Fragmented Territories: Incomplete Enclosures and Agrarian Change on the Agricultural Frontier of Samlaut District, North‐West Cambodia

Abstract

In Cambodia, the interactions between large‐scale land investment and land titling gathered particular momentum in 2012–13, when the government initiated an unprecedented upland land titling programme in an attempt to address land tenure insecurity where large‐scale land investment overlaps with land appropriated by peasants. This paper is based on a spatially explicit ethnography of land rights conducted in the Samlaut district of north‐west Cambodia – a former Khmer Rouge resistance stronghold – in a context where the enclosures are both incomplete and entangled with post‐war, socially embedded land tenure systems. We discuss how this new pattern of fragmentation affects the prevailing dynamics of agrarian change. We argue that it has introduced new forms of exclusion and a generalized perception of land tenure uncertainty that is managed by peasants through the actualization of hybrid land tenure arrangements borrowing from state rules and local consensus. In contrast with common expectations about land formalization, the process reinforces the patterns of social differentiation initiated by land rent capture practices of early migrants and pushes more vulnerable peasants into seeking wage labour and resorting to job migration.

Understanding the drivers of deforestation and agricultural transformations in the Northwestern uplands of Cambodia

“…The same patterns of boom and bust were experienced in Thailand (Sirisambhand, 1988) and at the global level across the Amazon deforestation frontier (Rodrigues et al, 2009). The livelihoods of smallholders, that had improved gradually over the period of agricultural expansion and intensification (Touk, 2004), have deteriorated in relation with heavy land degradation and yield declines (Martin et al, 2013;Montgomery et al, 2017;Touch et al, 2017), that led to indebtedness, asset de-possession, and labor migration to Thailand (Diepart & Sem, 2018).…”

“…Proximate (or direct) causes of land-use change constitute human activities or immediate actions that originate from intended land use and directly affect land cover, while underlying (or indirect, or root) driving forces are fundamental forces that underpin the more proximate causes of land-cover change (Lambin et al, 2003). Based on the literature review relevant to the agricultural expansion in the Northwest of Cambodia (Diepart & Dupuis, 2014;Diepart & Sem, 2015, 2018Montgomery et al, 2017;Touch, Martin, Scott, Cowie, & Liu, 2016, 2017, we identified three main categories of proximate causes: agricultural expansion and intensification, infrastructure development, and resources exploitation, and five main categories of underlying factors: political and institutional factors, economic factors, demographic factors, technological factors, and environmental factors (Fig. 1).…”

“…The LUCC analysis rests on a collection of Landsat Multispectral Scanner (MSS) and Thematic Mapper (TM) scenes acquired from the US Geological Survey site (http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/) for six dates: 1976dates: , 1997dates: , 2002dates: , 2006dates: , 2010dates: , and 2016. These dates were chosen based on the previous forest cover inventory at the country scale conducted by the Forestry Administration of the Ministry of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries (Forestry Administration, 2010;McKenney & Prom, 2002;Mekong Secretariat & River Commission, 1994) and important historical milestones of LUCC identified in the literature (Diepart & Dupuis, 2014;Diepart & Sem, 2018;Pilgrim et al, 2012). Images were selected from relatively cloud-free acquisitions (< 10 percent clouds) and at the same period of the year, during the Cambodian dry season from December to April.…”

From rice fields to financial assets: Valuing land for microfinance in Cambodia

“…The commercialisation of rice agriculture is now a national trend in Cambodia as farmers have become increasingly dependent on commodity markets (Beban & Gorman, ; Diepart & Sem, ; Mahanty & Milne, ). National government policy has contributed to this shift, as the government has actively promoted an export‐driven agricultural policy (RGC, ).…”

“…In particular, household debts have outpaced agricultural income: average microfinance loan sizes are now nearly three times larger than per capita income (Bylander, ). The majority of microfinance loans are instead repaid with wages, many of which are remitted from migrant family members (Bylander, ; Diepart & Sem, ). In Tiang's small hamlet, for instance, 14 out of 26 surveyed households rely on remittances to cover monthly loan repayments and other basic needs.…”