In its Land Administration, Management and Distribution Program, the Royal Government of Cambodia proclaimed measures to strengthen the Cambodian land markets and tenure security. However, in the past, the country’s land markets suffered severe aberrations caused by price hikes. This affected both urban and rural areas, mainly due to a rollout of urban capital.

The report, submitted in accordance with resolution 18/25 of 26 September 2011 of the Human Rights Council, is an assessment of the human rights impact of economic land concessions (ELCs) and other land concessions and major development projects in Cambodia (generally referred to as ―land concessions‖ throughout the report unless otherwise specified).

Common-pool resource management is a critical element in the interlocked challenges of food security, nutrition, poverty reduction, and environmental sustainability. This paper examines strategic policy choices and governance challenges facing Cambodia’s forests and fisheries, the most economically important subsectors of agriculture that rely on common-pool resources. It then outlines policy priorities for institutional development to achieve improvements in implementing these goals.

Following the »Land Policy Declaration« from July 2009, the Royal Government of Cambodia henceforth has the unique opportunity to implement a land valuation policy by the Council of Land Policy. Land valuation, taxation and capacity building are indispensable elements of a land reform in Cambodia. By improving prior assessment tools for valuation and taxation, Cambodia could serve as an example for the development of taxation in circumstances when rent-seeking, speculation, informal land markets and an unequal land distribution occur.

The Land Law of 2001 was a landmark statute intended to strengthen and protect the rights of ordinary Cambodian landholders. A land titling programme (LMAP) was initiated soon afterwards, with extensive World Bank and donor support. The land occupied by the community of Boeung Kak, in the heart of the capital was excluded from this process, despite evidence of prior residence going back decades. Instead it was classifi ed as having “unknown status” by the LMAP, as “state land” by default, and as a “development zone” by authorities.

This paper attempts to define the factors which determine emigration and rice doublecropping, i.e. rice cultivation on the same plot twice per year, by rural households in Cambodia, and investigates whether these decisions influence each other using data from a two-period panel survey of 231 households in three provinces in rural Cambodia. In the analysis, we take into account possible correlation between these decisions (through estimating a seemingly unrelated bivariate probit model) and unobserved heterogeneity among farmers (through estimating a random-effects probit model).

This document presents selected analyses of key issues in CFM in Vietnam. It brings together contributions by leading analysts and thinkers and is organized in three main parts: Part 1 discusses issues related to the transfer of forest rights to local people through FLA. It starts with an overview of FLA policy and its outcomes by Nguyen Quang Tan and Thomas Sikor. A case study by Nguyen Dinh Tien, Tran Duc Vien and Nguyen Thanh Lam alerts readers to the fact that too much emphasis on conservation objectives may endanger the food security of the local people.

The presentation will highlight the importance of establishing knowledge and understanding about “gender mainstreaming” strategies and gender equality within the Cambodian Land Administration Sub Sector Program (LA-SSP) and the land policy. Gender oriented objectives of the LA-SSP comprise of sustainable improvement of the living conditions of the urban and rural population of Cambodia, especially for women.

This 2010-11 Annual Development Review is the sixth annual review produced by CDRI on major development issues for Cambodia, and addresses several of the issues raised above.

Corruption in land management from the perspective of a simple risk framework. These risk factors and forms of corruption spring from more general shortcomings in the integrity framework. In this regard, this report argues that corruption is most likely to occur when an official or office has a monopoly, when the official or office has a great deal of discretion over how the decision is taken, and when there is little accountability for that decision or transparency, which might make it harder for the corruption to proceed unabated.

The purpose of this dissertation was to discover possible shortcomings in the land registration processes and to indentify minimal adjustments for a successful land registration initiative in Cambodia. The enjoyment of collective ownership from 1979 to 1989 witnessed the failure of this system and therefore the country signalized a need of a new property system. Consequently, Cambodia introduced land privatization in 1989 in which Cambodian citizens could have a right of ownership over residential land and a right of possession over agricultural land.