Degraded Forest, Degraded Land and the Development of Industrial Tree Plantations in Laos

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doi:10.1111/sjtg.12076 Degraded forest, degraded land and the development of industrial tree plantations in Laos

Ian G. Baird Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Correspondence: Ian G. Baird (email: [email protected])

The concepts of degraded forest (pa mai xout xom) and degraded land (din seuam xom) have been variously applied in official Lao government policy narratives and law over the last couple of decades. In this article I focus on the concepts of degraded forest and land, and the relationship with industrial tree plantations, using two examples from southern Laos. I argue that the concepts have been significant in both facilitating and obstructing the development of large-scale industrial tree plantations in different times and spaces, thus significantly influencing access and exclusion, as well as the spatialization of tree plantations. I provide a tentative genealogy regarding the emergence of these concepts in land and forestry policy in Laos, and briefly explain the links between degradation and ‘the land rush’ presently affecting Laos.

Keywords: degraded forest, degraded land, land grabbing, land rush, Laos, tree plantations

Introduction In May and June 2013 a crisis emerged in the southernmost part of Laos when large numbers of villagers were hospitalized after becoming dreadfully ill from consuming one of the most important sources of food in rural areas during the early part of the rainy season, het pho, wild mushrooms collected from dry dipterocarp forests. As time passed, and more and more people were reported ill, it became evident that the villagers had been poisoned by herbicides applied by a Vietnamese company in order to suppress grasses in new large-scale rubber plantations expanding into spaces where the mushrooms are abundant. These were found in forests that the Government of Laos (GoL) has defined as ‘degraded’, thus making them eligible for transformation into monoculture tree plantations, but which villagers rarely conceptualize or refer to as being degraded, since the forests have long supported local livelihoods and are thus seen as valuable. Degraded forest (pa mai xout xom in Lao) and degraded land (din seuam xom in Lao) have been important terms in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR or Laos) policy narratives and law over the last couple of decades. As the above anecdote indicates, however, different people have varying ideas about what exactly constitutes ‘degraded forest’ and ‘degraded land’ in Laos, including in law but also in relation to the everyday practices of government officials (Sipaseuth & Hunt, 2009). There has also been considerable confusion about the concept of degradation in other parts of the world (Lanly, 2003). Crucially, the ability to discursively define forests and land as ‘degraded’ or ‘not degraded’, is frequently important for determining what sort of development initiatives are possible in particular spaces. These concepts are crucial for understanding environmental narratives and rural development processes in Laos. Indeed, the question of what constitutes a degraded forest reminds us of Peluso and Vandergeest’s (2001) argument that the idea of state territorial sovereignty over a particular spatial category called ‘forest’ emerged due to the convergence of certain

Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 35 (2014) 328–344 © 2014 The Author Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography © 2014 Department of Geography, National University of Singapore and Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd Degraded forests and plantations in Laos 329 policies and practices that occurred in specific spaces and at particular times. At present, the question of what constitutes degradation in relation to new schemes such as the United Nations’ Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) and associated regulatory frameworks continues to be critical (see Barr & Sayer, 2012). There has been considerable research done regarding the ways that swidden agriculture has been discursively constructed and unfairly discredited in Southeast Asia (see for example, Condominas, 1954; Conklin, 1957; Dove, 1983; Fox et al., 2000). Guillaume Lestrelin (2010) has usefully explored the idea of ‘degradation’ in Laos, especially as it applies to swidden agriculture, and Jonathan Rigg (2006) has considered the links between forest degradation and livelihood adaptation in rural Laos. Others, such as Shoemaker et al. (2001), Lang and Shoemaker (2006), Hunt (2011) and Barney (2007; 2011) have reported on how the classification of ‘degraded’ is linked to industrial plantation development, a topic I expand on here, albeit with a somewhat different emphasis. In particular, I provide examples extracted from my long-term field research conducted from the early 1990s until 2013 regarding plantation development in Champasak Province, southern Laos, particularly in Khong District by individual farmers and in Paksong District by the Thai company Asia Tech. Initially, this research was conducted as part of my work for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and as a coordinator of Canadian bilateral small-scale development assistance in Laos, and more recently as a scholar. My fluency in Lao language has benefited my fieldwork as well as my ability to analyse various Lao language legal documents considered in this study. Here, I focus on how ‘degradation’ has been applied legally and in the policy realm, as well as practically on the ground. Like Whitehead (2012), who has demonstrated how the concept of ‘wastelands’ represents the hidden supplement to the categories of ‘value’ and ‘improvements’ in Lockean philosophy and early English political economy, I argue that defining forests and land as ‘degraded’—despite the lack of clarity on how to apply the concept in the particular context of Laos—has been important for facilitating capitalist monocrop plantation development in the country. Crucially, however, I also argue that the concept, depending on both place and time, has the potential to significantly influence the conditions required for preventing some types of commercial plantation development, and spatially orienting plantation development in particular ways. Following the work of Hall et al. (2011), who build on Ribot and Peluso’s (2003) important ‘theory of access’, and considering the interconnectedness between access and exclusion when it comes to land, I see the concept of degradation as variously both facilitating and obstructive. It is a crucial legitimizing factor. It is also, however, linked to regulation and market factors, elaborated on by Hall et al. (2011).

Degraded forest and land globally During the mid to late 1980s and early 1990s, there was considerable interest in land and forest degradation globally, as indicated by the emergence of large amounts of English-language literature regarding land and forest degradation (see Blaikie & Brookfield, 1987; de Saussay, 1987; Blaikie, 1989; Hunt, 2011).1 For example, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) emphasized the importance of forest degradation in a Tropical Forestry Action Plan (TFAP) report in 1985 (FAO, 1985). The first issue of the academic journal, Land Degradation and Rehabilitation was published in 19892 (Carpenter, 1989), and between 1988 and 1991 the first global 330 Ian G. Baird survey about soil degradation—GLASOD, the Global Survey of Human-Induced Soil Degradation—was carried out by the United Nations. The latter study indicated that soil degradation was occurring globally, with the primary causes being deforestation, over- exploitation for fuelwood, overgrazing, agricultural activities and industrialization. Asia was shown to be experiencing especially high levels of soil degradation due to deforestation, and Laos was labelled as being of ‘an area of serious concern’ in relation to soil degradation (University of Michigan, 1989; Oldeman et al., 1991), apparently due to the large amount of swidden cultivation there. The most recent version of GLASOD for South and Southeast Asia states that almost all of the land in Southeast Asia is degraded, with the main causes being agriculture and deforestation (Van Lynden & Oldeman, 1997). The increased popularity of the concepts and associated terms, ‘soil and land degradation’ has significantly influenced the ways environmental issues associated with forests have been conceptualized globally. Indeed, in the early 1980s the term ‘degraded forest’ was not commonly used in the literature associated with forest management. Instead, ‘deforestation’ was applied more frequently (see, for example, Beresford-Peirse, 1985; Fontaine, 1985; Saouma, 1987). In the 1970s the ‘Theory of Himalayan environmental degradation’ attributed environmental degradation mainly to deforestation rather than forest degradation (Eckholm, 1976), and the FAO’s 1980 global forest inventory referred frequently to ‘deforestation’ but not to ‘forest degradation’ (Lanly, 2003). The terms ‘land degradation’ and ‘soil degradation’ are sometimes used interchange- ably, but they have different meanings, since erosion can occur without the soil necessarily becoming degraded, and soils can become degraded without the structure of the land necessarily changing. In addition, changes in forest cover are considered to be a component of land degradation (FAO, 1999), thus indicating the difference between soil and land degradation. Indeed, often the terms are applied differently depending on various factors, including preferences of authors. Another term frequently used ambigu- ously, but not discussed in detail here, is ‘environmental degradation’. In relation to savanna areas, the term ‘land degradation’ became popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s as an alternative to ‘desertification’, since desertification—which can potentially occur due to human-caused reasons—may also be triggered or exacer- bated due to climate variability (Abel & Blaikie, 1989; Thomas, 1993; Middleton & Thomas, 1997; FAO, 1999; Reynolds & Stafford Smith, 2001). Indeed, cyclical climatic processes are sometimes confused with desertification (FAO, 1999). Although the FAO (1999: 2) has acknowledged that ‘[d]esertification is an emotive term that conjures an image of desert sand dunes advancing over adjacent areas, something that rarely happens in reality’, they still argue that desertification remains an appropriate term for referring to the end result of various processes, including land degradation (FAO, 1999). Blaikie and Brookfield (1987), in their now classic book Land Degradation and Society, define ‘degradation’ simply as ‘reduction to a lower rank’. But the meaning of ‘degradation’ frequently varies. In fact, it has often been unclear what exactly constitutes degraded forest (Lanly, 2003). Lanly (2003: 3) specifically defines degraded forest as ‘not involv[ing] a reduction of the forest area, but rather a quality decrease in its condition’. Gilmour et al. (2000: 3–4) state, however, that:

Degradation is a subjective term. A newly cleared area of forest might be regarded as prime agricultural land by a farmer, but as degraded wildlife habitat by a bird enthusiast. To some Degraded forests and plantations in Laos 331

extent, degradation is in the eye of the beholder. On the other hand, many would agree that once-forested land that has lost both its structure and diversity and is not used in any productive way is now, in some sense, ‘degraded’.

As Lestrelin (2010: 424) points out, with regards to Laos, the ‘severity and causes of land degradation remain vigorously disputed’, with methodological issues and scale of analysis being key issues of contention.

Eucalyptus plantations and degraded land in Laos In the early 1990s there was considerable concern associated with developing eucalyptus plantations in Laos.3 This was partially a result of the interest generated directly and indirectly due to the TFAP. Considerable conflict and contestation had also emerged in Thailand between rural villagers and pulp and paper industry investors regarding the development of eucalyptus plantations (Watershed, 1996a; Lang, 2002). Some villagers and GoL officials had heard about the bad reputation that eucalyptus was gaining, and thus were also voicing some concerns regarding the potential environmental impact of eucalyptus plantations (see Shoemaker et al., 2001). Indeed, NGOs working in Laos on forestry issues stressed to officials, especially those active at the central level, the problems associated with eucalyptus plantations, including the land degradation they could cause. Khankeo Oupravanh and Charlie Pahlman (1993: 8), two key NGO workers in Laos during the early 1990s, wrote,

The environmental impact of planting large areas of Eucalyptus spp. is a serious concern. It is widely recognized that eucalypt plantations can have long term detriment effects on soils, and can contribute to lowering the water table. Eucalypt trees are very hardy, but also very thirsty. Areas which have been used for growing eucalypt are difﬁcult to reclaim for other crops. Apart from the speciﬁc problems associated with eucalypt, any monoculture system is not ecologi- cally sustainable.

It appears that their efforts had some impact, as the Department of Forestry (DoF) decided to prohibit eucalyptus from being grown on good quality soil, thus excluding plantations from land and forest deﬁned as ‘not degraded’. They did not, however, go so far as to ban eucalyptus plantations altogether. Instead, since it was believed that these hardy trees could be grown on degraded land, DoF decided to only allow eucalyptus plantations to be developed on ‘unstocked degraded forest land’ (Oupravanh & Pahlman, 1993). During the 1990s the Asian Development Bank (ADB) was a key proponent of plantation development in Laos. Following GoL policy at the time, a key rationale for developing commercial fast growing tree plantations was to ‘bring into productive use unstocked and barren forest lands and offer an alternative source of raw wood materials which would reduce the pressure on natural forests’ (ADB Industrial Tree Plantations Project Summary, 1993, quoted in Oupravanh & Pahlman, 1993). Oupravanh and Pahlman (1993: 7–8) questioned the ADB’s plantation policy. Their thoughts are worth including at length:

Proponents of plantation activities often argue that only degraded and ‘unstocked’ land will be used to establish plantations. What is really meant by this? From most accounts, it seems clear that most deforested land in the country is in fact presently utilized by local villagers one way or another (e.g. grazing, shifting cultivation, ﬁrewood collection etc.). The fact that these areas are not covered by any ofﬁcial land tenure should not be taken to mean that the land is not being used by local people. It is also worth remembering that fast growing tree species grow 332 Ian G. Baird

faster on good soils than poor soils. What safeguards exist to ensure that plantation activities, especially those implemented by the private sector, will not cause local farmers to be displaced from productive land areas?

Over a decade later, Lang and Shoemaker (2006: 2) also heavily criticized the ADB’s plantation promotion project in Laos, stating:

Throughout its involvement in promoting industrial plantations in Laos, the ADB has consistently downplayed or ignored the importance of forests and common lands to rural Lao communities. Its entire plantations initiative has been formulated on a false premise—that there are large areas of unused or underused ‘degraded’ forests in Laos of little or no current value to local communities and that replacing these ‘degraded’ forests with industrial plantations would be an improvement.

Indicative of the attitude of many of those working for the ADB, in November 2003, Grant Curtis, an NGO Specialist at the ADB, was quoted by Lang and Shoemaker (2006: 2) as stating that, ‘[t]he plantations contribute to enhancement of the environmental landscape through reforestation of degraded forestlands and making more productive use of marginal agricultural soils.’ Yet it has frequently been unclear what exactly constitutes ‘unstocked degraded forest land’, whether to the ADB, the GoL or villagers. The term ‘unstocked’ was totally abandoned in the 2007 Forestry Law; only ‘degraded forest’ has been retained. Illus- trative of the debates about what constituted degraded forest in the 2000s, Japan International Volunteer Centre (2004: 4) wrote, in relation to an 80-ha eucalyptus plantation that a Lao company developed in a village where they were working in Khammouane Province:

Tree plantations in Laos are ordinarily conducted on ‘degraded forest’ lands. However, in the case of Naboh village, the plantation land was comprised of large areas of land that had high potential to be regrown back into natural forest, and it could be asked if the land was indeed suitable for a plantation.

The Land and Forest Allocation Program (LFA), which was developed by the GoL during the 1990s (Baird & Shoemaker, 2007; Fujita & Phanvilay, 2008), frequently resulted in the zoning of land in particular villages as ‘degraded’ in order to justify the development of commercial tree plantations (Barney, 2007; 2011; Hunt, 2011). This is even true for the so-called Participatory Land-Use Planning (PLUP) process developed recently (Barney, 2011). The LFA process also stipulated that upland swidden plots were only supposed to be allocated to villagers if the land was already ‘degraded’ (Barney, 2006). Barney (2007), however, demonstrated how in a village in Hinboun District, Khammouane Province, a joint government-private sector consortium acted in its financial interest to influence the zoning of a third of the village’s land as ‘degraded’, so as to facilitate plantation development. Thus, both villagers and large-scale plantations would appear to have been in competition for ‘degraded’ land. One can begin to see how Hall et al.’s (2011) ideas about regulation, market and legitimization have con- verged at particular times and in certain spaces to create conditions that provide plantation developers access, while excluding others, especially rural villagers. According to Barney (2006: 15), although small-scale plantations could potentially benefit villagers, ‘[w]hen plantations involve the clearing of areas allocated as degraded forests—but which are often cattle grazing, NTFP [non-timber forest product] gathering zones and swidden fields—without market-based compensation for land, the poverty alleviation potential for plantations is undermined.’ Lang and Shoemaker (2006: 3) also Degraded forests and plantations in Laos 333 wrote that ‘[l]ands traditionally used by villagers for their basic livelihood activities were defined by the project as “degraded”. This laid the foundation for their transformation into plantations.’ Even at present, the standard for what exactly constitutes ‘degraded forest land’ remains unclear. Barney (2008) has pointed out the importance of the ADB’s role in strategic cou- pling with the GoL in order to politically create a new administratively important category, ‘degraded forest land’. Following the framework laid out by Hall et al. (2011), one could say that multilateral banks and various international agencies have colluded with the GoL to create the legal (regulations), financial (market) and discursive (legitimization) conditions for facilitating the allocation of land and forests for highly capital- ized large-scale plantation development, thus giving access to foreign investors (or others with large amounts of capital) while excluding those without the means to develop large plantations, the villagers, who previously were able to access these lands. In addition, there is a spatial component, as investors require large pieces of land and relatively easy access to markets. It can indeed be argued that land grabbing by plantation companies with particular spatial requirements is being facilitated by the development of the concept of degraded forest and land, and that legitimization, regulation and market are all crucial factors. Without denying this, there is, however, more to the matter.

Land and forest degradation in Laos Although it is not clear exactly when and how the concepts of ‘degraded forest’ and ‘degraded land’ were introduced to the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR or Laos) in official policy discourse, they emerged in government documents beginning in the late 1980s and early 1990s.4 Of particular importance during this period was the calling for, by the then Prime Minister of Laos Kaysone Phomvihane, for the ‘first National Forestry Conference’ organized in 1989. At this conference, Kaysone called for a decrease in forest degradation in Laos and an increase in forest cover, to 70 per cent of land cover (Mossberg, 2013). Today the terms land and forest degradation are commonly referred to in Laos, both in legal and policy documents, and in discussions involving forestry officials (Southavilay et al., 2012). The GoL, and particularly the Department of Forestry (DoF) within the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF), were the first to adopt the concept at the policy level, and that they were heavily influenced by the United Nations Development Programme. The latter administratively managed the TFAP, the FAO which implemented the project,5 and TFAP donors such as the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), the World Bank and the ADB (Mossberg, 2013).6 Indeed, the TFAP was heavily influenced by the emergence of a global narrative linking land and forest degradation to increasing poverty (Lestrelin, 2010). The TFAP for Laos was completed in 1990, with its main aims being to eradicate swidden agriculture through the intensification of other types of agriculture, to develop commercial logging and industrial fast-growing tree plantations, and to promote a certain kind of land tenure reform. These changes were largely justified on the grounds that swidden cultivation was causing the degradation of forests and soils in Laos (GoL, 1990; Baird & Shoemaker, 2007; 2008). Thus, the term ‘degraded forest’ was inserted into forest policy in Laos as a result of the TFAP, and since then has become well established and conceptually important to official forestry policy discourses in the country, even though the TFAP was rapidly discontinued globally in the mid-1990s after it was negatively evaluated by the FAO, the World Resources Institute and various 334 Ian G. Baird international NGOs (Sizer, 1994; Lestrelin et al., 2012). However, prior to this time various donors to Laos, including Sweden, Finland, Germany, the World Bank, the ADB, the FAO and some NGOs, identified funding priorities based on the six subprogrammes. These continued to be implemented by the Department of Forestry between 1990 and 1996 (Mossberg, 2013), which organized annual coordination meet- ings with donors and NGOs (Carl Mossberg, former FAO employee, pers. comm., 6 April 2014). Lestrelin (2010: 426) reports that ‘[s]ince the late 1980s, the state of Laos has placed environmental conservation at the core of its rural development strategy.’ In the early 1990s the GoL developed a policy framework related to plantation development that specifically employed the concept of ‘degraded forest’ and ‘degraded land’. Although there is little indisputable evidence regarding the extent and processes of land degradation in Laos (Lestrelin, 2010), the 1993 Prime Minister Decree #169 was particularly important, as it divided the forest into five classes: 1) protection forest, 2) conservation forest, 3) reservation forest, 4) production forest and 5) degraded forest. Apart from commercial state-sanctioned logging and NTFP collection, which was allowed in ‘production forest’, other human activities were only permitted in ‘degraded forest’. Still, this classification system was difficult to apply, since it was predicated on ecological potential rather than actual condition. Nevertheless, it was transferred into Article 13 of the 1996 Forestry Law, which stated that ‘individuals and organizations can use forests but limited to degraded forests and shall be allocated according to the labor and financial capacity, but not exceeding 3 ha/labor force in a family’ [emphasis added] (GoL, 1996). The 1996 Forestry law stipulated that ‘degraded forests’ could be used for agriculture, plantations, grazing and other human activities (Barney, 2006). Following Hall et al. (2011), the role of regulation in determining access and exclusion was quite significant. Laos’ 1997 Land Law further expanded the concept of ‘degraded land’, stating that each household in a village was eligible for 1 ha of fish and paddy rice, 3 ha of fruit trees, 3 ha for tree planting, 3 ha for upland crops, and up to 15 ha for livestock grazing. Crucially, this land was only supposed to be sourced from ‘degraded land’ (Barney, 2006). In 2003, a new Land Law was adopted (GoL, 2003), reaffirming principles introduced in the 1997 law. According to Article 21, which deals with the determination of forest land use rights, and also in line with the 1996 Forestry Law,

The State gives the authorization to individuals and families for long-term and efﬁcient use of forest land which is considered deforested land or degraded land in conformity with the objectives for an area of not over three hectares per one labor force in the family.

Most recently, the 2007 Forestry Law states that plantations are not supposed to be developed in areas with high natural forests, but in degraded forests or on barren land. But there is certainly no consensus as to what constitutes degraded forest and land; the MAF states that land with less than 30 m3 of standing timber per hectare is considered ‘degraded’ (Barney, 2011). The ADB’s 1993–2004 Industrial Tree Plantations Project, however, considers degraded forests to have less than 20 per cent crown cover (Barney, 2011). The World Bank (2010) states that a degraded forest includes less than 20 per cent crown cover, covers an area of more than 0.5 ha, has trees with a minimum height of 5 m, and does not include bamboo and palm tree forests. The Japanese company, Oji Paper, has decided that degraded forests have less than 20 m3 of standing timber per hectare (Barney, 2011). Indeed, the ADB (2003), cited by Lang and Shoemaker (2006: 3), states that ‘[m]ost villagers expressed the opinion that they have no degraded forest Degraded forests and plantations in Laos 335 land’, indicating that the concept is frequently nebulous in rural areas and contested elsewhere. This is also the impression that I have developed over years of discussing environmental issues with rural people in southern Laos. But still, what constitutes degraded forest is administratively crucial in Laos. It has been pointed out that no governments in Southeast Asia allow for plantation development on lands covered with high natural forests. Therefore, in many countries plantations can also only be established on degraded lands, although in reality laws are frequently reinterpreted so as to avoid this issue, or simply not followed, whether in Laos or other parts of Southeast Asia (Barney, 2011). Moreover, even when they are, there is often considerable scope for interpretation of what actually constitutes degraded lands and forests. As Barney (2011: 188) puts it, in relation to Laos, ‘[f]orests are often not surveyed according to standards, and there is a useful ambiguity in the definitions of what exactly constitutes degraded forestlands.’ This blurriness has the potential to both increase access as well as reduce it, especially in a country such as Laos, where state policy is rarely enforced by central level bureaucrats, but is rather more frequently based on individual local level official interpretation. These officials are often unclear about state definitions themselves, and combined with the existence of many interpretations of what constitutes degraded forest, and the ability for officials to apply considerable local discretion, there is a lot of scope for justifying various actions in the field. Glenn Hunt (2011: 28) points out that ‘[t]he concept of degraded forest was (and still is) problematic, because it allows for lands to be appropriated for plantation development under Article 13 of the 1996 Law, and Articles 72–75 of the 2007 Forest Law.’ Barney (2011: 191) also points out that ‘[t]he irony of this situation is that “degraded” forest has quickly become a very lucrative and strategic asset for the GoL, as these represent the areas that can be allocated to concessionaires for plantation development.’ Indeed, in recent years constituting forests as degraded opens up opportunities for the state to capture land rents. Moreover, since many degraded forest areas are actually regenerating swidden fields, designating the areas as degraded essentially helps justify the transfer of village common property into state property. Rezoning land as degraded has made plantation development competitive for companies such as Oji in Khammouane Province, central Laos, who have taken advantage of the designation of swidden land as ‘degraded’ to justify the development of plantations (Hunt, 2011). The actual state definitions of ‘degradation’ are worth considering. The 2007 For- estry law (GoL, 2007) defines degraded forests, although in a rather vague way:

Degraded forests [emphasis original] are the forest areas that have been heavily damaged such as land without forest or barren forestland, which are allocated for tree replanting, agriculture, trees products, permanent animal husbandry areas or using land for other purposes in accor- dance with the socio-economic development plan (GOL, 2007: 2).

The law further deﬁnes, in somewhat more detail, degraded forestlands, although it is unclear how ‘degraded forests’ and ‘degraded forestlands’ differ. The law states:

Degraded Forestlands [emphasis original] are the forestland areas where forests have been heavily and continually damaged and degraded causing the loss of balance in organic matter, which may not be able to regenerate naturally or become a rich forest again. Typical species of plants and trees growing in this area are: Alang alang (Imperata cylindrica), May Tiou 336 Ian G. Baird

(Cratoxylon sp.), small bamboo, broom grass (Thysanolaena maxima) or other various species’ (GOL, 2007: 2).

The law also states,

Forest development [emphasis original] means the regeneration of degraded forest areas or reforestation after logging or heavy destruction using technical and scientiﬁc methods to upgrade the quality of the area and increase forest cover’ (GOL, 2007: 3).

Article 3.18 further states:

Forestland development [emphasis original] means the improvement of land quality from degraded land to become abundant land’ (GOL, 2007: 3).

In relation to the recent surge in large-scale plantation development in Laos, Article 74, which relates to ‘leases or concessions of forestland’, is particularly important. It reads:

The lease or concession of forestland for regenerating forests, planting trees, industrial trees plantations and collecting non-timber forest products shall be issued in degraded forestland, which are not able to naturally regenerate, and in designated barren forestland’ (GOL, 2007: 26).

Article 75.2 states,

The government has the right to approve a lease or concession of degraded forestland, which is not able to naturally regenerate, with area of more than 150 hectares but under 15,000 hectares per one project and with a lease or concession period more than 30 years, but with the maximum period not more than 40 years, with extensible depending on the case (GOL, 2007: 26).

The following sections outline the ways that the concepts of ‘degraded forest’ and ‘degraded land’ were materially important for not only providing tree plantation access in Laos in the late 1990s and 2000s, but also for excluding plantation access and affecting the spatializing of plantation development in the early 1990s.

Eucalyptus plantations in southern Laos Khong is the southernmost district in Champassak Province. While best known for the large number of islands located in the Mekong River’s Siphandone area, which is mainly located in Khong, the part of the district east of the Mekong River are largely dominated by lowland fire climax deciduous dipterocarp-oak forests (generally referred to as dry dipterocarp forests) (Maxwell, 2001). The development of small eucalyptus plantations there in the early 1990s demonstrates the material importance of the way policies were interpreted and enforced at that time. I remember observing the implications of the defining of certain types of forest areas as ‘degraded’ when I was conducting research during the mid-1990s in Khong District. The forest adjacent to highway #13 in Khong is largely dry dipterocarp. Few large trees are found, and there are some open grassland areas scattered between clusters of relatively small dipterocarp trees. These grassland patches were deemed by the Champasak Province forestry officials to be ‘unstocked degraded forest land’, even though there is considerable evidence to suggest that these types of forests produce a large number of important NTFPs of considerable value to rural villagers (Shoemaker et al., 2001; Baird & Shoemaker, 2008; Barney, 2011; Hunt, 2011; Xatdichanh, 2011). In any case, some local relatively small-scale ethnic Lao entrepreneurs were encouraged to Degraded forests and plantations in Laos 337 invest in planting eucalyptus trees in the grassland areas between the natural trees that already existed on the landscape. Crucially, however, they were not permitted to plant trees in adjacent areas with more natural trees, at least during this early era of plantation development. I remember riding by on buses and observing these intermittent clusters of eucalyptus saplings planted in previous tree-less areas adjacent to the roads. In this case at least, there was an apparently sincere attempt to develop plantations based on government policy associated with the concept of ‘degraded forest land’. Later I discussed the circumstances with both Khong District forestry officials and villagers. Various people confirmed that officials were concerned that eucalyptus trees would cause land degradation. There were a number of contextual conditions that probably contributed to these circumstances. First, plantation specific market influences in Laos were still limited in the 1990s as compared to more recently. Only lately have officials become more familiar with ways of generating ‘unofficial’ income from them. However, differences in the ways that local officials in particular provinces and districts dealt with these issues were also significant. Officials have been influenced by various factors, including the inclinations of their superiors, and more recently the increased eagerness of officials to risk being reprimanded to gain personal benefits from forestry activities (see Baird, 2010). Indeed, the concept of ‘degraded forest’ has, at different spaces and times, been variously important for prohibiting and spatially orienting plantation development as well as for promoting it. I had a chance to observe the development of the eucalyptus plantations cultivated on the ‘unstocked degraded forest land’ in Khong District over a number of years. Even the hardy eucalyptus planted there did not grow well. There was, indeed, a reason why there had been no trees growing there prior to planting saplings. The eucalyptus plantations were a dismal failure, with only scrawny undeveloped eucalyptus growing. The trees survived (although in many cases just barely), but they did not flourish. Eventually the plantations stopped being maintained and were seemingly abandoned. This demonstrated to officials and investors alike that strictly adhering to the policy of only allowing plantations on the most ‘degraded land’ was unlikely to be viable, and probably also contributed to less rigid compliance of this idea in more recent years. As mentioned earlier, dry dipterocarp forest, regardless of its condition, has often been defined as degraded by the DoF. This is how a 50 000-ha, 50-year concession to the New Zealand-owned company, BGA, was justified for planting eucalyptus and acacia trees in central Laos by the DoF in the late 1990s (Shoemaker et al., 2001; Lang, 2002; Barney, 2007; 2011).7 Moreover, in the early 2000s, the Agriculture Promotion Bank in Laos provided villagers in Xaibouli District, Savannakhet Province and elsewhere with loans to establish eucalyptus plantations ‘in dry dipterocarp and degraded forests’ (Shoemaker et al., 2001: 54), even though the forests provided villagers in the area with one of their most important sources of income, wild mushrooms. As Shoemaker et al. (2001: 54) put it,

While dry dipterocarp forests have less economically important trees than semi-evergreen forests, their value to local people is high, since mushroom production is much higher there than in semi-evergreen forests. Dry dipterocarp forests are also important grazing areas for village livestock.

Government and international organizations have tended to undervalue these particular spaces, partially because these forest uses are often not easily legible to the state, as they are not easily captured through remote sensing and other forms of mapping based on permanent features. Mushrooms are not easily seen, and only emerge during certain 338 Ian G. Baird seasons, and livestock are mobile and thus difficult to assess. In addition, it is important to consider who benefits from different land uses. Those who pay few taxes and have little political influence, such as rural villagers, have tended to benefit from particular uses of these habitats, which large-scale investors with broad market access and political power have little interest in.

Asia Tech on the Bolaven Plateau in southern Laos The Bolaven Plateau, or Phou Phiang Bolaven in Lao, is largely located in Paksong District, Champasak Province, although the escarpment areas of the plateau are also situated in parts of Lao Ngam District, Salavan Province; Thateng District, Xekong Province; Saysettha and Sanamxai Districts, Attapeu Province; and Pathoumphone and Bachieng Districts in Champasak Province. Created long ago by volcanic activity, the Plateau reaches from 1000–1350 m above sea level in elevation, and is endowed with high quality soils, making it an important agricultural area for upland crops such as coffee, cabbage and potatoes. The Plateau also receives much more rain than the lowlands surrounding it, with rainfall in some parts reaching over 4000 mm/year. The original vegetation includes a rich variety of semi-evergreen and evergreen forests (Baird & Shoemaker, 2008). One of the first foreign plantation companies to gain a large-scale economic concession in Laos was Asia Tech Company, a Thailand-based firm, and not surprisingly, they were interested in gaining access to the Bolaven Plateau (as were the French colonials earlier). Their story is important, as it especially demonstrates how the concept of ‘degradation’ obstructed and spatially influenced plantation development in Paksong District. Initially, in November 1990, Asia Tech wrote to the GoL to propose a project on 16 000 ha of land on the Plateau. A year later, after negotiations, the government gave Asia Tech permission for the project, with the state taking a 5 per cent share. In 1992, Asia Tech started trial plantations of eucalyptus, and experimented with raising dairy cows. In 1995, they also started trialling Acacia mangium trees in plantations. Prasan Singhonsai of Asia Tech stated, however, in a 1995 meeting organized by the FAO in Vientiane,

Our company has been adversely affected by a lack of consistent technical advice: in 1992, we invested in establishing 200 ha of eucalyptus plantations. Then we were obliged to abandon these plantations due to the confusion of technical units concerned (quoted in Lang, 2002: 50).

This ‘confusion of technical units’ that the Asia Tech representative referred to related to the GoL’s policy to only permit eucalyptus plantation development on ‘unstocked degraded forest land’ (see Oupravanh & Pahlman, 1993). Therefore, because the land on the Bolaven Plateau is generally considered to be some of the best agricultural land in the country, Lao ofﬁcials told Asia Tech to stop planting eucalyptus (Watershed, 1996b). Thus, Asia Tech switched to planting pine trees (Pinus caribia) in 1996–97, which the ofﬁcials had determined could be grown on the higher quality or non-degraded land found on the Plateau (Watershed, 1996b; Lang, 2002). Watershed (1996b: 16) interviewed the company’s Senior Vice-President, Chayavut Chant-nvarngoor in 1996. The following quote demonstrates the importance of the concept of environmental degradation in Laos. It also illustrates the nature and importance of environmental narratives within business more generally. As he put it,

We have been using the concept of long-term reforesting, planting trees in scrub grass areas and unused land. Actually most of the areas we are now using cannot be used by farmers to grow Degraded forests and plantations in Laos 339

any cash crops at all. We have in fact planted only 100 hectares in degraded forests. We are not cutting trees for commercial purposes such as logging—in fact, we have never sold even one single tree for commercial purposes [emphasis added].

We can see how the Asia Tech Senior Vice-President adopted and made use of various terms to present his company’s activities so as to fit well with environment policy narratives. First, he strategically chose to refer to the plantation development process as ‘reforesting’, presumably to improve the image of the project. Second, he described the land given to Asia Tech as ‘unused land’, which is important, since many ethnic Jrou (Laven) villagers on the Plateau had already expressed considerable dissatisfaction to me at the time with Asia Tech’s plantation development scheme, reports that were later summarized by Watershed (1996b). Thus, Asia Tech stood to gain if they could convince the GoL and their local and nongovernmental critics that the land was ‘unused’. That would help legitimize their claim over it, as unused land could not have been taken from the people by Asia Tech. Essentially, Asia Tech wanted to convey the message that they were simply putting unutilized land to productive use, but in fact much of the land was being used by local people, for livestock grazing and NTFP collection, and as buffer forests surrounding their small coffee plantations, with the purpose of keeping occa- sional frosts from killing their coffee plants (Watershed, 1996a). Finally, Asia Tech’s vice-president reported that 100 ha of pines had been planted in ‘degraded forests’. This statement is both understandable yet also contradictory, as pine trees were actually planted because the land was considered to be too good quality for eucalyptus, which the officials believed was only suitable for degraded land. Thus, it was not only the good quality of land that led to the planting of pine trees, but also its spatial orientation on the Bolaven Plateau. Asia Tech was, however, concerned about being blamed for profiting from logging, or from benefiting from converting good quality natural forests into plantations. So, despite the obvious contradiction, it served their purposes to describe the area that they were cultivating as being previously ‘degraded forest’. Being able to define land and forests as degraded in particular contexts, and not degraded in others, was clearly important for Asia Tech.8 This remains the case for many investors trying to develop large-scale plantations in Laos today.

Conclusions This article has considered how the concept of forest and land ‘degradation’ has been applied and legally adopted in Laos over the last two decades, and in particular, how certain environmental policies and practices related to ‘degradation’ have been crucial for both facilitating and preventing, and spatializing certain types of plantation development in Laos, depending on the particular times and spaces where circumstances have played out. I concur with various other authors that the concept of degradation has been important for facilitating large-scale plantation development. Crucially, however, I add that the creation of the categories of ‘degraded’ and ‘non-degraded’ forest and land has also served to obstruct, albeit unevenly, some plantation development, as illustrated through the examples from the 1990s in Khong and Paksong Districts in Champasak Province. This understanding fits much better with the access and exclusion framework that Hall et al. (2011) have proposed, while adding that temporal and spatial context is important for determining access and exclusion. Following Forsyth and Walker (2008), who write about forests and hydrological processes in northern Thailand, I have also endeavoured to show how the seemingly ‘scientific’ concept of ‘degradation’ is, indeed, not politically neutral. Influences relate to 340 Ian G. Baird legitimization, regulation and the market. This is not to say that empirical environmental science is not capable of providing important data for assessing people-environment relations. Indeed it is, at least to some extent, but at the same time bias is always part of the story of environmental narratives, at least to some extent, and frequently to a large extent, with the concept of forest and land degradation in Laos being one example of how the science has been applied, due to a lack of clarity of what it exactly means, with some bias in the Lao context. It is important to consider the science, or lack of it, behind particular claims, and also the ontology of systems in science. For example, Forsyth and Walker (2008: 228) write that ‘[m]any readers might be surprised—if not deeply worried—that so much environmental policy in Thailand is based on beliefs that are unsupported by research and insensitive to local complexity’. This is also true for Laos and elsewhere. Although plantation development are only allowed in ‘degraded’ spaces, it might seem surprising that the GoL has never—at least to my knowledge—clearly and consistently defined what exactly constitutes ‘degradation’. No widely applied benchmarks have been established, with different standards being followed, if any at all, and it does not appear that anyone in the government has ever effectively argued that clear standards would be useful. Instead, the concept has been left vague and open to interpretation—not unlike many other concepts and associated legislation in Laos—even while the term has remained a powerful determinant of what happens on the ground. Productive dry dipterocarp forests have been frequently defined as degraded, even when there is no indication that they are, thus allowing eucalyptus plantation development to occur, even when it has caused serious negative impacts on productive habitats with great livelihood importance for local people who rely on them. Of particular concern is that few studies have been conducted to determine the nature of ‘degradation’ in the context of Laos. Instead, government officials with particular perspectives and biases, and often with conflicts of interest, continue to rely on the same vague wording and lack of clear and consistent definitions. This gives the state more power to facilitate plantation development, or not. Indeed, following Hall et al. (2011), one can see how various factors interact, including legitimation, regulation and market. Ultimately, the convergence of various factors creates a particular assemblage, and thus results. They also result in certain spatial outcomes. Most recently, the concept of degraded land and forest has become important for justifying large-scale economic land concessions for industrial plantation development in Laos, as indicated in the opening anecdote of this article. These concessions are being affected by the recent increasing interest in rural farm land, a trend that some have referred to as the ‘global land grab’, or possibly more suitably, the ‘global land rush’ (Tania Murray Li, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, pers. comm., 1 March 2013), and which have also been equated to primitive accumulation or accumulation by dispossession (Baird, 2011; White et al., 2012). Indeed, there has been considerable scholarship generated related to this issue over the last few years, although there is no space here to review the complex debates. But of specific relevance to this article, Barney (2011: 171) writes, ‘[c]oncessions are thus being allocated by various levels of the Lao government without either standardized, ground-checked consideration of the quality of the forest cover, or a forum for local participation.’ It is also possible, however, to use the concept of ‘degradation’ as a way of resisting plantations, something that the Land Issues Working Group, an NGO-supported coali- tion in Laos, tried to do through arguing, in their 2012 calendar, that only land that is degraded can be given to plantations, thus making the case that there is a considerable Degraded forests and plantations in Laos 341 amount of non-degraded land and forest that should not be allocated to land concessions. Ultimately, the concept of land and forest degradation is important, but following Hall et al. (2011), defining land and forests as degraded has the potential to both facilitate access and exclude as well.

Endnotes

1 However, the term ‘degradation’ was sometimes used before then, in relation to forestry and the environment, but it was not emphasized to the same degree as more recently (see, for example, Doe, 1984). 2 The journal’s name was changed to Land Degradation and Development in 1996. 3 Eucalyptus plantations remain controversial in Laos today, with critics recently arguing during a MAF-organized session on the topic that ‘the [eucalyptus] trees would severely damage the soil leaving it almost infertile, as well as sucking up large quantities of water making soil in the surrounding areas very dry’ (Vientiane Times, 2013). 4 The compound terms ‘xout xom’, meaning ‘to deteriorate’ and ‘seuam xom’, meaning ‘damaged’,’ ruined’ or ‘deteriorated’ have long existed in the Lao language (Kerr, 1972), but I contend that they did not become widely used in Lao forestry policy until after the late 1980s and early 1990s. 5 Carl Mossberg was the Chief Technical Advisor for the TFAP in Laos (Mossberg, 2013). Another key foreigner involved was a Hungarian forester named Jozsef Fidlocsky, who worked initially under Hungarian bilateral aid in 1982 to do the ﬁrst national forest cover studies in Laos, and then under SIDA in 1992 to do the second such study. He played a key role in introducing the concept of degradation to Laos (Carl Mossberg, Former FAO employee, pers. comm., Thakhek, Laos, 16 January 2014). 6 The concept of the TFAP was ﬁrst developed by the FAO in 1985 (FAO, 1985; Saouma, 1987). 7 In 2004, BGA was purchased by Japan’s Oji Paper, resulting in the concessionaire becoming Oji-Lao Plantation Forestry Company, Ltd. The GoL retained a 15 per cent share (Barney, 2007). Barney (2011) reported that the plan is now to grow eucalyptus and acacia trees on a seven-year rotation, with the logs being chipped and sent by container ships to Oji’s pulp factories, either in China or possibly Japan. 8 Asia Tech ran out of funding after planting 900 ha of pine. In 1998 they sprayed herbicide on their pine plantations, and in 2000 they conducted small corn and sugar trials on the plateau, but since then they have largely been inactive, apparently due to funding problems (Lang, 2002).

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