Trying to follow the money: Possibilities and limits of investor transparency in Southeast Asia's rush for "available" land

Abstract

List of figures and tables Figures Case study areas and spatial data systems examined in this study. vii Three growth landscapes. 4 Forest estate, Kalimantan. 6 Oil palm, timber plantation and logging concessions in Kalimantan. Oil palm frontier as illustrated through the case of GAR plantations, part 1. 11 Oil palm frontier as illustrated through the case of GAR plantations, part 2. 11 Cross-referencing of Profundo data with WRI/GP oil palm concessions data. 16 Concession locations and associated national representation systems in the CLV Development Triangle region. 19 Viet-Lao Rubber Company project landscape. 22 Prevalence of different financing categories in self-reporting companies of the CLV rubber sector, qualified by percentages of total for which data is available. 28 Partial legibility of Chinese agribusiness investment in the Golden Quadrangle area. 33 Tables Estimated oil palm area per province, 2001 and 2010. 8 Details about concessions shown in Figure 4. 9 Fixed asset growth in the legible portion of the Indonesian palm oil sector, disaggregated by financing category. 13 Types of financiers in the Indonesian palm oil sector's two main financing categories, 2002-2011. 14 Key private entrepreneurs invested in the Indonesian oil palm sector. 15 Available investment-per-hectare ratios for the CLV region. 25 Estimated fixed assets in the rubber sector, Lao and Cambodian portions of the CLV triangle region. 26 Types of financiers in the publicly reported fraction of the CLV rubber sector. 29 Area numbers reported by Xishuangbanna Commerce Department for opium replacement agribusiness projects. 34 Miscellaneous agribusiness statistics for northern Myanmar. 35 Comparison between 2003 data on poppy replacement plantations and 2008 data. 35 Subsidy estimates for Chinese poppy replacement agribusiness in northern Myanmar and northern Laos. 37 Numerous key informants helped me navigate the material discussed below; special thanks go to Ward Warmerdam of Profundo Economic Research. Mark Grimsditch and Andreas Neef provided substantial and extremely helpful comments on an early draft, while Steve Lawry helped sharpen the text later. Thank you all. 1 Trying to follow the money in Southeast Asia's land rush A big land deal used to be around 100,000 hectares (240,000 acres). Now the largest ones are many times that. In Sudan alone, South Korea has signed deals for 690,000 hectares, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for 400,000 hectares and Egypt has secured a similar deal to grow wheat. An official in Sudan says his country will set aside for Arab governments roughly a fifth of the cultivated land in Africa's largest country ….