Landowners leasing their land to Chinese-run plantations are aware of the many drawbacks associated with banana farming, but still rent out their land, or are sometimes deceived into doing so, because of the limited market for traditional crops as well as the high rents they receive.
After decades of war, in northern Tanintharyi Region, Myanmar, rubber expansion is further aggravating tenure security and reviving historical grievances between Mon and Karen communities, ultimately undermining prospects for peacebuilding and security.
A push to privatise land and other resources in countries from Ukraine to Papua New Guinea is hurting indigenous people and the rural poor, while increasing the risks linked to climate change.
A regional legislator of Myanmar wants the regional government to investigate reports of farmland being illegally rented to foreigners, which could affect food security. She said that foreign companies are using local proxy firms to illegally lease and farm land.
Displacement Solutions has just published a major 184-page legal report on the land grabbing in Myanmar, including for agriculture, and how these processes constitute internationally wrongful acts.
Threats of and actual displacements of rural communities in the Mekong have been on the rise amid increasing land deals for corporate plantations, mining, logging, biofuels, food crops for exports.
Le RCEP changera la manière dont les gouvernements décident des droits fonciers et qui a accès à la terre. Il pourrait par conséquent intensifier l’accaparement des terres en Asie. Nouvel article de GRAIN.
RCEP will not just change rules on the export and import of goods and services; it will change how governments decide on rights to land and who has access to it.
China-backed banana tissue-culture plantations, banned in Laos and Thailand, began popping up in Myanmar about 12 years ago. A report issued earlier this year by Land Security and Environmental Conservation Network indicated that that there are more than 100,000 acres of banana plantations in Kachin state.
The Myanmar government has tightened a law on so-called 'vacant, fallow and virgin' land, and farmers are at risk.
Rights groups are calling on Myanmar's government to scrap a new land reform law they fear could leave millions of people with nowhere to call home.
Myanmar's new land law amendment has its roots in a British colonial notion of “wasteland” that consciously undermines customary land claims of highland communities to the benefit of foreign investors and tax collectors.
