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Large-Scale Land Acquisitions  International Development Policy Large-Scale Land Acquisitions International Development Policy Editor-in-Chief Gilles Carbonnier (Professor of Development Economics, The Graduate Institute, Geneva) Guest Editors Christophe Gironde (Senior Lecturer, The Graduate Institute, Geneva) Christophe Golay (Coordinator of the Project on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights) Peter Messerli (Director of the Centre for Development and Environment (CDE), University of Bern) VOLUME 6 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/idp Editorial Board Marc Bacchetta (Counsellor, Economic Research and Statistics Division, WTO) Jean-François Bayart (Director of Research, Centre of Research and International Studies (CERI), Sciences Po, Paris, France) Carlos Casas (Professor of Economics, Head of the Economics Department, Universidad del Pacifico, Lima, Peru) Francis Cheneval (Professor of Political Philosophy, University of Zurich, Switzerland) Suren Erkman (Director, Institute of Land Use Policies and Human Environment, University of Lausanne, Switzerland) Marcela Eslava (Associate Professor, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia) Till Förster (Professor of Social Anthropology, Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Basel, Switzerland) Ricardo Fuentes-Nieva (Head of Research, Oxfam GB, UK) Inge Kaul (Adjunct Professor, Hertie School of Governance, Berlin, Germany) Xiaoyun Li (Dean of the College of Humanities and Development Studies, China Agricultural University, and Chief Senior Advisor, International Poverty Reduction Center, China) Pamela Martin (Professor in Political Science and Geography, Coastal Carolina University, USA) Katharina Michaelowa (Professor of Political Economy and Development, Institute of Political Science, University of Zurich; Director, Center for Comparative and International Studies, Zurich, Switzerland) Hassan Mshinda (Director, Tanzanian Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH)) Patrick Osakwe (Chief, Africa Section, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)) Ugo Panizza (Professor of Economics, The Graduate Institute, Geneva, Switzerland) Dennis Rodgers (Professor of Urban Social and Political Research (Urban Studies), University of Glasgow, UK) Jorge Alberto Restrepo Torres (Associate Professor, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogota, Colombia) Elizabeth Sidiropoulos (Chief Executive, South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIA), South Africa) Mahaman Tidjani Alou (Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Law and Professor, Abdou Moumouni University, Niamey, Niger) James Zhan (Director, Division of Investment and Enterprise, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)) Managing Editor Marie Thorndahl Research and Communication Officers Maren Schulte and Emmanuel Dalle Mulle Figure Layout y-b design www.ybdigital.com Copyeditors Dave Brooks and Nathalie Tanner Translations Randall Jones and Brian Fergusson Cover Photo Amaury Peeters Visit International Development Policy and associated documents online http://devpol.org and http://debate.devpol.org This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial 3.0 Unported (CC-BY-NC 3.0) License, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. Cover photo courtesy Amaury Peeters. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Large-scale land acquisitions : focus on South-East Asia / edited by Christophe Gironde, Christophe Golay, and Peter Messerli. pages cm. — (International development policy ; volume 6) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-30474-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-30475-8 (e-book) 1. Land tenure—Law and legislation—Southeast Asia. 2. Eminent domain—Southeast Asia. 3. Land use—Law and legislation— Southeast Asia. 4. Real estate development—Law and legislation—Southeast Asia. 5. Law and economic development. I. Gironde, Christophe, editor. II. Golay, Christophe, editor. III. Messerli, Peter, editor. KNC772.L37 2015 333.330959—dc23 2015026735 This publication has been typeset in the multilingual ‘Brill’ typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1663-9383 isbn 978-90-04-30474-1 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-30475-8 (e-book) Copyright 2016 by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. This work is published by Koninklijke Brill NV. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorisation to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Large-Scale Land Acquisitions Focus on South-East Asia Edited by Christophe Gironde, Christophe Golay, and Peter Messerli LEIDEN | BOSTON Contents Foreword ix Preface xi List of Figures xii List of Tables xiii List of Acronyms and Abbreviations xiv Notes on Contributors xvii Part 1 Setting the Scene: History, State, and Law 1 Large-Scale Land Acquisitions: A Historical Perspective 3 Laurence Roudart and Marcel Mazoyer 2 States as Actors in International Agro-Investments 30 Martin Keulertz and Eckart Woertz 3 The Role of Property Rights in the Debate on Large-Scale Land Acquisitions 53 Olivier De Schutter Part 2 Land Dynamics and Livelihoods in South-East Asia 4 The Impact of Larger-Scale Agricultural Investments on Communities in South-East Asia: A First Assessment 81 James Zhan, Hafiz Mirza, and William Speller 5 Sweet and Bitter: Trajectories of Sugar Cane Investments in Northern Luzon, the Philippines, and Aceh, Indonesia, 2006–13 108 Mohamad Shohibuddin, Maria Lisa Alano, and Gerben Nooteboom 6 Marginal Land or Marginal People? Analysing Patterns and Processes of Large-Scale Land Acquisitions in South-East Asia 136 Peter Messerli, Amaury Peeters, Oliver Schoenweger, Vong Nanhthavong, and Andreas Heinimann viii contents 7 From Lagging Behind to Losing Ground: Cambodian and Laotian Household Economy and Large-Scale Land Acquisitions 172 Christophe Gironde and Gilda Senties Portilla 8 ‘Better-Practice’ Concessions? Lessons from Cambodia’s Leopard-Skin Landscape 205 Michael B. Dwyer, Emily Polack, and Sokbunthoeun So Part 3 Human Rights and Large-Scale Land Acquisitions 9 Identifying and Monitoring Human Rights Violations Associated with Large-Scale Land Acquisitions: A Focus on United Nations Mechanisms and South-East Asia 231 Christophe Golay 10 Large-Scale Land Acquisitions in Cambodia: Where Do (Human Rights) Law and Practice Meet? 249 Ioana Cismas and Patricia Paramita Conclusion 11 Large-Scale Land Acquisitions, Livelihoods and Human Rights in South-East Asia 275 Christophe Gironde and Christophe Golay Index 293 Foreword Gilles Carbonnier, Editor-in-Chief The crisis that hit the financial, energy, and food sectors with booming prices in the mid-2000s gave rise to a new wave of transnational, large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) in developing countries. Energy and food price hikes accompanied by export restrictions on rice and other staples raised food secu- rity concerns worldwide, and in particular among net food importing coun- tries. Both foreign and domestic investors from the private and public sectors have since sought to acquire ownership rights and long-term leases over large portions of land in low-income countries. This spurred renewed research interest in agrarian change and ‘land grab- bing’, as reflected in a series of special issues dealing with the topic in major development and agrarian studies journals. On the policy side, social mobili- sation against large-scale land acquisitions encouraged intergovernmental organisations and governments to elaborate regulatory frameworks and volun- tary guidelines meant to protect the interests of local communities and other stakeholders affected by the new land rush. Notwithstanding a rapidly growing body of knowledge on LSLAs, there remain various gaps, for example between specific insights from case stud- ies performed at the community level and studies that look at land acquisi- tion dynamics at the macro level. There remains much scope to better grasp how land deal plans are effectively implemented on the ground and how they impact the livelihood of community members over the mid to long run, includ- ing in terms of human rights. In 2014, the editorial board of International Development Policy invited three guest editors for a special issue on the LSLA phenomenon. We asked Christophe Gironde (Senior Lecturer, the Graduate Institute, Geneva), Christophe Golay (Coordinator of the Project on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights) and Peter Messerli (Director of the Centre for Development and Environment, University of Bern) to fill specific gaps in our understanding of LSLAs. I wish to commend the guest editors for bringing major innovative features
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