Efforts to thwart the trafficking of conflict commodities to finance wars constitute an ongoing endeavour. As specific approaches become effective for certain commodities, belligerent actors pursue new forms of exploitation.

The Annual Country Reviews reflect upon current land relations in the Mekong Region, and has been
produced for researchers, practitioners and policy advocates operating in the field. Specialists have been
selected from Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam to briefly answer the following two
questions:

Drastic growth of urban populations has caused expansion of peri-urban areas—the transitional zone between a city and its hinterland. Although urbanisation may bring economic opportunities and improve infrastructure in an area, uncontrolled urban expansion towards peri-urban areas will negatively impact the environment and the community living within the area.

Modelling socio-ecological systems, in which social and ecological systems interact each other and co-evolve, are useful for supporting decisions in managing landscape ecosystems.

Property rights are a cornerstone of economic development and social justice. A fundamental way of understanding the strength of property rights is through citizens' perceptions of them. Yet perceptions of tenure security have never been collected at a global scale.

The Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGGT) set out internationally-accepted principles and standards for responsible practices, providing a framework for governments, the private sector and civil society to use when developing policies and programmes for improving food security.

China has a rich resource of native sheep (Ovis aries) breeds associated with historical movements of several nomadic societies. However, the history of sheep and the associated nomadic societies in ancient China remains poorly understood. Here, we studied the genomic diversity of Chinese sheep using genome-wide SNPs, mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal variations in > 1,000 modern samples.

It is acknowledged that conflict over land is a major source of violence in various parts of Mindanao, particularly the prosed Bangsamoro region. Historical accounts trace the root cause of land issues and identity-based conflict to the introduction of the Regalian doctrine of land ownership by Spanish colonizers.