Abstract
In recent years, the term of ‘land grabbing’ has become an attracted phenomenon for researchers and organizations who have been working on local communities or development issues. The current discussions tend to focus on farmland converted from smallholders to large-scale agricultural production. However, a lot of land is lost in other ways such as the expansion of urban spaces into peri-urban zones. In Vietnam, the ongoing urbanization and industrialization strategies have strongly transformed peri-urban areas from dominant agricultural area into multifunctional areas, including large residential development, business areas, industrial zones, and infrastructure development. This process has involved in changes of socioeconomic structure and institutions in globalization context. It seriously affects rural landscapes and farmers’ livelihoods. By using the data and information from existing literatures, Government sources and legal documents on land policy, as well as data from interviews with different stakeholders in Thua Thien Hue province, this paper will make an inventory of agricultural land conversion to urban development in Vietnam; illustrate the issues, causes and consequences.
Keywords: agricultural land conversion, livelihoods, urban development, Vietnam