Improving land management in the Mekong Region

Context

The Mekong region countries Lao PDR, Cambodia, and Viet Nam face significant changes in land-use patterns and increasing pressure on natural resources. Many rural communities, particularly smallholders, have been left behind as growth has not been uniform. This presents challenges in securing the land and resource rights crucial to their livelihoods and cultural identities.

Legal and policy frameworks on land governance in the Mekong Region present opportunities for smallholders to protect their land ownership and use rights, but there are several barriers to making full use of these. They are often complex and contain gaps or contradicting clauses. Laws and regulations are sometimes inconsistent or poorly enforced, resulting in corruption and other abuses. The result is land grabbing, displacement and marginalisation of smallholder farmers and other vulnerable groups. The project is designed to combat these shortcomings.

Objective

Smallholders have gained secure and equitable access to and control over agricultural land and forests in the Mekong Region.

Approach

This project is a contribution to the Mekong Region Land Governance Project (MRLG), which is aiming to improve tenure security for smallholder farmers in the region by 2025. MRLG is jointly funded by the Government of Switzerland, through the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) with additional co-financing from Germany and the Government of Luxembourg.

ILM-MR 3 aims to improve policies and practices regarding land tenure security for smallholders through different alliances involving government agencies, civil society and academia. Alliance members are supported in developing evidence-based policy recommendations, fostering policy dialogues and piloting activities at community level.

The alliances facilitate improvements in policy and practices across two thematic areas:

• Customary Tenure
• Responsible Agricultural Investment (RAI)

In most cases, influencing policy focuses on improving laws, implementation decrees and regulatory mechanisms. Where there is a disconnect between policy and effective implementation in the field, practice influencing supports effective policy implementation at local administration level and empowers communities to know their rights and defend them.

Last update: December 2024