Land acquisitions are transforming land-use systems globally, and their characteristics and impacts on human well-being have been extensively analysed through local case studies and regional or global inventories. However, national-level analysis that is crucial for national policy on…
Climate change is the greatest challenge facing our generation. It touches all segments of society and it jeopardizes the future prosperity of the global communities, including the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR). In Lao PDR, climate change has resulted in higher temperatures,…
Road expansion has played a prominent role in the agrarian transition that marked the integration of swidden-based farming systems into the market economy in Southeast Asia. Rural roads deeply altered the landscape and livelihood structures by allowing the penetration of boom crops such as…
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, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam to briefly answer the following…
The agricultural sector is a cornerstone of Lao PDR’s development strategy, employing over 70 percent of the population. However, agriculture is contributing only 16 percent of the country’s GDP due to factors including low productivity and lack of modernization, among other issues. To unlock…
The management of land concessions and leases in the agriculture, tree plantation, hydropower and mining subsectors (referred to as land deals henceforth) is a crosscutting topic and involves a wide range of agencies of the Government of the Lao PDR (GoL) at various administrative levels, from…
In September 2015, the global community agreed on “The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”, including 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and 169 targets. Goal 15 urges countries to “protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests,…
Forests play a crucial role in the fight against global climate change. The communities that live in and around forests are well-placed to carry out climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) recognizes that social forestry enables…
This paper highlights how farmers in a northern Lao village transformed their customary land rights – in the face of incoherent overlapping state territorialization attempts – into a territorial strategy to secure their land tenure. By planting rubber, some villagers have engaged in a crop boom…
Read RECOFTC’s digital annual report, “<a href="https://www.recoftc.org/special-report/recoftc-annual-report-2017-2019?mc_cid=7fd44d……
Labor migration and large-scale land enclosures are increasingly central to the story of agrarian change throughout the Global South. Nonetheless, there remain limited understandings of how recent explosions of mobile labor and new sources of smallholder capital shape and are shaped by ongoing…
This policy brief discusses the opportunities and challenges facing social forestry in Southeast Asia and recommends that ASEAN Member States, universities and international research organizations mainstream participatory action research (PAR) in social forestry to overcome these challenges and…