Safeguarding customary forest tenure in the Mekong Region: a legal analysis

ABSTRACT

Customary forest tenure is under increasing pressure from various actors for economic, political, and environmental purposes. The erosion of customary forest tenure can impair societal nature relations, erode traditional practices, and contribute to environmental degradation. In the Mekong Region, customary forest tenure largely remains unprotected through national laws. This article presents a legal analysis examining the extent to which the legal frameworks of Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, and Vietnam contain legal provisions for safeguarding customary forest tenure within different resource systems, agricultural land, swidden land and forests, drawing on Schlager and Ostrom’s bundle of property rights. The legal analysis shows significant gaps exist in legal frameworks to safeguard customary tenure. We recommend that policies toward statutory recognition be developed from the ground up and consider the harmonisation between land and forest laws and relevant implementing ministries.

KEYWORDS:

• Customary forest tenure
• Mekong Region
• land rights
• forest resource rights and access

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Mekong Region Land Governance project (MRLG). MRLG is a project of the Government of Switzerland, through the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), with co-financing from the Government of Germany [email protected] the Government of Luxembourg.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Ironside gained these insights through interviewing a Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MoNRE) representative.

2. Multiple ownership in the Civil Code Art.211 includes a ‘family line, hamlet, village, tribal village, mountainous hamlet, ethnic hamlet, religious community, or other community of property which is formed in accordance with customary practice’.

3. Individuals and households can also gain certification over grazing areas, rice field gardens and can sell and transfer said rights (Land Law, 2019).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Chulalongkorn University, Graduate School [Ratchadapisek Somphot Fund for Postdoctoral Fellowship]; The Mekong Region Land Governance Project.