall et al.'s Powers of Exclusion, conceptual lenses are developed through which to examine how land grabs transform property and social relationships of resource-based production.
Enclaves of Improvement: Sovereignty and Developmentalism in the Special Zones of the China-Lao Borderlands
The highlands of mainland Southeast Asia have famously been the locus of “Zomia,” polities resistant to control by lowland nation-states, but this relative resilience has been due to their marginality.
Land Grabbing in Dawei (Myanmar/Burma): An (Inter)National Human Rights Concern
ABSTRACTED FROM THE PROGRAM DESCRIPTION: In recent years, various actors, from big foreign and domestic corporate business and finance to governments, have initiated a large-scale worldwide enclosure of agricultural lands, mostly in the Global South but also elsewhere. This is done for large-scale industrial and industrial agriculture ventures and often packaged as large-scale investment for rural development.