Geographies of Evasion? Reflections on community forestry and systematic land titling in Cambodia

What happens when the development industry tries to strengthen rural people’s tenure rights? In the early 2000s, community forestry and systematic land titling were seen by donors as highly promising interventions to deliver improved livelihoods for rural people in Cambodia. Land titling was projected as a way of enabling smallholder farming to become a third engine of economic growth for the country (after garments and tourism), whilst community forestry was imagined as a way of protecting the forests upon which many rural people depended.

Robin Biddulph presents the results of his research into these interventions. At village-level he describes the fate of the interventions and explains why they did not appear to match their theoretical promise. 

At national level his analysis addresses a paradox common in rights-based development interventions. Namely that they are framed as limiting government power, but at the same time they are implemented by government agencies. This apparent conflict, he suggests, was resolved in these cases “geographies of evasion”, where apparently universal programmes were selectively implemented in places where they would not confront the problems that they claimed to address.

Biddulph’s original research was framed in relation to the “lessons” of earlier (1990s) development studies literature. Now, fifteen years later, such questions of “learning” become relevant again as he embarks on a research collaboration with Dr Astrid Norén-Nilsson of Lund University. This will take him back to the same villages and, in changed circumstances, once again critically examine the contrasts between how issues are described at national level and how they are experienced locally.

Dr Robin Biddulph is Associate Professor of Human Geography at the University of Gothenburg. He lived and worked in Cambodia from 1991-2001. In addition tenure rights in Cambodia, his research interests have included tourism in Cambodia, land reform in Tanzania and housing tenure policies in Sweden.