National Updates on Agribusiness Large Scale Land Acquisitions in Southeast Asia Brief #8 of 8: Union of Burma

A growing body of literature and studies suggests that Burma has become the ‘latest flashpoint in an alarming trend’ of global land grabs. Sources suggest that the land and resource rights of local communities are being undermined by legal reforms that seek to liberalize foreign direct investment and place all lands under the ownership of the State, with little indication that strengthened legal protections for the rights of communities will follow. With its resource-rich but volatile border regions already plagued by decades of civil war, inequitable natural resource exploitation and the dispossession of rural communities in Burma as a result of illregulate agribusiness expansion could become the next trigger of heightened socio-economic turmoil rather than of national development and welfare.