The contested terrain of land governance reform in Myanmar

ABSTRACT

State control of land plays a critical role in producing land dispossession throughout the Global South. In Myanmar, the state’s approach towards territorial expansion has driven the country’s system of land governance, resulting in widespread and systemic land grabbing. This article investigates ongoing land governance reforms as key terrains for contesting such abuses of power. Employing a relational land governance approach, we view reform processes as shaped by changing power-laden social relations among government, civil society, and international donor actors. Legal and regulatory reforms in Myanmar potentially act as sites of meaningful social change but in practice tend to maintain significant limitations in altering governance dynamics. Civil society organizations and their alliances in Myanmar have played an important role in opening up policy processes to a broader group of political actors. Yet, policies and legal frameworks still are often captured by elite actors, becoming trapped in path dependent power relations.

KEYWORDS:

• State territorialization
• policy reform processes
• path dependency
• Myanmar

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to all of the interviewees for generously providing their time and inputs. Additionally, thank you to Glenn Hunt for providing further insights during the writing process. Colleagues at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) branch office in Yangon were instrumental for facilitating the research in Myanmar. We would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers and the editor, Robert Shepherd, for their comments and edits on earlier versions of the paper. Any remaining errors or omissions are our own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Diana Suhardiman is a Senior Researcher and Research Group Lead for Governance Inclusion and Equality at the International Water Management Institute, based in Vientiane, Laos. Putting power and politics central in natural resource governance, her research highlights the complex and contested nature of water and land governance across scales in South and Southeast Asia.

Miles Kenney-Lazar is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at the National University of Singapore. His research examines the political ecology of land and agro-industrial plantations in Laos and Myanmar, particularly peasant claims to land in the face of displacement.

Ruth Meinzen-Dick is a Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). One of her major research areas deals with how institutions and policies affect the way people manage natural resources, especially land and water. She is co-leader of IFPRI’s research theme on Strengthening Institutions and Governance.

Notes

1 Ferguson 2014; Willis 2013; Callahan 2003; Grundy-Warr and Yin 2002.

2 Aung 2015; Jones 2014; Zaw and Khaing 2013; Gee 2005; Steinberg 2005.

3 Hong 2017; Einzenberger 2016; Kramer 2015.

4 Boutry et al. 2017; Huard 2016.

5 See Woods 2011 on how the allocation of supposedly unused land for investors has exacerbated the crisis of land governance in the country.

6 Oberndorf 2012.

7 FIDH 2017; Gee 2005.

8 Vandergeest and Peluso 1995.

9 LIOH 2015, 9.

10 Linn 2015; Loewen 2012.

11 Pierce et al. 2015.

12 ERI 2018.

13 Pierce et al. 2015.

14 Pierson 2004; Pollitt and Bouckaert 2004; Greener 2002.

15 Thorburn 2000; Leach, Mearns, and Scoones 1999.

16 Kenney-Lazar 2018.

17 Kenney-Lazar 2018; Ribot and Peluso 2003.

18 Cleaver 2002; Thorburn 2000; Leach, Mearns, and Scoones 1999.

19 North 1990, 3.

20 Suhardiman, Rutherford, and Bright 2017.

21 Prasse-Freeman 2014.

22 Braverman et al. 2014, 13.

23 Etchart 2016; Peters, Pierre, and King 2005.

24 South 2017; Mark 2016; Woods 2015; Jones 2014; Kramer 2012; Thawnghmung 2003.

25 Hong 2017.

26 Mark 2016.

27 Global Witness 2015; Gee 2005.

28 FIDH 2017; Linn 2015.

29 Mark 2016.

30 The LUASC was reformulated as the National Land Resource Management Central Committee (NLRMCC) in October 2014. See Oberndorf, Tein, and Oo 2017; TNI 2015.

31 The re-formulated NLRMCC was chaired by the Vice-President, with the Minister of MOECAF as deputy chair. In 2016, MOECAF was combined with the Ministry of Mines to create the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation.

32 Resistance from some elements of the current NLD government to accept the incorporation of ethnic, customary, and communal land rights in the NLUP indicates how the current government is still fairly authoritarian and Burman-centric, despite its democratic claims.

33 LCG’s close connection with the Department of Forestry facilitated greater involvement of CSOs in policy reform processes.

34 These CSOs work on a wide range of issues including land and forest governance, extractive industries, and the impacts of foreign investments on natural resources While they each differ in their focus, scope, area of work, and sources of funding, they share a common vision as advocates for sustainable, equal, and just natural resource governance for marginalized peoples.

35 Oberndorf 2012.

36 Oberndorf, Tein, and Oo 2017.

37 CSO representatives in Yangon expressed that they now felt more left out of political processes under the NLD government than under the Thein Sein government. Such a difference in state-civil society relations may reflect the difference in each government’s need to reach out to civil society as a democratic move to appease the international community.

38 Prasse-Freeman 2015.

39 Simpson 2014.

40 LIOH 2018b.

41 LIOH 2018a.

42 USAID 2014.

43 Sone, Thein, and Diepart 2017.

44 Displacement Solutions and NRC 2017.

45 Sone, Thein, and Diepart 2017.

46 Pierce et al. 2015.

47 LIOH et al. 2017.

48 NLD 2015.

49 Displacement Solutions and Norwegian Refugee Council 2017.

50 Global Witness 2015.

51 LIOH et al. 2017.

52 According to CSO representatives, we interviewed in September 2017, farmers received only a one-day notification to appoint their committee representatives.

53 Meinzen-Dick and Pradhan 2002, 28.

54 McCarthy 2018; Moe 2017; Huang 2013.

55 Pierson 2004; Pollitt and Bouckaert 2004; Greener 2002.

56 Prasse-Freeman 2015.

57 Meinzen-Dick and Pradhan 2002, 7.

58 Spiertz 2000.

59 Prasse-Freeman 2015, 29.

60 Kramer 2009.

61 See Sen 2009 and Fraser 1998 on the importance of including diversity, equity, and accountability.

62 Also see Unruh’s 2001 analysis of postwar Mozambique, which illustrates the need to bring together social, cultural, ecological, and physical systems to resolve conflict in state transformation processes.

63 Jones 2014.

64 Woods 2018; Zin 2019.

Additional information

Funding

This work was undertaken as part of, and funded by, the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) led by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). The opinions expressed here belong to the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of CGIAR, IFPRI, or PIM.