Location
The purpose of the Mekong Land Research Forum online site is to provide structured access to published and unpublished research on land issues in the Mekong Region.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.
Members:
Resources
Displaying 346 - 350 of 564Temporary transfers of land and risk-coping mechanisms in Thailand
This paper uses data collected in Thailand among permanent rural-urban migrants to analyse the motivations in land temporary transfers such as free loans or rentals. Land transfers are here looked at in a continuum and categorized according to three characteristics: the nature of the relationship between the parties of the exchange, the monetary nature of the payment as well as its explicit or imlicit nature. This methodology allows a richer typology than traditionnally used in empiric literature, and distinguishes between various loans that are not always free.
Land, Livelihoods, and Remittances: A Political Ecology of Youth Out-migration across the Lao-Thai Mekong Border
This article seeks to draw connections between a political ecology of global investment in resource sector development and a culturally informed understanding of rural out-migration across the Lao–Thai border. The author highlights how the departures of rural youth for wage labor in Thailand and the remittances they return to sending villages are becoming important for understanding agrarian transformations in Laos today. In the first section the author introduces the contemporary context of cross-border migrations across the Lao–Thai Mekong border.
Property Tax Reform in Vietnam : A Work in Progress
In 2012, Vietnam will celebrate 25 years of economic reform and structural re-adjustment from a largely centralized, subsidized economy to one based on market principles. A major component of these reforms has involved establishing land and property rights, thereby giving individuals and organizations secure title to the property they occupy and use. The passing of various Land Laws has given legislative support to the concept of private property rights. This represents a significant ideological change, given that land in Vietnam has always been considered to belong to the State.
Multiple Migrations, Displacements and Land Transfers at Ta Kream in Northwest Cambodia
The Cambodian case examines migration, land tenure and land management, in a context of conflict and the use of force in land transfers since the time of the Khmer Rouge regime to the present, by studying five agro-ecological zones close to the Kamping Pouy irrigation system in Battambang Province. The study combines analysis of demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of household use of land and labor with a historical and ethnographic review of conflict and institutional factors in successive land administrations.
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.