Challenges of Governance Responses to Land Use Change and Poverty among Indigenous People in Northeast Cambodia
Sochanny Hak
Development Studies, University of Auckland, New Zealand
This paper focuses on livelihood transitions emerging from land use change in an indigenous commune of northeast Cambodia. The paper argues that despite overall poverty reduction among households in the commune from 2003 to 2012, the rapid expansion of the market economy resulted in dispossession from
land and forest resources, an over reliance on cash crops, land commodification and concentration, social
differentiation, and socioeconomic inequality. In January 2018 a follow-up survey conducted in the commune found that rapid household population growth at 56 percent from 2012 to 2018 circumscribed overall economic growth and outpaced the capacity of the commune’s resources to sustain it. Without
government protection of indigenous land rights, non-indigenous in-migration will undoubtedly proceed at
pace to the point where the indigenous residents of the commune will become the minority poorer population.
Event: Land Governance in an Interconnected World_Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty_2018
Only personal, non-commercial use of this document is allowed.