Plantation rubber, land grabbing and social-property transformation in southern Laos

How Land Concessions Affect Places Elsewhere: Telecoupling, Political Ecology, and Large-Scale Plantations in Southern Laos and Northeastern Cambodia

“…The same has been true for research on small-scale rubber development in southwestern China [3,8], and between China and Laos [9]. However, researchers studying large-scale economic land concessions for plantations in Laos and Cambodia have variously illustrated that these concessions frequently result in serious negative impacts on local people and the environment, often leading to dramatic transformations of landscapes and livelihoods [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. As important as this research has been, studies of land concessions have largely focused on the immediate impacts of the "enclosure" process associated with gaining access to land by investors.…”

Historical Changes of Land Tenure and Land Use Rights in a Local Community: A Case Study in Lao PDR

“…If a development or concession project is introduced in the area, landholders now have a better chance of receiving fair compensation. Their land cannot be taken away by investors with little or no compensation, in contrast to what has happened in many concession areas [50,51].…”

Resistance and Contingent Contestations to Large-Scale Land Concessions in Southern Laos and Northeastern Cambodia

“…HAGL is not only a major player in rubber agriculture and agri-business in northeastern Cambodia, but also has massive plantations on the Lao side of the border in Attapeu Province, Laos (Kenney-Lazar, 2012 [15]; Global Witness, 2013 [16]; Baird and Fox, 2015 [69]). HAGL's rubber plantations have been heavily criticized in recent years, due to the large amount of land dispossession that the plantations have caused, and also due to heavy environmental impacts (Global Witness, 2013 [16]), and the World Bank Group's Compliance Advisor Ombudsman investigated HAGL in Cambodia after people from 17 communities in O Chum and Andong Meas Districts (including Talao Village) in Ratanakiri Province, with the support of local non-government organizations (NGOs) in Ratanakiri, and Phnom Penh-based Equitable Cambodia, filed a complaint against the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a funder of HAGL in Vietnam, for allegedly grabbing their land without consent (Woodside, 2014 [71]; Cuddy, 2015 [72]).…”

“…Often characterized as "land grabs", the development of land concessions for plantation development has emerged as a major concern for those studying agrarian change (Borras and Franco, 2013 [3]; Scoones et al, 2013 [5]; Rocheleau, 2015 [6]). Indeed, a large number of case studies situated in various parts of the world, and especially in developing countries in the tropics, have demonstrated that these developments have often resulted in the displacement of small-scale farmers from their farmlands, the loss of common lands and forests important for rural livelihoods, the loss of biodiversity and a reduction in landscape diversity, and various other socio-environmental impacts on rural communities (Hall et al, 2011 [7]; White et al, 2012 [2]; Borras and Franco, 2012 [8]; McMichael, 2012 [9]; Hall et al, 2015 [10]; Gingembre, 2015 [11]), including in mainland Southeast Asia (Barney, 2009 [12]; Baird, 2011 [13]; Delang et al, 2012 [14]; Kenney-Lazar, 2012 [15]; Global Witness, 2013 [16]; Neef et al, 2013 [17]; McAllister, 2015 [18]; Schönweger and Messerli, 2015 [19]; Messerli et al, 2015 [20]). Oberlack et al (2016) [4], in a recent review article of a large number of case studies in various parts of the world associated with large-scale land acquisitions, have identified the enclosure of livelihood assets, elite capture, the selective marginalization of people already living in precarious circumstances, and the polarization of development narratives as key causes of adverse livelihood changes globally.…”