The year 2011 highlighted ongoing challenges to global food security, from food price volatility, extreme weather shocks, and famine to unrest and conflicts. On the policy front, major devel­opments at the global and national levels both offered grounds for encouragement and pointed to areas where further action is needed.

Depuis 2007, deux séries successives d’envolée des prix des denrées alimentaires ont causé la faim ou la malnutrition pour des millions de personnes dans le monde. Les mêmes facteurs qui avaient contribué à la hausse des prix en 2007-2008 ont refait surface en 2011 et ont pour nom : la baisse du taux de croissance de la productivité agricole, le niveau élevé du coût de l’énergie favorisant l’expansion de la production de biocarburants, la dépréciation du dollar américain, une forte demande des pays émergents en matière de produits agricoles et les bouleversements climatiques.

The agriculture, nutrition, and health nexus came to prominence in 2011. With 1 billion people continuing to suffer from food insecurity, and with vitamin and mineral deficiencies compromising the nutrition and health of billions of people, the international development community began to ask how much more could agriculture do to improve human wellbeing if it explicitly included nutrition and health goals?

Increased global demand for land underscores the need for well-designed, country-level land policies to protect long-held rights, facilitate land access, and address constraints to growth. However, reforms are often technically complex, politically sensitive, and time consuming. It is thus critical to identify priority issues in a participatory way, have a clear understanding of how they fit into the broader policy context, and be able to monitor improvements over time.

Although Cambodia is one of Asia’s smallest and poorest economies—in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) only Burma’s per capita purchasing power is lower—changes in its environment for business and trade since the turn of the millennium have been rapid and dramatic. Insiders and outsiders alike are increasingly recognizing the country’s economic potential as a range of new investment and infrastructure projects evince growing confidence and opportunity.

Land deals are frequently agreed in secret between governments and investors. This lack of transparency in the allocation of land fosters an environment where elite capture of natural assets becomes the norm, where human rights are routinely abused with impunity, where environmental destruction is ignored and where investment incentives are stacked against companies willing to adhere to ethical and legal principles.

We draw on empirical results from three case studies of property rights change across forest and fisheries ecosystems in central Vietnam to investigate the circumstances under which collective property rights may make sense. A generic property rights framework was used to examine the bundles of rights and associated rights holders in each case, and to assess these arrangements with regard to their contextual fit, legitimacy and enforceability.

Most of the land reforms of recent decades have followed an approach of “formalization and capitalization” of individual land titles (de Soto 2000). However, within the privatization agenda, benefits of unimproved land (such as land rents and value capture) are reaped privately by well-organized actors, whereas the costs of valorization (e.g., infrastructure) or opportunity costs of land use changes are shifted onto poorly organized groups. Consequences of capitalization and formalization include rent seeking and land grabbing.

Across the world, ‘green grabbing’ – the appropriation of land and resources for environmental ends – is an emerging process of deep and growing significance. The vigorous debate on ‘land grabbing’ already highlights instances where ‘green’ credentials are called upon to justify appropriations of land for food or fuel – as where large tracts of land are acquired not just for ‘more efficient farming’ or ‘food security’, but also to ‘alleviate pressure on forests’.