Concealed Contradictions: Sustainable Development Goals and Indigenous Land Dispossession in Cambodia

This paper examines how the dual forces of Economic Land Concessions and nature conservation projects in Cambodia converge to dispossess the Indigenous Bunong communities of their forest commons—land held as common property and managed collectively by local institutions, with access determined by matrilineal descent. Drawing on ethnographic research, it argues that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), rather than transforming entrenched exclusionary practices, function as an institutional epiphenomenon: a discursive layer that enables the Cambodian state to reframe ongoing dispossession in the language of global sustainability while leaving underlying power structures intact. The analysis exposes how state-led land titling processes and overlapping land allocations perpetuate exclusion, masking the gap between the SDGs’ stated aims and the lived realities of the Bunong. The findings call for a critical reassessment of the SDG framework, emphasizing the need to address the political-economic context and the agency of states in selectively mobilizing global agendas to maintain established patterns of Indigenous exclusion.