UP THIRD WORLD STUDIES CENTER: Seminar-Workshop on Land Access Issues in Southeast Asia

Monday, August 01, 2016

Seminar-Workshop on Land Access Issues in Southeast Asia

Seminar-Workshop on Land Access Issues in Southeast Asia

29 July 2016, 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Third World Studies Center
College of Social Sciences and Philosophy
University of the Philippines-Diliman

Among the consistent results of the Consortium for the Asian Democracy Index (CADI) surveys conducted in selected Southeast Asian countries since 2011 is the dismal state of asset distribution—i.e., land ownership—in those countries. Meanwhile, the work of the International Research Network on Exploitation and Usage of Nature, Land, and Resources in Africa, Asia and Latin America, or REINVENTERRA, since 2014 has highlighted various issues on access to natural resources and the conditions under which they are exploited, e.g., various forms of (state-sanctioned) land-grabbing. This by-invitation seminar-workshop brings together researchers affiliated with either of these two networks, as well as other researchers working on land access issues, at the Third World Studies Center (TWSC) of the University of the Philippines, where access to critical resources is a constant concern; among other activities, in February 2015, the Center served as secretariat of the international conference entitled “Contested Access to Land in the Philippines and Indonesia: How Can the Rural Poor (Re)gain Control?”

Participants in this seminar-workshop shall have the freedom to discuss any contentious land access issue or issues particular to their country or the region—from how tourism conflicts with traditional land use, to how agrarian reform is progressing (if at all). Also among the participants of this workshop are a team of young video documentary filmmakers who will show their work-in-progress, a short documentary on land reclamation in the Philippine province of Cebu.

Among the aims of the workshop is to draw parallels in the land access/appropriation/transformation issues in different Southeast Asian countries. Questions to be tackled may be in the vein of “Who is benefitting from land grabbing, or the continued non-implementation of land reform?” or “Can the displacement of certain communities for particular massive infrastructure projects be justified?” The proceedings of the seminar-workshop may be transcribed and published in an issue of TWSC’s journal, Kasarinlan: Philippine Journal of Third World Studies.

PROGRAM

8:30-9:00

Registration

9:00-9:10

Welcome remarks

9:10-9:45

Introduction of participants and overview of the seminar-workshop

9:45-10:00

Coffee break

10:00-12:00

Session 1: Senior researchers on land access issues in Southeast Asia

On the land reform movement in Thailand