The focus of this report is land grabbing in Cambodia. it is based on APRODEV Agencies experience from many years of development work. The report documents how affected communities have lost their livelihoods because of land grabbing by national and international business corporations. Local communities have not been consulted and they have received little or no compensation for their loss. The communities have been evicted from their land and have faced systematic human rights violations.

Against the backdrop of ongoing intense debate in Cambodia about economic land concessions (ELCs) this paper aims to capture the status quo, more than ten years after the adoption of a new Land Law and almost seven years after the promulgation of the relevant Sub-Decree on Economic Land Concessions. It is hoped that a survey- like appeasement of the policies and practices of these land concessions to date will assist stakeholders in Cambodia in developing fresh policy responses to a series of significant challenges encountered until today. The question is to figure whether it is possible to identify a new ‘common ground’. Uncovering such common ground and identifying lessons from past experiences may assist in formulating policy responses to current problems with economic land concessions and possibly present new directions for policy-making. Having this in mind, this paper will focus on the overall policy framework, namely the basic objectives that have guided decision-making in the field of economic land concessions. In doing so, the focus will be on reconnecting this policy with its original objectives, in particular the reduction of rural poverty and rural development, as these objectives constitute the benchmarks against which any progress or failure of these policies should be measured.

Prey Lang Forest is seriously threatened by Economic Land Concessions (ELCs), mining activities, and illegal logging and clearing, which appear to involve local and provincial authorities on at least some occasions, often with the support of the military and or companies involved in land concessions. Some ELCs are being granted illegally without following existing government legislation, conducting Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) or consulting with local communities. These communities are losing the traditional lands and resources they rely upon to survive.

Cambodia has enjoyed economic growth and a reduction of poverty in the past decade, but the benefits of this growth has not been shared equitably among the citizens. Disparities in income and access to opportunities have increased, particularly in rural communities. Rural communities are heavily dependent on land and forest resources, and landlessness is a main cause of widespread poverty in rural Cambodia.

Rural areas in Cambodia have been the target of large-scale land acquisitions since the late 1990s. As of March 2012, economic land concessions in Cambodia covered more than 2 million hectares, equivalent to over half of the country’s arable land. In this paper, we discuss the policy narratives and discursive strategies that are employed by various actors to justify and legitimize large-scale land acquisitions. We then analyze the underlying mechanisms of such acquisitions and investments and examine how they are entangled with donor-assisted land use planning efforts. Finally, we explore local people’s strategies of resistance.

The case studies covered in this report provide a window into the lives behind the land disputes occurring in Cambodia. This report gives an up- date on the land disputes and villages affected by them, and seeks to address the doubts of people like Grandma Saing and the others quoted above, as well answer the question “what next?” This collection of 11 case studies represents just a few examples of a tsunami of land disputes that have swept across Cambodia generated by industrial “development projects” during the last nearly two decades.