Swidden (also called shifting cultivation) has long been the dominant farming system in Montane Mainland Southeast Asia (MMSEA). Today the ecological bounty of this region is threatened by the expansion of settled agriculture, including the proliferation of rubber plantations. In the current conception of REDD+, landscapes involving swidden qualify almost automatically for replacement by other land-use systems because swiddens are perceived to be degraded and inefficient with regard to carbon sequestration.

In recent years the Lao government has provided many foreign investors with large-scale economic land concessions to develop plantations. These concessions have resulted in significant alterations of landscapes and ecological processes, greatly reduced local access to resources through enclosing common areas, and ultimately leading to massive changes in the livelihoods of large numbers of mainly indigenous peoples living near these concessions.

ABSTRACTED FROM INTRODUCTION: Lao PDR is the least densely populated country in Asia and has long been remote and isolated from the rest of the continent. This role has only recently begun to change. The geographic location of Laos between the booming economies of Thailand, Vietnam, and China has led to the perception of Laos as a potential crossroads of the tightly integrated GMS an organization promoting trade, tourism, and development between countries through which the Mekong River runs. However, this is a role it has been somewhat reluctant to accept.

This study discusses the innovation adoption of leading farmers and their problems and suggestions. A focus group discussion was conducted on leading farmers of the Tram Kak District, Takeo Province, Thailand, who first adopted the system of rice intensification (SRI). Findings showed that leading farmers observed the system of rice intensification (SRI) after attending the training course which was organized by Centre d'Etude et de Développement Agricole Cambodgien (CEDAC).

In Vietnam, forest devolution policies were implemented in the early 1990’s under which the government transferred management power over large areas of forested land previously controlled by the state forest enterprises or local authorities to local households. The government believes that implementing devolution policies would improve local livelihoods for the upland poor and stabilize forest conditions to increase forest cover.

ABSTRACTED FROM THE INTRODUCTION: This is a study of the rice economy in Myanmar. It seeks to identify barriers and bottlenecks that are hindering growth and depressing value in a sector that must play a central role in alleviating the extreme poverty that currently afflicts an expanding proportion of rural households.

INTRODUCTION: Over the last 30 years, the context of development in Cambodian has undergone dramatic changes. A succession of deep transformations, characterized by a complete restructuring of institutional and socio-economic environment, has resulted in a singular situation. Cambodian society remains largely agrarian, with land being the corner stone of the production system for a large majority of the population.

The research team set out to answer three research questions: 1) What are rubber investment’s key features with regard to the investment process, investor identity, location, activities and scale? 2) How was the “upland” landscape originally zoned and mapped as part of the LFA process, and later re-zoned and mapped by local authorities and foreign investors? 3) What are the impacts of rubber investment in upland areas on the land use and livelihoods of the villagers involved?

ABSTRACTED FROM INTRODUCTION: Since đổi mới, Vietnam witnesses a rapid urbanization and industrialization, which leads to conversions of a large area of agricultural land and other types of land, and this has forced thousands of farmer households to change their traditional livelihoods and even their lives. Using the lens of a sustainable livelihoods framework, this study analyzes and explains the questions of how, in what ways and to what extent agricultural land conversions have been affecting farmer livelihoods in one peri-urban Hanoi village.

TAKEN FROM EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: This report documents the contemporary ecological, social and economic transformations occurring in one village in Lao PDR’s central Khammouane province under multiple sources of development-induced displacement. Rural development policy in Laos is focused on promoting rapid rural modernisation, to be achieved through foreign direct investments in two key resource sectors: hydropower and plantations.

This paper is part of a collection of five policy briefs was commissioned by the World Bank for the 2009 World Development Report Reshaping Economic Geography. Through relocation policies, the Government of Lao PDR seeks to transform what it considers to be a traditional, rural economy into a modernised market-oriented system by eradicating shifting cultivation, changing the way that land is allocated and by reaching communities.

This participatory poverty assessment (PPA 2006) comprises one component of ADB’s Technical Assistance to the Lao People’s Democratic Republic for Institutional Strengthening for Poverty Monitoring and Evaluation. The goal of this PPA, as with the first PPA in 2000, is to complement the statistical analyses of poverty in a meaningful way and to record the experiences and concerns of the poor in order to initiate and identify more effective forms of public and private actions to alleviate poverty.