The Impacts of Economic Land Concession on Indigenous People’s Livelihoods. Ratanakiri, Cambodia

Economic land concessions are commonly believed to increase employment in rural areas, to offer new economic opportunities in the countryside, and to encourage local economic diversification through investments upstream and downstream of the concessions. ELCs are also considered to generate state revenues at national and sub-national level and reduce poverty in rural areas. However, this possible progress is bought by massive land-use conflicts, social problems and land degradation. Natural resource-based communities face severe challenges. My research deals with the problems of rural communities in Ratanakiri Province in Cambodia. Former common resources have been granted to private investors (mainly from Vietnam) to develop large-scale agricultural enterprises. The study uses concepts of resilience in livelihood framework to analyze these impacts caused by state development plans. The theoretical framework helps to explain how the economic land concession evolves and affects the resources and communities. The rationale of my contribution originally comes from the main idea of sustainable development which aims to balance different needs of the environment, society and economy. Communities in the research area lost their sense of commonality in resources protection and push on the degradation of existing resources. In the study the resilience of each community is analyzed based on its buffer capacity, self-organization, and capacity for learning. And, it aims to disclose the unpredicted impacts of state development plans on indigenous communities