The scramble for land and land-related resources by powerful actors engenders various resistance and challenges by peoples’ organizations, social movements, and activists committed to the advancement of the rural poor’s fundamental rights to the natural ‘commons’ and livelihood resources. Southeast Asia boasts of diverse and numerous movements and organizations committed to social and economic justice. In this presentation, Mary Ann shares some of the trends around land and resource grabbing-- including the dominant governance model: mechanisms, actors, experiences, and impacts, that is ‘transforming’ rural Southeast Asia, and resistance struggles, including key demands and alternative perspectives/visions. Mary Ann Manahan is a program officer with Focus on the Global South-Philippines Programme. She joined Focus in 2003 and works on the Reclaiming the Commons programme, with focus on land, water, social and environmental justice and gender issues. Her work combines activism, research, advocacy and campaigning

1. Is Asia for Sale?:
Resource Grabbing, Investments &
People’s Campaigns in Southeast Asia
Mary Ann Manahan, Focus on the Global South
September 15, 2014

2. Outline
• Framework: Emerging Green Consensus
• Context
• Drivers of Investments in Land: ASEAN
Economic Integration
• Trends: Enclosures and Territorialization
• People’s Campaigns and Struggles

3. Land, Water, ‘Green’ Grabbing and Control of Commons
UNEP’s Green Economy: Nature as Capital
multiple crises caused by misallocation of ‘capital’; sets the stage
for the creation of markets where nature and its ecosystem
functions will be priced

4. CONTEXT

5. • Resource grabbing not a new
phenomenon
• In recent years, increase attention
on new wave of foreign acquisitions
of agricultural lands/ global land
grab in global South due to media
reports
• Triggered by complex and
interrelated crises in food, finance,
energy and climate--- revaluation of
rush to control land
• Mantra: for development, food and
water security, agricultural
investment, and energy security.

6. ASEAN Economic Community: A Driver
of Land Investments in Asia

7. (1) ASEAN FDI
Record level
FDI in 2010
amounting to
US$75.8
billion
compared to
US$37.8
billion in
2009

8. (2) Sectoral Composition

9. Where is the money going?

11. (3) Global Value Chains
 Increasing pressure on raw materials (esp.
for mining)- resource wars trigger greater
competition; leads to increase price of raw
materials
 Agriculture Value Chain
 Example CP operations

12. The parent company of CPF, CP Group is one of the first Asian multinational
companies with revenue reaching $33 billion yearly. It has subsidiaries in 15
countries in the world engaged in several businesses, including agribusiness, food
processing, retail, telecommunications and property development.

14. Growth in the Mekong Region
Country GDP Growth Main Drivers of Growth/Slump
Cambodia 6.8 % Garments and Footwear exports
Tourism
Lao PDR 7.8 % Hydropower, Mining,
manufacturing
Tourism
Myanmar 5.5% Investments in hydropower, gas
and oil
Thailand 0.1 % Effect of widespread flooding;
slump in manufacturing
Vietnam 5.9 % Expansion in services; Tourism

15. Development Plans

16. Policy Context
Country No. of signed BITS
(as of 2012)
Brunei 6
Cambodia 21
Indonesia 63
Lao PDR 23
Malaysia 67
Myanmar 6
Philippines 35
SIngapore 41
Thailand 39
Vietnam 58
TOTAL 359

17. Investment Policy
ASEAN Comprehensive Investment
Agreement (ACIA)
 A single investment agreement that provides
clearer interaction of relevant provisions: e.g.
liberalization and protection

18. Regional Economic Integration
 ASEAN Economic Community Blueprint:
Free flow of investments in AEC
 A free and open investment regime is key to
enhancing ASEAN’s competitiveness in
attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) as
well as intra-ASEAN investment
Investment is a core element of the goal to
establish ASEAN as a Single Market and
Production Base

19. Integration and Investments
In fact, for CPF Philippines, the timing was just right.
“We will be ahead when others decide to come to
the Philippines” -- Pinij Kungvankij, vice chair of
Charoen Pokphand Foods (CPF) Philippines Corp.
ASEN integration was a major consideration when
the company decided to start infusing investments
into the Philippines last year.

20. WHAT ARE HAPPENING TO LAND
AND OTHER RESOURCES?

21. Enclosures

22. • New frontiers of
resource control :
new enclosures for
agriculture, mining, forest
exploitation,
conservation, national
parks, real estate,
townships, extraction,
industry, etc.
• “Green grabbing”
/Payment for
Ecological Services–
enclosures with ostensible
environmental aims
Kratie, Cambodia

23. Enclosures are detrimental to those who rely
on what we call as ‘commons’, esp. poor and
marginalized women
• threatens access to and control of land and
natural resources including customary rights
to water, forests and ecosystems
• Affects people’s livelihoods and ability to feed
themselves and the community, especially of
low-income and poor rural women

24. A rubber plantation
owned by a Vietnamese
Company in a
community forest
What happened to the
the people?
They lost their
sources of food, water
and fuel and their
access to their
community forest.

25. • Employment
opportunities? For
whom?
Case of Kampongcham, in the
subdistrict/commune of
Chomkravean

26. Other Issues
• Embedded in struggles of farmers, IPs, rural
women for access to land/land rights
• Myth/Creation of “frontiers”—newly available
land (newly valuable land) for export
production
• Accompanied by militarization and
harassment/violation of human rights
• Differentiated impacts– across class, gender
and ethnicity

27. Territorialization

28. Power of the State: Eminent Domain
• Creation of new territories for investment
through ceasefires, relocation of villages
from upland to lowlands (as in Laos, VN,
Burma, Indonesia)
• Burma—“ceasefire capitalism”—alliances
with Chinese and other Asian investors and
Singaporean banks to move from jade and
timber economies to large scale industrial
agricultural economy (big support from
China—esp. in Northern Burma)

29. DAWEI
Source: TERRA, 2012

30. Conceptual Plan of Dawei Mega Project
204.5 square kilometer
the fifth biggest Industrial Estate in the world and the biggest one of Thailand. (30 sq KM)
Source: TERRA, 2012

31. Source: TERRA, 2012

32. Peoples’ Campaigns to Reclaim the
Commons
Community defence struggles
Land occupation /
positioning / cultivation has
often been used as a
legitimate strategy for
communities
Ensuring the right to
information as in the majority
of land deals, local
communities are kept in the
dark.
Land rights/agrarian reform/
resource rights struggles

33. Women at the forefront of resource rights
struggles
• As actors and leaders mobilizing
against processes that exclude
them (despite criminalization and
harassment)
“I live here. I have rights and I am
working with the women here so
we won’t have to move. I will keep
on fighting here”
- Kun Cha Tha who quit her job selling rice to
devote her time to protesting
90% of the protestors and leaders in
the Boeung Kak lake are women Cambodia’s Boeung Kak Lake
land grabbing case
Source: Reuters/Samrang Pring

34. Local struggles
Source of Photos: Judy Pasimio

35. In reclaiming their ancestral lands/domains
Delsa Justo, Ati Chieftain who
led the land occupation of their
Delsa Justo, Ati Chieftain who
led the land occupation of their
ancestral lands in tourist
destination, Boracay
ancestral lands in tourist
destination, Boracay

36. In asserting the Right to Self-
Determination of Indigenous Peoples
Source of Photos: Judy Pasimio

37. Summary
 Southeast Asia continues to be a high growth region
 SEA in the global value chain- traditional roles but also
looking for new drivers of growth
 Economic integration is driving new investments
including in agriculture, land and natural resources
 There is a push to reform policies including investment
policies and land and environment policies to facilitate
more investments
 Peasants and indigenous communities continue to
defend their lands and resources through various
resistance struggles

38. Thank you very much for listening!