Abstract/Summary

1. This paper first presents the allocation of land to different uses and then examines data on land and fisheries concessions. The registration and titling process and data are next examined. Finally, the paper retabulates and interprets data from eight socio-economic surveys conducted in Cambodia in the recent years in order to analyse the information on land that they provide. The aim of this final chapter is to make a count of the number of land parcels in the country, calculate the average size of parcels, estimate landlessness and land inequality, and make a preliminary estimate of the relationship between poverty and landlessness.
2. Economy-wide data on land use for recent years have been published for 1992–93 and 1996–97. These data are generated by measurements and calculations made out of maps drawn from aerial and satellite photographs. While these information profiles appear to be fairly accurate, there are problems in reconciling the totals in some of the data tables. Such problems usually appear when detailed cartographic maps to reconcile finer differences do not support the aerial photographs. In addition, there is a lot of misinformation on land concessions arising out of a lack of appropriate data in the public domain. Concessions for agriculture are granted by different agencies that do not always use the same approach. As a result, data from different sources do not necessarily match, nor are they consistent across different years. The absence of a central bureau that could collect and collate and finally reconcile different data sets is acutely felt here.
3. Most land in the country is not yet registered and titled. At the more aggregate level, demarcations between land under different uses - for forests, agriculture, urban areas and so forth - have to be made. Next, the boundaries of various districts, communes, and other administrative bodies have to be demarcated. In the domain of private lands, there are a little over half a million certificates issued against an estimated number of 4.5 million application receipts issued. This backlog is indeed daunting.
4. There were 2,093,152 households in the country, as per 1999 Socio-Economic Survey estimates: 1,782,350 in rural areas and the rest in urban areas. This is against a figure of 2,188,663 recorded in the 1998 Population Census. The total agricultural land area measured was 3.91 million hectares as of 1996–97, though it is not certain whether or not it is all brought under the plough each year. Rice land was estimated at about 2.7 million hectares, while the rest was presumably devoted to chamkar crops, plantations and other perennial crops, mainly, though not exclusively, under concessions. Forests cover about 58–59 percent of the total area of the country. The area under forests, as per estimates obtained for 1992–93 and 1996–97, has reduced very marginally. But these estimates do not reflect upon the quality of the forests, a point often made by those who monitor forests.
5. The total area given out for forest concessions, as per company-specific records available from Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF), in 2001, was 4.21 million hectares. This was 6.39 million hectares in 1999, against a figure of about 8 million claimed by an Oxfam study. This discrepancy could be partly due to the fact that government records are not always available in the public domain. Area under agricultural concessions is believed to be about 0.71 million hectares, and area under fishery concessions is about one million hectares. As some of these figures are believed to be approximates, it is strongly proposed that they be inventoried again.
6. The Socio-Economic Survey of 1999 shows the total number of agricultural land parcels to be about 2.88 million hectares. This means that for every household in the country, there are 1.37 parcels of land. The average size of a parcel is small at 0.90 hectares. The total number of residential plots adds up to 2,029,160, including those that are normally possessed and those that may be the subject of some form of dispute. Homelessness works out at about three percent. The average size of residential land is about 888 square metres, about 919 square metres in rural areas and 616 square metres in urban areas. Depending upon the data source consulted, agricultural landlessness works out at about 12–15 percent: the interval could be explained by the regional/target group specific variation. The average size of agricultural land holdings in the agrarian sector is about 1–1.3 hectares per household, again depending upon the area and target group. The statistically most representative sample, the Socio-Economic Survey of 1999, shows this to be 1.33 hectares, though for other reasons there could be bias in these data as well. Agricultural land is owned by both urban and rural dwellers.
7. There is considerable confusion among the populace with regard to the legality of ownership of land. A majority of the people believe that if they are occupying land without conflict or controversy it is legally theirs, irrespective of whether they formally possess land papers. Historically, this has been the traditional position. Only one out of four surveys that inquired about possession of land papers, the PET-98 Survey, projected the true position.
8. Though the average size of agricultural land plot is not large, there is large inequality in their distribution. The Gini coefficient of inequality, which ranges between 0 and 1, is well above 0.50 in almost all surveys. The Socio-Economic Survey of 1999 shows this to be 0.57 for rural areas and the Socio-Economic Survey of 1997 shows this to be 0.66. This gap is too large and it is believed that both these surveys have a data bias or error.
9. The different socio-economic surveys studied in this paper, other than Oxfam's LADIT Survey that specifically collected information on the causes of landlessness, have collected data pertaining to land as additional information to their main concerns. For example, the socio-economic surveys of the National Institute of Statistics were essentially concerned with measurement of standards of living, UNICEF-World Food Programme surveys with nutritional and food security issues, and the Mekong River Commission surveys with fishing capacities and equipment available in the riparian communities. Also, the geographic areas covered by most of these surveys are different. As a result, there is huge inconsistency in the parameters generated from the different data sets on variables relating to land. The need for an exclusive survey on land issues is therefore paramount. Such surveys are periodically conducted in other countries. The Land Tenure Center at the University of Wisconsin, United States, maintains an inventory of such surveys which contains information on their coverage, sample design and so forth. The government may find it useful to create a central bureau of statistics that would not only collect data and collate data collected by others, but also reconcile differences that may exist when data are collected by different agencies.