The objective of this background paper is to provide a succinct description of the land tenure situation
in Cambodia and, on that basis, discuss the needs smallholder farmers have for land, projected up to the
year 2030. The main problem it examines lies at the intersection between, on one hand, the demographic
increase in the rural smallholder population and its associated need for land in the future (the demand
side) and, on the other hand, the possibility offered by the different land tenure regimes to meet this demand
(the supply side); the central question focuses on how supply can meet demand.
By looking first at how much land is available under different categories (the supply side), the paper
succinctly presents and maps the different land tenure regimes with updated statistics and discusses their
main outcomes and shortcomings. On that basis, we present a preliminary assessment of land distribution
by main land tenure systems in Cambodia.
The land under cultivation by smallholders represents 19 percent of the total area of the national territory
and is itself sub-divided into agricultural land with land titles (systematic land registration, 6 percent
and land covered by the Order 01, 6 percent), under Social Land Concession arrangements (1 percent)
and untitled (6 percent). The forest cover includes forest concessions (10 percent), Community Forestry (2
percent), Protected Areas and Protection Forests (20 percent)1
and an unclassified forest cover area (14
percent). Economic Land Concessions under operation represent 12 percent while cancelled concessions
represent 2 percent of the total territory. The actual tenure of a large non-forested area (14 percent) remains
undetermined and further updates are needed to shed light on this issue.
The paper suggests that the central problem of the current Cambodian land reform is its ineffectiveness
in coordinating the processes of land rights security and formalization in lowland and upland areas,
although both regions are closely linked through land-driven migration movements that have intensified
over the past 20 years. This has been particularly contentious given the fact that in a parallel process, and
driven by a strong, state-based political economy, large land deals have been concentrated in the uplands
of the entire country along processes that are exclusionary in nature. The overlap of competing land
claims has created a widespread conflict situation in all uplands region of the country.
By looking at how much land is needed for family farmers in the future (the demand side), the paper
anticipates the land requirements of smallholder farmers by 2030 based on the projected demographic
increase in the economically active population in rural Cambodia and on two sets of scenarios i) the transfer
of unskilled labour from the agricultural to the secondary and tertiary sectors (industries and services)
and ii) the provision of land for smallholder farmers.
The analysis suggests that by the year 2030, the transfer of unskilled labour from agriculture to the
secondary and tertiary sectors will lag behind the demographic increase in the active rural population.
With 2015 as a baseline, the scenarios suggests that by 2030 smallholder farmers will need an additional
land area ranging from 320,600 ha (+10 percent in relation to the actual area at the present time) to
1,962,400 (+64 percent). An average scenario based on an allocation of 1 ha per active labourer (in accordance
with the present social concession policy) and on the continuation of the present transfer rate of
unskilled manpower from agriculture to the secondary and tertiary sectors (i.e. the transfer of 40.000 workers
per year) predicts that 1,622.000 ha will be needed for smallholder farmers by 2030.