On the production of climate-related loss: land dispossession, indebtedness, and climate change in northeastern Cambodia

This article examines the production of climate-related loss, specifically loss of access to land, among Indigenous and ethnic minority farming communities in northeastern Cambodia. We analyse how rapid socio-environmental and political-economic changes are eroding smallholder farmers’ capacities to cope with climate impacts and can lead to what we call climate-related loss. We show how climate change compounds and reinforces longstanding patterns of marginalisation and environmental degradation that underpin land dispossession. We argue that interpreting climate-related loss as a product of contemporary and historical socio-environmental transformations of the land is necessary for advancing more situated and differentiated understandings of climate justice.