In economics, land has been traditionally assumed to be a fixed production factor, both in terms of quantity supplied and mobility, as opposed to capital and labor, which are usually considered to be mobile factors, at least to some extent. Yet, in the last decade, international investors have expressed an unexpected interest in farmland and in land-related investments, with the demand for land brusquely rising at an unprecedented pace.

The cost of buying land and homes is set to rise significantly as the market factors in new valuation charges that have more than doubled for most asset classes.

Lands minister James Orengo introduced the new charges through an amendment to the forms and fees section of the Valuers Act, paving the way for their application in the property market beginning this month.

Valuation fees for certain classes of land or homes have increased by up to 400 per cent, piling upward pressure on sale prices.

The government of (post)socialist Laos has conceded more than 1 million hectares of land—5 percent of the national territory—to resource investors, threatening rural community access to customary lands and forests. However, investors have not been able to use all of the land granted to them, and their projects have generated geographically uneven dispossession due to local resistance.

ABSTRACTED FROM CHAPTER INTRODUCTION: The preceding chapters of this book give a central place to the Powers of Exclusion framework for understanding transformations in land relations, as developed in our 2011 book on Southeast Asia. A couple of the main aspects of the two books make for an interesting comparison. The first is that each employs a regional frame of reference to explore themes in changing land relations. The second is their respective development and application of a common conceptual framework.

WEBSITE INTRODUCTION: In the Mekong region, conflicts between local communities and large scale land concessions are widespread. They are often difficult to solve. In Cambodia, an innovative approach to conflict resolution was tested in a case involving a private company, Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL), and several indigenous communities who lost some of their customary lands and forests when the company obtained a concession to grow rubber in the Province of Ratanakiri.

ABSTRACTED FROM EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Land rights systems in Southeast Asia are in constant flux; they respond to various socioeconomic and political pressures and to changes in statutory and customary law. Over the last decade, Southeast Asia has become one of the hotspots of the global land grab phenomenon, accounting for about 30 percent of transnational land grabs globally. Land grabs by domestic urban elites, the military or government actors are also common in many Southeast Asian countries.

WEBSITE INTRODUCTION: This book examines large-scale land acquisitions, or ‘land grabbing’, with a focus on South-East Asia. Thematic papers and detailed case studies put this phenomenon into specific historical and institutional contexts, analysing transformations in livelihoods, human rights impacts, and potential remedies.

Agrarian resistance often occurs as a result of expropriation and dispossession of poor farmers’ land and other properties. This paper examines how cost-benefit rational choice determined the government of Cambodia’s response to poor farmers’ resistance to large-scale land acquisition for an agro-industrial investment. Theoretically, whatever mechanism a government chooses to respond to resistance, the aim is to retain more benefits, especially political legitimacy.

The purpose of the report is to provide documentary evidence of land disputes recorded throughout 2015. This evidence was gathered from articles on land disputes from local printed media, meetings with Land and Housing Right Network (LAHRiN) members, and through on-site data collection. This report aims to raise awareness and understanding of the current situation regarding land disputes, and act as a resource for other stakeholders working on land issues including government officials, donors, LAHRiN members, Cambodian and international civil society and academic researchers.

Poverty reduction has become a worldwide promise, yet the term itself has been commonly abused to legitimize development policies and projects with truly questionable impacts on the poor. This article critically reflects on how claims of poverty reduction through agricultural development have been turned into tactics of land capture in Cambodia.

ABSTRACTED FROM CHAPTER INTRODUCTION: In Cambodia, the notion of concession (sambathian) traces back to the French colonial period when concessions were introduced to allow for large scale management and exploitation of forest and fisheries resources and the development of agricultural land under plantations. Since their inception, concessions have been much more than a tool for natural resources management; they also function as a central instrument in power and governance systems. In this chapter we focus on forestry and land concessions.

Cambodia has long had a difficult mix of resource wealth and weak land governance, a function of its legacy of enduring postwar conflict and neoliberal development policies of the 1990s. Since 2012, however, its government has undertaken a series of self-described ‘deep reforms’ aimed at overcoming the poverty, land conflict, and unequal rural landholdings created during the 2000s, when over 2 million hectares of economic land concessions were allocated to private companies.