Impact of Government Policies and Corporate Land Grabs on Indigenous People’s Access to Common Lands and Livelihood Resilience in Northeast Cambodia

Andreas Neef,Sochanny Hak,John McAndrew

doi:10.3390/land7040122

Abstract

Cambodia has become a principal target of transnational (and domestic) land grabs over the past decade, mostly in the form of economic land concessions (ELCs). The northeastern part of the country—where the majority of Cambodia’s indigenous people reside—is a particular hotspot. In this article, we discuss three policy mechanisms that the Cambodian government has employed to extend and legitimize land exclusions in the name of national economic development through the example of two indigenous villages in Srae Preah Commune, Mondulkiri Province. First, we show how the allocation of two ELCs has deprived indigenous communities of their communally managed land. Second, we examine how communal land titling processes have failed to provide indigenous villagers with effective legal mechanisms to counteract ELCs and land encroachment by internal migrants. Third, we elucidate how the promotion of cash crop production contributed to livelihood and land use transitions from a reliance on forest resources in 2003 to a dependence on cash crops in 2012 to a struggle to remain resilient amid a slump in crop prices in 2018. We conclude that the combination of these policies has undermined communal ownership and livelihood resilience under a situation of limited exit strategies.

Highlights

These are the two villages in the commune whose common lands have been most affected by the establishment of economic land concessions (ELCs)
The final part discusses livelihood transitions and land use change as a consequence of government policies that encourage crash crop production. This last part will demonstrate how the livelihoods in Srae Preah Commune have been transformed from a natural resource reliance (2003) to a dependence on cash crops in 2012 and the subsequent struggle of communities and households to remain resilient against the backdrop of the cash crop price decline in
Our findings confirm that ELC investment, which converts forestland into agro-industrial plantations, is a form of ‘commons grabbing’ (Haller 2016 [46]) that has profound impacts on livelihood resilience, among those groups that depend on communally managed forest resources for their subsistence

Summary

Introduction

Large-scale land acquisitions and leases for agro-industrial, mining, and tourism projects have affected hundreds of thousands of smallholder farmers and communal landholders in SoutheastAsia, with indigenous people and ethnic minority groups most at risk (Borras & Franco 2011 [1]; Kugelman & Levenstein 2012 [2]; Pearce 2012 [3]; Zoomer & Kaag 2014 [4]; Neef & Singer 2015 [5]).Cambodia is arguably a major hotspot of transnational and domestic land grabs, which occur mostly in the form of Economic Land Concessions (ELCs) and occupy a total area of more than two million hectares, with up to 800,000 people affected by land conflicts, dispossession, and forced displacement (Neef et al, 2013 [6]; ADHOC 2014 [7]; Oldenburg & Neef 2014 [8]). The massive scale of land grabs and the violence surrounding their implementation have been met with various forms of resistance by the rural population These have ranged from spontaneous protests, counter-violence, and petitions to more sophisticated forms of NGO-led advocacy resistance and the use of transnational networks (McLinden Nuijen et al, 2014 [9]; Neef & Touch 2016 [10]; Young 2016 [11]; Verkoren & Ngin 2017 [12]; Lamb et al, 2017 [13]; Schoenberger 2017 [14]). Mondulkiri Province in northeast Cambodia is largely inhabited by the Bunong indigenous people. For centuries they have effectively used the natural resources of their upland forest environment. As natural resources become more circumscribed, indigenous people have been forced to make adaptations to maintain their livelihoods (McAndrew & Oeur 2009 [21])

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion