Access mapping highlights risks from land reform in upland Myanmar
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Access mapping highlights risks from land reform in upland Myanmar. / Kmoch, Laura; Palm, Matilda; Persson, U. Martin; Jepsen, Martin Rudbeck.
In: Journal of Land Use Science, Vol. 16, No. 1, 2021, p. 34-54.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Access mapping highlights risks from land reform in upland Myanmar
AU - Kmoch, Laura
AU - Palm, Matilda
AU - Persson, U. Martin
AU - Jepsen, Martin Rudbeck
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - Secure land access is vital for Myanmar’s upland households, who rely on crops and forests to meet their subsistence needs. But recent land reforms threaten to undermine customary tenure and land-use practices in Myanmar. This paper combines income accounting methods with access theory to assess how new legislation may affect four Chin communities in the country’s north-west. Our assessment of 94 households’ land-access mechanisms and economic benefits from different types of land reveals existing land-access inequalities among Chin households and demonstrates communities’ continued dependence on environmental resources, especially those from swidden fields, home gardens and forests. A majority of households would lose all of their land-derived income, if they were denied access to communities’ customarily governed land, e.g., under the Vacant, Fallow and Virgin Land Management Law. Policy stakeholders should therefore intervene, to alleviate land-access inequalities among Chin households and to direct Myanmar’s land-system dynamics onto more just development trajectories.
AB - Secure land access is vital for Myanmar’s upland households, who rely on crops and forests to meet their subsistence needs. But recent land reforms threaten to undermine customary tenure and land-use practices in Myanmar. This paper combines income accounting methods with access theory to assess how new legislation may affect four Chin communities in the country’s north-west. Our assessment of 94 households’ land-access mechanisms and economic benefits from different types of land reveals existing land-access inequalities among Chin households and demonstrates communities’ continued dependence on environmental resources, especially those from swidden fields, home gardens and forests. A majority of households would lose all of their land-derived income, if they were denied access to communities’ customarily governed land, e.g., under the Vacant, Fallow and Virgin Land Management Law. Policy stakeholders should therefore intervene, to alleviate land-access inequalities among Chin households and to direct Myanmar’s land-system dynamics onto more just development trajectories.
KW - customary tenure
KW - environmental income
KW - land-use practices
KW - Livelihoods
KW - Myanmar
KW - swidden farming
U2 - 10.1080/1747423X.2020.1836053
DO - 10.1080/1747423X.2020.1836053
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85094126314
VL - 16
SP - 34
EP - 54
JO - Journal of Land Use Science
JF - Journal of Land Use Science
SN - 1747-423X
IS - 1
ER -
ID: 251356084