Rural poor squeezed by land concessions in Mekong region – report
Companies acquired concessions amounting to the size of a small European country, while rural residents of Southeast Asia’s Mekong region saw their landholdings shrink or disappear over the past two decades, according to researchers. More than 5.1 million hectares of land – an area larger than Slovakia – were granted for mining and agricultural concessions in Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand, according to a report by the non-profit Mekong Region Land Governance (MRLG).
