Proceedings: International Conference on Poverty Reduction and Forests, Bangkok, September 2007 1 A Note on Forest Land Concessions, Social Conflicts, and Poverty in the Mekong Region Keith Barney 1 Large-scale forestry and tree plantation concessions in the Mekong region have been established in different historical periods, and in very different political contexts. In many cases, forest land concessions have been associated with land-use and livelihood conflicts with surrounding communities. Conflicts are typically based upon a local loss of access to customary resources, and are thus founded upon divergences between customary and statutory resource tenure systems. The World Bank (2003) notes that the failure to integrate and adapt legal forms of land and resource tenure with the reality of local livelihood practices almost invariably leads to conflict. At times open hostilities and violence can result. The task of mapping social and communal conflicts over access to resources associated with forestry and land concessions in the Mekong region is at once a historical question—with roots extending well into the colonial period (Peluso and Vandergeest 2001)—and a contemporary one, involving new layers of contestation to struggles over property rights, political economy, and social justice. There is a significant and growing body of evidence, drawn from the Mekong region and elsewhere, that large-scale plantation and forest land concessions do not contribute to effective local poverty alleviation, but rather undermine viable, alternative approaches to rural development which respects the moral, customary, and in some cases legal claims of rural communities to their historical lands. This briefing note represents an initial overview of existing documentation regarding large- scale (> 5,000 hectares) forest land and plantation concessions, and social conflicts in the Mekong region. The overview was undertaken in association with the Rights and Resources Initiative. A couple of observations might be made here. First, data on concessions and social conflicts are highly uneven across the Mekong region; there has been no systematic study conducted which would attempt to gauge, with defined empirical parameters, the extent to which forest land concessions are associated with community resource conflicts, or their relationship to rural poverty reduction. Secondly, what specifically would constitute a “community resource conflict,” and what would constitute “coercion,” are complex questions, which would require further clarification. Certainly, narrowing the analysis to only violent conflict would elide the majority of cases of community–state or community–company livelihood conflicts in the region. The use of violence, for example, by police, or paramilitary, can also remain as a background threat, but which is not necessarily acted upon. While a valid research focus, a focus only upon “spectacular,” or violent conflict, would also have the effect of minimizing the commonplace nature of how most displacement effects from forestry and plantation developments are visited upon rural communities, and how this in turn undermines livelihood capabilities and practices, especially forms of common property resource management. A focus on violence also distracts from how the legal regime in a state, 1 Department of Geography, York University, Toronto, Canada. E-mail: kbarney@yorku.ca