Land policies are of fundamental importance to sustainable growth, good governance, and the well-being of, and the economic opportunities open to, both rural and urban dwellers - particularly the poor. To this end, research on land policy, and analysis of interventions related to the subject, have long been of interest to the Bank's Research Department, and other academic, and civil society institutions.

ABSTRACTED FROM THE OBJECTIVES SECTION: These Voluntary Guidelines seek to improve governance of tenure of land*, fisheries and forests. They seek to do so for the benefit of all, with an emphasis on vulnerable and marginalized people, with the goals of food security and progressive realization of the right to adequate food, poverty eradication, sustainable livelihoods, social stability, housing security, rural development, environmental protection and sustainable social and economic development.

This paper starts from the assumption that the process of reform is as important as the content of the reform. Many excellent land policies, laws and technical reforms have been developed, yet, in many cases, implementation has slipped, stalled or has even been reversed. The paper argues that an understanding of land issues and the reform process from a governance and political economy perspective offers insights that can not only improve the design of reforms, but can also offer tools to support implementation.

This Topic Guide is written for DFID staff, but is relevant to all development professionals. It comprises the following sections:

In the context of transition to a more open form of government, the Myanmar government has begun to liberalize land markets and, in 2012, enacted two major land-related laws. Implementing these new land laws has proven challenging, however, as it has been difficult to integrate these laws with the existing customary practices of various ethnic minorities. To address these and other issues UN-HABITAT Myanmar is assisting the Myanmar government in developing a Land Administration and Management Program (LAMP).

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.

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.

ABSTRACTED FROM THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Of the many challenging issues that will require resolution within the peace processes currently underway between the government of Myanmar and various ethnic groups in the country, few will be as complex, sensitive and yet vital than the issues comprising housing, land and property (HLP) rights.

In 2001 a new Land Law was adopted in Cambodia. It was significant because - for the first time - it recognised a new legal category of people, Indigenous Peoples or chuncheat daoem pheak tech in Khmer, and it also introduced the legal concept of communal land rights to Cambodia. Indigenous Peoples are not mentioned in the 1993 constitution of Cambodia or any legislation pre-dating the 2001 Land Law. However, Cambodia's 2002 Forestry Law also followed the trend by recognising Indigenous Peoples.

This report presents the innovative experience in bamboo forestry management and the process of Communal Land Titling carried out by the community of Huay Hang and Napor, Sangthong District, Lao PDR. The systematization of this experience has been made possible with the cooperation of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Ministry of Planning and Investment of Lao’s People Democratic Republic, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the PROCASUR Corporation. They provided technical and methodological support in the process of documentation of the experience.

This report on Myanmar's political economy of timber trade highlights five different sources and flows of timber destined for export. The purpose is to bring to light the different actors, geographies, and politics embedded within the web of timber flows because each inter-connected stream has its own degree of legality, sustainability, land rights regimes, and ethical sourcing.

This paper uses four years of panel data on 793 households collected during 2001–11 to measure chronic poverty in rural Cambodia and to identify its key determinants. A household wealth index—a proxy for long-term welfare—constructed by polychoric principal component analysis is used as welfare indicator. Both ordered logistic and multinomial logistic regression models are adopted to identify the causes of chronic and transient poverty by focusing particularly on five explanatory variables: agricultural land and livestock, demography, human capital, social capital and natural resources.