 So I think we are ready to start. Welcome to everybody who is attending this webinar from Land Portal. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Daniel Hayward. I am not a cat. I am a knowledge engagement coordinator for Land Portal and also project coordinator for the Mekong Land Research Forum based at Chiang Mai University in Thailand. In a moment, we will be introducing our four main panellists and hearing from three Southeast Asian countries on developments in responsible agricultural investment and how they have potential to recognize and protect land tenure for small holders and the rural poor. Before that, we will be introducing a newly published set of country portfolios providing an entry point to learn about land relations in a number of Southeast Asian countries. But first of all, a few logistical notes before we get started. This webinar is being recorded and will be available later for consultation on the Land Portal website and on our YouTube channel. Following presentations from our panellists, we will have 30 minutes to address your questions. Now for these, please use the Q&A feature to pose your questions, not the chat box. However, if you want to post your questions so that everyone sees them, you can subsequently put them into the chat box. Before going to the panellists, a bit of context. This webinar is part of an upcoming series of sessions named Country Insights. Over the past year, Land Portal has been compiling a series of country portfolios summarizing the history and development of a country's land governance system and analyzing key elements of this system, such as the land legislation, trends and land use, how women access and control land, investments, and so on. Romy will be posting the links to these portfolios in the chat, if you're curious. The portfolios act as an entry point to learn about a new country, suggesting further sources for deeper exploration and linking to relevant news reports, blogs and data sets. To have a look at them, you can go to the Land Portal website and click on the tab, Countries. In the last month, we have published portfolios on Cambodia, which was written by my colleague Anne Hennings, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. And over the next few minutes, I'd just like to give a few reflections on these four countries. Now in geographical terms, Indonesia is by far the largest with a population of 270 million people, a total land area of just over 1.9 million square kilometers, and with 300 distinct ethnic and linguistic groups. At the other end of the spectrum, Singapore is the smallest, a city-state with 5.7 million people crammed into just 719 square kilometers, making it one of the most densely populated countries in the world. All four countries endured periods of colonial rule. Indonesia was the first to achieve independence from Dutch rule in 1945. Singapore was the last country to do so in 1963, initially as part of the federation of Malaysia, only to split from it in 1965 and become a sovereign state. For the legal land system in each country, both Indonesia and Malaysia are highly pluralistic, acknowledging statutory Islamic and customary laws. Malaysia does so within a federal political structure, with law and regulation operating at both federal and state levels in Peninsular Malaysia, and then the states of Sarawak and Sabah having their own legal systems to draw upon. On the other hand, Singapore has a highly centralized land planning system. By developing vertically due to land scarcity, 90% of people in Singapore are homeowners in affordable high-rise housing, and yet the state owns 90% of the land. Nearly a quarter of all this land is reclaimed, and this links to Cambodia in the controversial provision of sand to feed the reclamation process. Meanwhile, Cambodia itself suffered during a destructive period of rule under the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to nine, where private property rights were abolished and existing land documents destroyed. In terms of land use, Singapore is classed as 100% urban, although there are pockets of forests and agricultural areas. The country presently imports 90% of its food needs, and there is an aim to increase domestic food production to contribute 30% of needs under its 30x30 target. Despite a predominance of forest cover in Indonesia and Malaysia, in both countries a majority of the population reside in urban areas. In Indonesia, this represents 56% of the population, with the main urban center being Jakarta. In Malaysia, the figure is 77%, which is one of the higher rates in Southeast Asia. Cambodia, on the other hand, remains predominantly rural populace, with only around a quarter of the population residing in urban areas. The final area I would like to mention leads us on to the main topic for today's webinar. Turning land into capital has been a key strategy for economic development in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Cambodia. The exception here is Singapore, which due to its limited land size has become the strongest economy in Southeast Asia as a leader in finance and technology. Indonesia has the third largest area of tropical rainforest in the world, and 70% of all land is designated state forest land. Despite the claims of forest-based communities, there is a large corporate presence for mining, logging, and oil palm production. Malaysia sees similar disputes between commercial use and customary claims on forest land. For oil palm, there's been a remarkable rise from just 433 square kilometers in 1961 to over 52,000 square kilometers in 2018. In Cambodia, there is a legacy of large-scale land concessions from colonial times to the present day, more recently turned as economic land concessions or ELCs, and these take place for flex crops such as sugar and rubber. After large concerns as to their productivity, a moratorium was placed on new concessions in 2012, and there are also land deals for mining and hydropower projects. Now, I think that's enough of a summary on the countries to start with, and we do urge you to go to our country pages to have a look for further detail. Before we start with the main discussion, we would like to conduct a very quick poll so that we know who is attending this webinar. So we have two questions in the poll, and some options will be shortly coming up on your screen. The first question is, where are you based? And we should have a question coming up, which gives some options. These are regions around the world. Yes, I would just like, this is Romy from Land Bottle. Neil, can you? Yes. Good, so you should see on your screen now in which region are you based, and if everyone could quickly fill in a box, we will have the results in approximately 20 seconds or so. The second question, scrolling down, is which sector do you represent? And we have a number of categories here, government, civil society or NGOs, private sector, international organizations, universities, knowledge institutes, or other. So please do take a moment to vote on these two questions, and we will reveal the results in a moment. We're almost there. So yes, I can see the results here. We have, for the first question, we have an interesting mix. The highest proportion of participants here today are based in Europe, that's 40%, followed by Southeast Asia, 34%, and then Africa, 14%. Perhaps for the timing of this webinar, it's not surprising we have less participants from the Americas. So welcome to all our viewers from around the world. It's nice to see such a mix. For the second question, which sector do you represent? We have 40% of viewers from universities or knowledge institutes. The second highest category was civil society, NGOs, 20%. Then joint third is international organizations and government on 14, 14, 14%. Then private sector, 6% and other, 6% as well. So I think we have quite a nice, healthy range, and it's also very nice to see that we have so many colleagues from government attending today. So again, thank you all for coming. So now on to the main topic of the webinar. This takes three out of our four countries, namely Indonesia, Malaysia and Cambodia, and looks deeper into the impact of investments to small holders and other land users. There are numerous cases where such groups have lost access rights to their land due to its acquisition for commercial purposes, often without receiving adequate compensation. This is despite evidence that large-scale acquisitions, particularly concessions, have delivered neither the economic growth promoted by national governments, nor the profits desired by investors, be they domestic or foreign. As a result, there is a growing interest in alternative investment models. The challenge is to try and encourage investor confidence while also promoting sustainable practices and inclusivity in land deals so that small holders have an opportunity to share both in the benefits of production and achieve secure tenure over their land. For some further country-based perspectives, I would like to introduce our presenters for today. Our first presenter is Ms Chan Sovi Ngon, who is a researcher and operations manager at the Centre for Policy Studies in Cambodia. Her research interests focus on modernised agricultural practices for small-holder farmers, agricultural value chains, linkages between gender, agriculture and climate change, and responsible land governance. She is presently a researcher for the study project Research on Agricultural Investment Business Models in Cambodia. The second speaker is Mr Andiko Sutan Mankayo, who serves as a senior sustainability and human rights lawyer in ASM law office. He is currently a member of the Steering Committee on Indonesia National Climate Change Control and specialises in environmental justice. Additionally, he has worked for a range of institutions in Indonesia, including the Indonesia National Forestry Council, PUMA, Association for Community and Ecologically Based Law Reform and Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation. Our third presenter is Dr Reza Asmi. Dr Asmi has a background in environmental sciences with experience around Asia and Africa. He is executive director and founder of Malaysia-based Wild Asia, promoting conservation and helping connect consumers, businesses and traders to reduce their environmental footprint. In particular, the project promotes responsible oil palm production and responsible tourism. Finally, at the end of this webinar, we will be inviting Dr Rob Cole to give some final reflections. Rob is an advisor on responsible agricultural investment for the Mekong Region Land Governance Project, or MRLG. MRLG works on smallholder tenure security in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. Rob's role at MRLG aims to promote do-no-harm agribusiness investments that are mutually beneficial for farmers and investors, while protecting the land base that is vital to rural livelihoods. During this session, I will ask three questions to which the panelist will respond over the next 45 minutes. Then we will have approximately 30 minutes for questions from the public. Finally, Dr Rob Cole will give a few closing remarks to round off the seminar. So, our first question is, how have land investments in your country impacted upon the land tenure security of smallholders and the rural poor? Now, could we have a first response for the case of Malaysia from Reza Azmi? Thank you. Hi, Daniel. Thanks very much. I think the context for Malaysia is that we've been part of this 100 year, I guess it's 100 year experiment in industrial agriculture of large land scale investments. And these are thousands of hectares of land developed for essentially commodities, which are not necessarily a product used within the domestic markets, but really destined for foreign markets, for example, rubber, oil, palm and timber. And I felt that before we get into the sort of the dramas and the problems of today, it's good to have a reflection of the past. And our colonial, I mean, Malaysia shares this colonial history with a number of other countries around the world. And what we can see is that if you look back about 100 plus years ago, the first model of plantations was starting to be rolled out. For example, you had the tobacco plantations in America. You had the first prospects of rubber and other types of plantation commodities in Malaysia. Now, what I can understand from this is that we've sort of seen land development in about four phases. So 100 years ago, it was what I would imagine a sort of mavericks, these pioneers who go out and are selling jungle and opening up land. And much of this is on the back of private equity or this idea that they were part of a business chain where they could produce a crop cheaply sold back to London at a cheap rate so that this could be then further traded in these European markets. And I think this is the model that sort of shaped a lot of finance and trade in Southeast Asia. Then the second phase is in the sort of 1950s where we're now under sort of nationalistic, we're now an independent government. And the next phase of large scale developments were largely backed by the World Bank or these other financial institutions. And under this guise of development. So these, for example, I think Daniel mentioned, Felda. So this was a case of large investments for landless smallholders. And this started the next phase in Malaysia. So we had the mavericks, we had then this development phase. And then by the about the 1980s, we saw this wave of nationalism. So the mavericks of 100 years ago are now landowners. And a lot of these landowners were being acquired by the Malaysian government in some way or another, where government link companies started to buy back a lot of these companies and keep it under Malaysian control. So we start seeing the birth of what government linked companies. So Saim Darby of today is a result of one of those acquisitions. Then the fourth phase, what I've seen in the last 10 or 20 years, the sort of new generation of mavericks with private investments with speculators all looking at land development projects as a way to make money. Now, if I look back, the reason why the early large scale developments worked in Malaysia was because our population structure was small. And then the second factor, which I feel is actually a lot of the land was held either within the sort of control of a few vialties or, and then the third factor was also that the fact that these are forested lands far, far away from these sort of coastal areas where people actually were. So I feel that this model maybe worked well in this context. But the problem is that this large scale development model promoted for different reasons, whether it's development or for making money was then brought to regions where customary lands are the dominant land sort of dominant land factor. So this is where we start seeing the problem. So if you go to Papua New Guinea, you go to Sarawak, you go to Africa, all the conflicts between what the state understands as concessions versus what the local people understand as their rights, there is a mix match here. And often the people who are residing in these concession areas are not really in a position of power because they are power brokers, there's government officials, there's the private sector, there's, you know, there's a whole bunch of different people who are actually calling all the shops. So I think this is the sort of context to I think a lot of the problems that we're starting to see and is being reported, etc. And so I think I'll stop there because I think I wanted to sort of just set the scene so that we can kind of pass on to now the problems that we're seeing in Indonesia and Cambodia. Thank you so much, Reza. I think this is really important reminder for us that to understand present-day dynamics, we often, we do need to take that historical approach and see how maybe what worked in the past, how those dynamics have changed, caused problems in the present day. So thank you so much for that. For our second response, I'd like to hear about impacts of land investments in Cambodia. So I'd like to go to Chancellor Limon. If I could ask you to unmute your microphone, please. Hello, everyone. So this is Sophie from Cambodia. Before I answer the question, I'd like to give an overview of the brief history of the land investment in Cambodia. So the government of Cambodia started to grant ESC project in early 1990s and the main purpose are to develop intensive agricultural and agro-industrial activities, increase employment, and diversify by the livelihood opportunity in rural areas. And another purpose is also to generate step revenue through economic land use. Currently, there are 231 ESC projects covering around 1.1 million hectares. And the life cycle of the project, the ESC project was 99 years, but later on the government negotiated with those ESC companies to reduce the life cycle to only 50 years. So some under negotiation and some also agreed to reduce the ESC project to 50 years. This ESC project is very significant for the investment in Cambodia and they have also created different impacts like on communal land titling. It has the process of formal communal land registration in Cambodia. The project also impacts on the use of communal land and resources, such as point, pastoral land, non-timber forest products, upland farm, and also secret forest for the indigenous people. The control result impacts because of the ESC project a complex complicated land conflict between the local people and the investor. It also threatening to the land 10 years of local people because in Cambodia, especially in rural area, not all people have their hard land titling which are considered full legitimate of the ownership. And with the arrival of the ESC project, some of them lost their land because they have no legitimate rights acknowledged by the company and also by the government, and some are being overcreated from their land. So they lost access to natural resources on the land and also the surrounding environment that have been the main sources of their livelihood. Given this, through the conflict resolution between the investor and the local people that implemented by the Cambodian government through the Leopard skin policy to address the land conflict between 2012 and 2013, some people also get their land title registered. The impact of the land investments through these ESC projects also led to new land acquisition by some people in rural areas because after losing their land to the investment company, they had to find a substitute way to maintain their livelihood and access to the natural resources. Given the complex impact and land conflict, there are some policy impacts from the ESC investment projects, particularly on rural employment that have created full-time and part-time job for rural people that they can work with the company through labor work. So those people can also generate extra income to support their livelihood after some of them have lost their land. It also contributed to improve the local economic activities and also enhance the local infrastructure development, especially the rural roads in Cambodia, school and summer hair center as well. I think I stop here. I let you from the other country. Thank you. Thank you so much, Sophie. Good to hear about this complexity and also to hear about some sort of positive as well as negative outcomes from Cambodia. Finally, to hear about Indonesia, which like Malaysia has a legacy of land investment for oil palm production, I'd like to invite some comments from Mr. Andiko. Oh, and I'd like to add also that the internet reception, there is no working camera there, so we want to be having a view of Mr. Andiko directly. Thank you, Pak Daniel and all. Nice to join with the seminar. From Indonesia, I would like to explain a little bit about the history context. After Indonesia independence, Indonesia got the big problem about the gap of tenure among parties inside Indonesia. Indonesia tried to develop the industry, especially based on the land, for example, palm oil, plantation and rubber. But when my government was start the development of plantation in Indonesia, the agrarian problem still still running. There is no good improvement about how to resolve the gap of tenure. And this situation brings many problems for Indonesia's investment. For example, we met with the conflict of tenure in Indonesia. And until 2009, Indonesia is number one of palm oil producer around the world. And 12.3 million hectares of palm oil plantation out by 25 conglomerate. And a few million hectare of palm oil owned by small holder, but not so good condition in the ground. And the state forest area, 95 percent, the license was given to the company. It looked like timber company and timber plantation company. But only 5.12 percent the license owned by community. And based on this condition, from one reset a few years ago, World Bank reset talking about 1 percent of population in Indonesia controlled 68 percent national wealth. Now, based on this condition, the land investment in Indonesia meet with the many conflict, environmental conflict or social conflict in the ground. Now, the problem the investment doesn't have some obligation to talking the idea. The idea of investment doesn't have obligation to talk with community in first step. The investment coming and will be invite the community after he got the license and he need some space to negotiate, make some negotiation with community to take over his land. And the model of land acquisition in the big business in Indonesia only give the compensation. Now, if we talking about the compensation, we talking about the big transfer right from the community, small holder to the big company and in that time the situation change in the ground in Indonesia. The farmer will be transfer to be employee or different job in the ground. There is no idea about that. Now, after that, slowly, slowly the Indonesian law try to develop some solution, but not enough, I think. For example, my government and Diko, I just want to check you are still here, we have lost your volume for a moment. If we have lost him for a moment, we will give a few more seconds for Diko to rejoin us. Otherwise, I was going to make the comment that I think it's very interesting to make this close linkage between land investments and inequality. And I think there is a lot more interesting in inequality in a wide range of fields and I certainly know there has been this recent publication through Oxfam on inequality. So, if we, I think Diko has left us for a moment, he will probably be trying to come back in. What we will do, I think he was nearly at the end of the answer, we will give him the opportunity if he comes back to finish his answer and move on to the next question. However, what we will do in the meantime is move on to the second question and get the first response. So, the second question is what are the, having looked at, what is the kind of the status of impact from land investments on on land tenure for smallholders? What are the latest interests and developments that open the door for responsible agricultural investment and the inclusion of smallholders? So, whilst we wait for Diko to come back, I'd like to ask for a first response from Chan Sobbingon for Cambodia. Thank you. Thank you, Daya, for the second question. So, talking about the latest interest and development that opened the door for responsible agricultural investment, I think in Cambodia, we now focus on the track farming that is considered as the latest development that are open the door to promote the inclusive of smallholder farmers. It is the business model that are implemented by the agricultural cooperative that have smallholder farmers with the private companies. It can be the ESE project or other private investors to produce a agricultural product for export as per their query contract. There are also other initiatives by the government NGOs and companies to explore potential opportunity that the land investor, particularly the ELC companies who have processing plan of factory to work with smallholder farmers through contract farming. But it's still under the exploration and research and discussion. We are not sure if it is possible and if it is possible, what kind of business model should be implemented to include the smallholder farmer. From my working experience, the post-heal business model that can be called inclusive of smallholder farmers, it is contract farming for organic cassava production and the standard cashew nut production in Praveya province between the private companies and the agricultural cooperative that consists of the smallholder farmers. So how it works, so let's say the organic cassava production contract farming between the Cambodian agricultural cooperative and cooperation called CACC with 11 agricultural cooperative in Praveya here. They signed a contract and you contract with AC the agricultural cooperative to produce a specific amount of organic cassava and they provide technical support to ensure the organic quality while the farmers through the agricultural cooperative have to ensure the quality monitoring and organic cassava production and sell to the company as per the agree contract and quantity. Besides this for the standard cashew nut model, it's with Santana agro product. So this company they have their own plantation, they have the processing factories but the plantation, their own plantation cannot be used enough cashew nut for the processing factory. So they want to work with the smallholder farmers through the contract farming but they also buy the cashew nut through the open market from smallholder farmers under commercial farm to supply to their processing factory. These can be considered after the inclusive business model even through contract or under the contract negotiation or they buy the product from the smallholder farmers but at least they include the smallholder farmer in the process of their business development. I think I stop here and let hear the view from the other panelists. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Sovi. I think we are still waiting and checking on Andiko to rejoin us so I would like to get a response from Reza as me for this question and as a reminder what we're looking at the opportunities and new developments that give some potential for responsible agricultural investment. So we'd like to hear something from the case of Malaysia. Thank you. Thanks, Anil. So again just context why so in terms of Malaysian land cover under oil palm I think we're about five million or five or maybe six million hectares and maybe 30-40% of that is controlled by essentially these large corporations. Another 30-40% of that sits under some sort of development scheme and that's primarily the area where you know the beneficiaries are the either landless smallholders or smallholder farmers who actually own their pieces of land. In I think what okay then the other group are the sort of independent smallholders where there isn't actually any direct link to market but they have a place to sell their crops because of all the established mills across the different production regions. So from my I think from my land because we've been involved quite heavily within the development of the Round Table for Sustainable Oil Palm which is a sort of multi stakeholder platform which it's not just industry but it's sort of industry NGOs and the banks involved in this in this platform which has been around for about the last 15 years. So within that context the idea for having more responsible more responsibility for the local communities around where these plantations and mills are has been a sort of key feature of the RSPO standards from the very beginning but probably in the last few years you started to see more sort of specificity and just how or what that means and how the companies demonstrate what they're doing. So then what we're seeing on the ground is that a lot of these RSPO certified companies are starting to look at well how do I provide more support for these independent producers who are within their range or are existing suppliers to them. Some of the early sort of examples would be providing better quality material, some are providing services and then more recently we started to hear some of the big companies saying well maybe we'll just take over the land management of these farms and so that reduces a lot of the costs for them and they sort of they would take a cut from the products that arise from this. But I think with all of this I mean all of this is still remains within the band of essentially this industrial model so it's more monoculture but now you know sort of done within schemes or essentially you're just helping the smaller farmers with their monoculture crop. From another dimension through the RSPO as well again over the last 15 years or so we started to see how the standard has been used as a sort of investment criteria. So there are some parties people who are thinking of investing in either existing projects or new projects where they are using a number of the critical criteria within the RSPO which includes the provisions for fair and free and prior informed consent, the need for having you know sort of HCV assessments for the sort of environmental due diligence and all of those things are one of the key requirements within this sort of lens of looking at new developments. So I think that's a positive thing. However what I don't see in the Malaysian context is how all these efforts within these international investments or international investors looking at projects in Malaysia and Indonesia. We don't see a crossover with the national banks for example and we don't see this with a lot of the sort of I mean from that sort of sector. So I think that that would be kind of interesting to see whether they will adopt similar stance in terms of using a standard like the RSPO to screen whether investments will go ahead or not or whether these are things that need to be excluded. So anyway I'll leave it at that. Thank you so much Reza. To give an update apparently we are getting communication there was there's been a power cut in Mr Andiko's area so he is not able to get on internet at the moment. We will proceed with the webinar and hope that the situation changes and he can rejoin us. Otherwise what we can do is try and consider a means by which we can still put forward and reflect his responses in the reporting and sort of settlements to outputs from this webinar. What I do know is that certainly to talk about opportunities he also wanted to look at sort of promotion of sustainable oil and certification systems and legal developments in Indonesia. So I think there would be kind of very interesting crossover and kind of cross learning with Malaysia there. However maybe he will be able to rejoin us to tell you himself. In the meantime I think what we can just do because we're already getting some questions in we can move on to our third and final questions and hear from Sylvie and Reza and then and then move to the Q&A hope that Andiko joins us at another moment. So the third question I mean this follows on from the promotion of responsible agricultural investment and I would like to mention the ASEAN guidelines on responsible agricultural investment. These were set of guidelines that cover 10 areas of agricultural production and they were adopted by ASEAN in 2018. I mean in actuality they pretty much follow the guidelines at a global level put forward by the Committee on World Food Security or CFS. So there's two parts to this question. The first part is how visible are the ASEAN guidelines on responsible agricultural investment in your country? Have you come across them? And the second part do you see them having use? Are they useful for your own work? So perhaps firstly I'm going to go straight back to Reza asked me for a response on that. Correct. I think it was helpful when there was three of us. Okay, I think I mean I had a look at the ASEAN guidelines and I must say that I think from my side it's very new. I'm also wondering in the context of Malaysia where there's very limited projects around smallholders just because most of them I mean most of the smallholder projects are actually within these sort of development scheme projects. I'm not sure how the ASEAN lending guidelines would sort of fall into that category but then it goes back to my point before which is that you know we're not seeing how there's more additional responsible criteria is being added into investments into investment criteria and in some ways that's a shame because when I actually look at the ASEAN guidelines there are some good things in there and one of the things we sort of jumped out at me when I was looking at it was that especially for smallholders it's sort of written in a very sort of fuzzy way but essentially what it's saying is that it's promoting sustainable land management and I think if I reflect back on the this model that we've inherited should all land developments be this industrial model which was this 100-year-old experiment which I think doesn't work everywhere. Number two is that the industrial model also doesn't respect soil which is fundamental for any form of sustainable agriculture. There's heavy mechanization, the natural soil fertility has more or less disappeared because that's the reason why we have so much dependency on chemical or inorganic fertilizers and when we started to look at this from the context of smallholders we realized that all of these industrial kind of model that essentially the industrial model when applied to smallholders with their very small land area makes them very very uh I mean their profits are actually very small and then there's this whole risk of being you know any commodity drops in commodity prices they're they're affected quite badly so I started to see well okay well maybe if we look at sustainable land management in a different way perhaps we should look at seeing the agroforestry model or a shift from monocultures to polycultures and our own sort of trials around organic production and oil palm actually show you that you can not depend a hundred percent on on bought fertilizer once you understand that natural soil fertility is built up by adding more organic content back to your soils because it's the micro rises that's the bacteria in the soils which are actually the fundamental building blocks for soil fertility but also for good plant health so that's something that's kind of missing but you're seeing it with the smallholders they're practicing this however their yields may be uh maybe not optimum compared to the industrial foundations but their cost is lower in fact so they're actually making more profits so then on the other side if you look at polycultures you're then saying well why not add trees why not add different crops to your farm block and now you've got layering of income in a small area your profitability is starting to go up and as long as it's a polyculture in an organic production model to me I feel this is the the better way to go in in the form of a model that's appropriate for small producers who have access to labour or it's a small enough area that they can manage themselves or with family groups but their income potential is much better compared to taking you know what we're seeing with this industrial model with oil palm or other commodities so I'll stop there. Thank you so much laser and thank you for jumping in for an immediate answer directly after your previous one there was a kind of reason to have you first then um I mean if there is a certain parallel here also with what I think Andiko would would have been saying about there is some knowledge of the the Arsene guidelines in Indonesia but there's no real means to kind of promote or kind of um bring them make them active so um I wanted that to go first because I think it's now interesting to hear from Solvi where there's from the case of Cambodia where I think there is a maybe a bit more than active role for the guidelines so Solvi I invite you to give a response. Thank you Daniel. So regarding the Asian guideline or the responsible agricultural investment I think from my work experience and working with relevant stakeholders the the guideline have good visibility in Cambodia at least among like the key officials at the Ministry of Architecture, Forestry and Fishery some NGOs and also private companies who are investing in agriculture and then sector. I think it provides a good foundation for the company also public sector to consider what architecture that they should consider for and call responsible investment either in agricultural or food. In Cambodia I think the guideline is not mandatory but it plays as a basic foundation for consideration and implementation by different stakeholders but the government committee have initiated its own law and policy to promote the inclusive and also responsible agricultural investment. Many contract farming laws and other related policy that have been trust and negotiated with private company and NGOs and related actors. To me I think the guideline it could trigger consideration of what factors should be considered as responsible and inclusive investment model what are the role and responsibility of the relevant stakeholder from government to NGOs companies communities and farmer themselves and what are the mechanisms that those stakeholders should work together to achieve their specific objective that called inclusive and responsible under the 10 guidelines and it is also beneficial because of the flexibility and adaptation of the guideline that can be that each country can adapt to their different contexts and legal framework. Yeah that's my view from Cambodia. Thank you. Thank you so much. We have some good news that Mr. Andiko has found his way back to our cyber meeting place. So Andiko we have now worked through kind of the answers for the three questions so I would I basically it's it we would we would kind of like to hear also on the Indonesian perspective so I give you the floor to give your responses to all the questions oh yes to give your responses to all the questions. I do know that you were part of the way through your first response to question one so I give you the choice if you would like to complete that response or move on to a reply for question two and three how would you like to respond. Okay thank you sir quickly yeah we have problems about the smallholder in Indonesia because there is some oh transform land acquisition process in Indonesia to transfer the right from the community to the big company and the second question we have opportunity now to influence the situation there is some project a program about from my government about the agrarian reform social forestry and this day we have the new regulation about how to recognize the community right under the new law today now the asian standards should influence the the content of the new law and how to implement and how to bridge the new relationship among the big company and community under the new this law yeah and Indonesian has the like for example human rights and business uh agenda this is uh official under the my government and we can using that and a few big big company for example from the palm oil industry and uh pub and paper has the strong commitment yeah public commitment to recognize the smallholder recognize the indigenous people and uh right of local people we should uh invite the uh the company to follow the asian standard but the problem is not much people hear about the asian standard for for agriculture there is no focal point in indonesia and there is no some meeting or some some publication about that yeah not enough publication from asian or from my government about how to implement the asian standard now from my experience if we're talking about the standard we need to increase the community capacity to to watching to how to standard to be to be implemented and uh in the ground around the company in area land-based business in indonesia maybe that part thank you thank you so much and particularly thank you for stepping in and immediately jumping to all your responses um it's very much appreciated so now we we have a few questions coming in already just before we go to these questions if you're leaving now please let us know what you think about this webinar by filling out a short survey and romey will be posting the link for this in the chat box your feedback is much appreciated but also don't forget that we will also be having some further reflections and comments from rob cull at the end of the q and a so it's well worth sticking around for that um now for just we have some you have various questions some of them are open uh to all panelists and some are directed so what i will do is mix the questions around to diff uh to different presenters so first of all um a question for and i will i will apologize now for any mispronunciation of names but first question from sophie fiat um and this is to chan sobbing on uh could you please elaborate more about how the ownership of land prevent how ownership land ownership prevents women from exercising or claiming their rights to land in cambodia sovi could you have a thank you daniel and also thank you sophie for the question i think in cambodia the land ownership of women and men is different and uh dominated by men because of i can call it the culture or the norm that uh in the family after you get married normally when you have the asset register it's under the man name but later on because of the advocacy or some demanding that at least women can share the land ownership with men so i think it's getting better but still the dominant are men for the land ownership and there are also like differentiation between the like but if you are if you are talking about the crop the cash crop and uh uh subsistence crop so cash crop normally go to men and something for to support your family it will go to women i think it's more it's not about the policy or anything but it's more about the culture and the view of the women themselves and sometimes i think it's not important it just under the name of their husband it should be fine but in the law and policy i think they it is incorrect for both to have their name on the land title or land ownership that is my views and experience from cambodia thank you thank you thank you so much sophie um for a second we have a second question here from justine silvestre um justine thank you for your question um the question goes first it is to razer and sophie um i will first of all direct it to dr razer and then chance will be if you if you have any additional response the floor is yours so the question is andi connoted that there is no obligation for forestry investors to consult with communities prior to investing how about in melasia and cambodia any any obligations for fbic by investors under domestic laws so first i'd like to go to um raise asmy yeah i think this is a little bit uh i guess it's um i guess the simpler answer is because fbic as a concept isn't adopted by the malaysian government in any way uh one could say it doesn't really apply i mean it isn't applied in in what fbic is actually what actually fbic means where we're starting to see some of its usage is within those companies who are on an rsb or program or are are intending to be in an rsb or program because then they would have to apply this on their existing developments or into new projects but i think the other thing to to remember from malaysia is that the extent of customary lands will differ whether you are in peninsular malaysia or whether you're in borneo and in the context of peninsular malaysia most of the time these are these smaller communities of indigenous people who are essentially living within what are the forest areas and in the context of sabah and sarawak it's then much more widely dispersed so fbic would be then an issue for projects which are within the state forests within peninsular malaysia and we're seeing a number of examples of this and in the case of sabah and sarawak where you have these semi-government slash private investments in concessions which overlap in customary land areas then you have all these issues around fbic here so anyway i think i'll pass you over to kembordia soli do you have any further further response uh thank you i think fbic is uh has been promoted by NGOs who are working to protect the rise of the community people and to minimize the impacts from the development project but i don't think it is the mandatory law or policy from the government from the government side they have the ELC process for all the project to do prior to their operation thank you thank you so much um we now have a question for firstly for andiko and then if any other panelist wishes to also respond and it's a question from john meadows uh thank you john in the context this is the question um in the context of the value chain are the speakers aware of any positive impacts that the informed consumer is having on responsible investment practices and ensuring the equality of rights for smallholders it appears that application of as in guidelines is arbitrary and that large-scale food and commodity producers still exist exert enormous power so it's about where where is the consumer having a voice in this process so um and andiko do you have any response first of all to that yeah based on Indonesian experience yeah maybe since 10 years ago there is so big campaign about market campaign yeah i mean about the supply chains uh related with palm oil timber plantation and uh international community other international community and uh the parties yeah industry parties yeah related with land base in indonesia or look like meet with some or power or some reason to change yeah because i know yeah so many big company only aware about the market or not aware about the law yeah because the law commonly still lower than market standard yeah we need some some advocacy and some comment from market to change the the value change yeah value change about the industry and industry will be moving forward and government will be follow the process of uh the circle of uh market system uh around the world yeah now uh based on my experience uh if there is some uh market com a strong market uh uh common from europe for example yeah uh uh this is uh give me like direct and direct direct and not direct impact in the ground in indonesia and slowly slowly we we can change the uh indonesian change the a few regulation related with the industry i would like to underline yeah uh my point uh the market common this is a important point to change the the bad situation in the ground and push the government to change the a few regulation for example indonesian uh was producing the standard of indonesian palm oil sustainability uh standard to respond to respond the market demand uh international international market demand how to send the the clear and clean product from indonesia to market because uh for example like uh oil palm this is uh product for international market not only for uh uh indonesian market yeah now international market will be make a better situation in indonesia through the standard uh look like the asian standard how to change uh situation including the the quality of fpac because in the obligation in indonesia only aware about fpac or only about the consultation not consent yeah uh if we talking about the consultation not consent now this is so strong situation in the ground related with the uh land acquisition from community to company thank you thank you andiko would any of the other panelists like to also jump in and give a response to this question on um the potential impact of the consumer razor i yeah i think um i mean oil palm has been in the spotlight for 15 20 years now um and i think that we got there largely because it became a consumer camp i mean an NGO led campaign to raise consumer awareness about i guess the rates of deforestation and how this was uh you know and then so the whole idea of like growing oil palm and this was killing orangutans and forests and etc um so and i think that was the fundamental basis behind it and that's why we've had these a lot of attention or a lot of the big companies who were connected to this global supply chain moving in a certain direction to meet the rspo standard so i would say that yes uh it does have have an impact and if like if you then look you know 15 years later you're starting to see a similar movement within the rubber sector for example and i think there's a similar standard being launched this year or it was launched last year um and yeah so that's also happening and there's also a response from national governments because they're starting to say well if if then if these other criteria is then we also want to to have a similar standard so so now we've got the Malaysians assembled for more standard but sometimes i feel that you know is it all a little bit too late because the whole point of these campaigns were we wanted to have forest or natural areas protected and i think if that was the goal 20 25 years ago i think we lost the point i mean we've lost we've lost that if we look at peat for example there was a lot of interest to protect this for many many different reasons um but there's only a fraction of natural peatlands that remain today and most of that is sitting under some form of industrial agricultural plantation thank you um okay so the next question is directly to you so shall i move would you like to comment on this question otherwise i go to the next one uh you can go to the next one okay so your next question you have a question specifically for Cambodia um what happened after the 2012 moratorium in Cambodia um the expansion of ELCs is totally stopped is there are or are there any concrete government measures to solve the land related issues um this this is a i don't have a name behind this question so it's given anonymously uh thank you for the question as far as i know and from my experience working in this sector after the 2012 moratorium on the ELC project there are no more land ELC land allocation to any company either local or foreign and there are also the reduction of the ELC project either cancel or revoke the land size uh so far that i think the previously the land ELC land area was around two million something but now it has been used to only one million something that is the measure of the government for the ELC management we got in the land conflict it was controversial when the ELC project have just started and granted and it has been going on between the local people and the companies and there are a solution by the government and policy intervention also from the NGO as well even it has been significantly reduced but i think there are still some overlapping land claim or conflict that is going on but significantly reduced and the government has also taken a different measure to address the conflict as well so far thank you thank you um i think we may just have time for one more question which can be i will first put to andeco but then every panelist can give a response this is a question for um from harry bejera um and it goes as thus is there any national level land use policy to preserve fertile land for agriculture in the countries discussed today if so what are their implications so far so um first of all i'd like to know andeco do you have any response to this question yeah we have a few regulations about land use but the problem is not enough recognition recognition to indigenous people right Indonesia not easy to get the recognition from government because we need uh uh district some kind of district regulation to to get the recognition for indigenous people in indonesia uh if we want to get the recognition uh we will be meet with the long way politic uh rule or to develop or to make a regulation now uh in under the the gap of uh position uh uh in the field uh company has the many right yeah from the state and he meet with the community who the community doesn't have formally recognition from in the government from the law yeah now the company only give like small small like compensation because there is no land title there is no formal land title and map some kind of like that yeah uh the the company uh still uh invite the community to the table of negotiation but the company talking about the uh where is your land title formal land title uh like uh daniel mentioned before or in the preliminary in the nation uh living in the uh legal pluralism the community using the adat law customary law or there is no uh land title formal land title under the customary law but the company has the backup big backup from state law yeah and he's still talking about the uh certificate about the formal map and some kind of like that yeah uh i would like to underline yeah there is the gap yeah gap capacity uh gap the protection uh from the uh state law to parties in the within the uh land based uh business in my country thank you thank you so much um are there any further responses from the other panelists i see nobody on muting so in that case i think we are running a little short on time so what i would like to do is move onto some final reflections for this session um apologies for all those who posted questions we have not had time to answer but um hopefully this discussion continues further outside this particular webinar and um things will become clearer uh however to close this webinar with some with some final thoughts um i'm delighted to introduce uh dr rob cole from mrlg rob the floor is yours thanks very much daniel and thanks to the panel and also to everyone who asked these fascinating questions um we had a really interesting discussion there on questions of the value of ideas like fpik the rai guidelines and actual practices on the ground and whether um consumer and market preferences actually the ultimate decider all of these are long-term processes and all during that time resources continue to be depleted and um land conflicts continue so um in my commentary what i'd like to do is draw together some of the perspectives from the three countries and then offer a few points on the potential and limitations of the guidelines on responsible agricultural investments so we've heard from our three speakers a kind of microcosm of land issues in southeast asia first the exit from colonial control and reworking of land governance that followed um often recreating or reinforcing power structures relating to control over the land base more recently this power has been applied to direct flows of lucrative foreign investments in land intensive commodities industrial plantations or resource extraction um in the cases of malaysia and indonesia the impacts are stark and well known millions of hectares of land transformed to oil palm for consumer products in distant markets in cambodia which has faced similar impacts um from economic land concessions attention is now turning to somewhat towards contract farming and in this regional commodity modification process smallholders um often face difficult choices some are in a position to adapt and gain from new opportunities others face displacement from the resources that they depend on so that uh i think brings us neatly back to the title of this webinar which is don't forget the smallholder so for the mecon region land governance projects our overall focus is to protect smallholder land tenure um within that my work is about promoting more inclusive and do do no harm agricultural investments uh with the asian rye guidelines as a reference a key question is how much can we rely on voluntary guidelines to offer solutions so in the last couple of minutes i'll just highlight um that this is the point really where um words have to be turned into actions and that the principles on responsible agricultural investment will only be useful to us if they're effectively communicated and adopted in practice so a key challenge is that short-term high-risk invest investments generally do not incentivize responsible practices because obviously the investor knows they have a short period with which to maximize their profits for longer-term investments it starts to be more in the interest of investors to look after the land base and the workforce for their own um ongoing business model this um is generally the point when companies start to have more visible CSR programs so the question is how to make responsible investment in the interests of all types of agribusiness and the starting point should not be to say hey everybody here's a whole brand new set of guidelines that we all now now have to follow because a lot of the content of the rye guidelines already comes from existing efforts so uh the voluntary guidelines on responsible governance of land tenure for example and also f-pick which we uh during the discussion um so we need to be clear in our communication and our um work to promote r.a.i that these guidelines aren't reinventing these tools but instead they bring them together under a single framework to address common problems that we see time and time again in relation to agricultural investments um a key related critique is the extent that the rye guidelines can just be another box checking exercise or worse still a another way of greenwashing bad investments and enabling more industrial uh monocultures as Reza um mentioned earlier uh the point is that large-scale um agribusiness has reached a kind of critical mass in southeast asia it's there's a lot of momentum behind this um model of production and um we are much better off taking a serious look at what tools we can apply to incentivize more responsible investments um if a particular type of investment damages local tenure arrangements the related guidelines should provide steps that can be taken to protect them if another investment has negative impacts from a agenda perspective the rye guidelines provide a reference so in some the the way to use these guidelines effectively is to start from the problem at hand and draw on them as a set of potential solutions in the end they are only guidelines it's up to policymakers to prioritize the needs of small holders above those of investors and it's up to investors to recognize that they profit from the same land base that small holders depend on for their livelihoods thanks everybody and i'll hand back to daniel thank you rob thank you very much so that brings us to the end of this webinar um i'd like to thank all of our presenters for their contributions today um thank you also for all of your questions and participate and participation today um i think romey has posted in the chat box uh a web address where you can watch this again on our youtube channel quite soon there will also be a report on this webinar available through the land portal website otherwise um i'd like to on behalf of a land portal i'd like to kind of wish everybody a fabulous rest of the day and all the best so bye for now