Cambodia

Three MoUs on investment in mineral exploration and sugar cane plantation in Cambodia were signed last weekend in China’s Guangxi province at the Forum on Potential Investment and Business Opportunities in Cambodia.

The land grab in Cambodia is creating an underclass of landless citizens who have no stake in society and nothing left to lose. Recourse to the law is not an option.

Cambodia is in the grips of a prolonged land grabbing crisis, a slow-motion calamity that has seen over 2.1 million hectares of land – roughly the total area of Wales – transferred mostly from subsistence farmers into the hands of industrial agriculture firms.

Sri Lanka’s Touchwood Investments PLC has acquired 11,138 hectares of land in Cambodia to set up an agricultural project to plant rubber and other crops.

The Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development has published a special issue of its bulletin on landgrabbing, its impacts on women and their resistance, across the Asia Pacific region.

Vruchtbaar en goedkoop land is gewild. In Afrika jagen zakenlui op dit 'groene goud'. Trouw schreef er een serie over. Ook in de Mekong-regio in Zuidoost-Aziëwordt land van bewoners afgepakt, vooral voor de rubberproductie. Foute zaak, zeggen mensenrechtenclubs. Maar de autoriteiten zijn blij met de investeerders.

Film inspired by an APRODEV report on land grabbing in Cambodia

Doch wie erleben Kleinbauern und Ureinwohner vor Ort die Landnahme der Investoren? Thomas Kruchem hat in Uganda, Kambodscha, Argentinien, den Philippinen und Äthiopien recherchiert.

Cambodia is a microcosm of a violent struggle playing out across the globe for control of a shrinking – and therefore increasingly valuable – pool of natural resources.

The Cambodian government has cancelled a 14,981-hectare concession in the Cardamom mountains granted to an Australian firm for a banana plantation.

In the last five years, land concessions totaling tens of thousands of hectares have been granted to private companies for industrial sugarcane production in Cambodia.

Participants from various communities shared documented cases, stories and photos of how large-scale investments of local and foreign owned companies are displacing communities and how people oppose such type of investments.