The Mekong Region has experienced rapid agrarian change over the past two decades, driven by public sector policies promoting agricultural commercialisation to alleviate rural poverty, provide income opportunities, and modernize agricultural production systems. This transition has radically altered rural landscapes across the region, including Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam. National governments in the Region welcomed the agrarian transition as an opportunity to create employment, diversify income, and alleviate poverty in rural areas, ultimately achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda.
However, an increasing number of reports have pointed to the negative impacts of some large-scale commercial land investments, including environmental degradation, worsening poverty and inequality, rising landlessness, and social unrest. As smallholder farmers account for the largest national constituency in each Mekong country, securing equitable outcomes along these aspects constitutes high-level objectives of the agrarian transition. This brief investigates the extent to which these objectives have been met during the agrarian transition in the Mekong and explores alternative solutions that could contribute to realigning the agrarian transition within a more holistic understanding of sustainable development.
The brief focuses on three sustainable development concerns: poverty reduction (SDG 1), gender equality (SDG 5) within the broader scope of a reduction in multi-dimensional inequalities, and environmental integrity (SDG 15). Aggregated national statistics tend to hide complex and differentiated realities, failing to capture the ways in which the costs and benefits of the agrarian transition accrue to different parts of society, generating both winners and losers.
