‘Better-Practice’ Concessions?: Lessons from Cambodia’s Leopard-Skin Landscape

In many destination countries in the global land rush, the state lays legal claim to large swathes of land, including land occupied and used by smallholders and managed under a variety of customary governance systems. This disjuncture between formal and de facto property is exacerbated by many states not even knowing the extent of their landholdings (FAO et al., 2010), and has in recent years been used to put large amounts of land into play through the blurring of both legal and cartographic boundaries (Cotula et al., 2009; Deininger and Byerlee, 2011; HLPE, 2011; Borras Jr. and Franco, 2012). This