We, participants of the regional workshop “Promoting People’s Rights to Land and Natural Resources“, gathered in Bali, Indonesia on July 23-25, 2012, coming from across Southeast Asia and the Pacific to share experiences and understandings about global land grabbing in our respective countries and to explore possible steps for collaborating and coordinating in planning grassroots learning, advocacy, and actions.

We firmly state that the convergence of current issues such as food and energy crises, climate change, and the increasing nodes of new global financial capital has fueled a wave of contemporary land grabbing. Land and natural resources in the Southeast Asia and Pacific regions have been seized for industrial crop cultivation, monocrop plantations, land speculation, mining, infrastructure projects such as dams, tourism, conservation areas, climate change mitigation, and urban expansion.

This entire process has been facilitated by states and international financial institutions through laws, policies, and agreements between countries and the private sector, including domestic and foreign companies, rural elites, landowners, and corrupt community leaders; regional investments such as free trade and investment agreements; international policies such as the EU biofuel policy, which is a major driver for the large-scale expansion of oil palm and other plantations; and financial capital control over commodity markets and natural resources, which reduces the values of these natural resources to tradable financial instruments.

We collectively understand that land grabbing has specific consequences within and among countries that transcend class, gender, and ethnic strata. Women, children, and indigenous (law) communities are vulnerable groups to ownership usurpation, evictions, and displacements caused by land, water, and forest grabbing. This land grabbing not only exacerbates pre-existing disparities but also destroys local economies, structures, and socio-cultural identities of those dependent on land for their livelihood sustainability. Land grabbing also leads to the stagnation of poverty alleviation, protection of human rights, community well-being, rural area development, and social justice as stipulated in the constitutions, laws, and policies by Southeast Asian and Pacific countries’ governments, as well as human rights instruments at regional and international levels, such as the right to self-determination, the right to a decent standard of living including housing, food, adequate healthcare, cultural rights, ownership, and the right to participate.

We are aware of the differing political responses by various actors, including social movements and civil society, to land grabbing within and among countries. However, we are reminded of the increasing criminalization and life-threatening risks to community struggles to claim and protect their rights to land and natural resources. One by one, we learn about the disrespect and violations of the human rights of communities, imprisonment, and killings of those who have bravely tried to defend their rights.

The worsening situation compels us not to remain silent. Therefore, we collectively demand:

• that governments and states, including bilateral, regional, and international institutions, must ensure and respect the rights of communities and peoples over land and natural resources above the interests of companies and economies seeking to seize the land and its contained natural resources
• that investments, both public and private, must not undermine the rights of various communities and social groups to land and natural resource ownership. These communities must have control over decision-making on whether investments are allowed (in their areas). International legal provisions and enforceable mechanisms must be invoked to regulate and sanction companies investing and operating in other countries, especially with climate change investment mechanisms such as carbon trading, REDD, and the like, if they violate human rights or disrupt local community orders.
• that the principle of free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) regarding investment projects, including land and natural resource allocation changes, must be applied in various settings, at various levels. The absence of this principle in large-scale projects compromises communities’ rights to land, territories, and natural resources. Communities also have the right to say “no” to development or investment projects.
• that accountability and specific mechanisms related to land grabbing resolution must be established and enacted; this includes ensuring communities’ and groups’ rights to sufficient, timely, legitimate, easily accessible, and useful information, especially regarding development and investment projects on land and natural resources.

We are fully aware of the immense challenges faced in combating land grabbing practices in our respective countries and in protecting the individual and collective rights of communities and ensuring access and control over land and natural resources in the Southeast Asia and Pacific region. However, these challenges only embolden us to strengthen our work and collaborate to stop land grabbing in this region. Therefore, we commit further to: