Plantations in the mekong region: overview parts of the world, people have found the need to keep crossing “new frontiers”, trying to push beyond the current limits, to find a better life, to live off a better land. Except when forcibly displaced, the Mekong peoples WRM Briefing, December 2008 have rarely had a history of moving away because they have their own golden land. That may be the reason explaining why local people cannot understand the arrival of eager investors that rush into the area to exploit Eucalyptus, oil palm, rubber and jatropha monoculture plantations are their land to make their own wealth to take back home. expanding onto local communities’ lands and forests in the Mekong region’s countries. Promoted under the guise of development, poverty Private companies are aiming to take over 180,000 hectares in Laos and alleviation and even climate change mitigation, such plantations are over 800,000 hectares of land in Cambodia. Some of those companies are resulting in severe social and environmental impacts. In spite of the local, but most are international. The governments of the lower Mekong difficult political scenarios in which they are established, local peoples are countries award concessions to companies whose main aim is to grab the resisting through whichever means are available to them, ranging from largest possible piece of land, and later on to introduce large-scale broad alliances against plantations (such as inThailand) to nascent clusters plantations. The first time the plantation may fail, but this doesn’t matter, of local resistance against plantations in Cambodia and Laos. The aim of as long as they own the large piece of land along the main road, paying this briefing is to provide a broad picture of the on-the-ground reality of very low land taxes, and having plenty of time to try planting again. plantations in the region’s six countries –Burma, Cambodia, China, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam- as a means of generating awareness on the issue Two of the biggest threats for the Mekong’s peoples and resources – large- and, more importantly, to assist in making local peoples’ voices heard. At scale plantations and hydropower dams – share many common the same time, we hope that this information will serve as a useful tool for characteristics, including those related to the role of the private sector, the strengthening resistance against these types of plantations, both within and lack of clear policies for making the process transparent and accountable outside the Mekong region. and lack of people’s participation. However, large-scale plantations have pushed ahead over the past 10-15 years and as a result many people have lost their land, even before they knew if they had any legal right over the - No more frontiers to cross: Life of Mekong people in the land at all. The promotion of those schemes has made the gap between plantation era people and policy makers wider, and people still have no chance to make their own voices heard in decisions about their future on their own land. Welcome to the Mekong region! Sharing a linguistic heritage, the same Taking the land away from people means taking away their rice, their ancient word is still used across the region, particularly in Laos, Thailand crops and their families’ food security. This can turn out to be a disaster and Cambodia, to describe this place as “suvarnabhumi”, a golden land. for the countries in many senses, if an urgent reconsideration of these With tremendous natural resources from their rivers, forests and lands, policies is not achieved in time. people of the Mekong were seen as more than wealthy, as most of the people live by their capacity to work together with nature. While rivers As all the Mekong countries – Burma, Cambodia, China, Laos, Thailand, and forests are places to hunt, fish and gather, the land is gold in itself, and Vietnam – are presently providing soils for large scale plantations producing rice, a variety of crops and providing a home. While in other including rubber, eucalyptus, jatropha and palm oil, at the same time investors from within the region are also playing a power game over the lives in their own land that they have been using for generations. That is to less strong countries. Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese companies and their say, they wish to stay in their “Suvarnabhumi”, their golden land. state enterprises are now rushing in to push beyond their frontiers to satisfy their own industrial needs in neighboring countries such as Premrudee Daoroung – Director, TERRA Cambodia and Laos. Over the past decade, the struggle to monitor and campaign on plantation - Mono-crop trees find more room over the borders in the issues in the region has had little success. However, the emergence of the Mekong region land network and their campaign on land concessions in Cambodia, for instance, has resulted in increased awareness within society as a whole. In The inter-meshing of the six economies in the Mekong Basin since the spite of that, plantation proponents keep advertising large-scale plantations 1990s has been fostered under the Greater Mekong Sub-region economic using endless and ever more complicated reasons, ranging from ‘shifting cooperation programme. This was aimed at increasing the flow of cross- cultivation stabilization’ and ‘poverty reduction’ 20 years ago, to border investment from countries with considerable economic might such plantations now aimed at carbon credits and biofuel production. as China, Thailand and Vietnam into neighbouring countries such as Laos Throughout the years, the reasons given to the local people have kept PDR and Cambodia, which have a ‘doors wide open’ approach calling for changing, but something that has not changed is that people of the Mekong foreign companies to come to invest. Extensive land and cheap labour countries have continued to be pushed to the frontiers of their own land. have been used as an incentive for drawing in investors to develop commercial tree plantations in the form of hundreds of large-scale land In November 2006, a statement of unity came out from a Mekong concessions in the period of the last 4-5 years. Regional Conference on Tree Plantations, held in Kratie province, Cambodia where people from five Mekong countries shared their We can distinguish four forms of investment in monoculture tree experiences and the lessons they had learned on the issue of industrial tree plantations in the Mekong: investment of foreign capital from outside the plantations and their impacts on local peoples' livelihoods. The people Mekong region, cross-border investment of capital from within the stated that “Contrary to government claims that plantations contribute to Mekong region, domestic investment by major capital groups, and national economic development and poverty alleviation, plantations have household investment by small-holder farmers on their own land. In this increased poverty by displacing entire communities, destroying crucial article we will emphasise the first two types, since these tend to involve livelihood resources and preventing the access of communities to natural the greatest concentration of land use and have brought the most serious resources”. Their conclusion was that “In all cases the only way to create impacts for local communities. We can identify the main actors in the change has been through peoples' struggles. Struggle does not mean different countries as follows. violence; it means the different ways that local people adopt to secure and defend their rights”. Laos Investments in plantations in Laos are mostly in the form of large-scale In order to avoid having to move away and to change their lives, people in state land concessions, particularly for growing eucalyptus and rubber. the Mekong region now need to turn around and state clearly to the These draw on investment from countries outside as well as within the plantation proponents that there are no more new frontiers for the Mekong region. Major investing companies include Oji from Japan, with companies to cross. Instead, the people wish to remain and regain their extensive plantations underway and seeking a total of 50,000 ha of eucalyptus in Bolikhamxay and Khammouane provinces. Another is Birla Laos (Birla Grasim) from India who have a concession of 30,000 ha to Cambodia grow eucalyptus in Savannakhet province. Actors within the region The extent of land alienation in Cambodia is much greater. Information include the Vietnamese rubber companies, Viet-Lao, DacLac and Dau from the Council of Ministers in February 2003 specified that the Tieng, which have agreements to invest in rubber over an area of more government of Cambodia authorized 40 economic concessions covering an than 30,000 ha in the southern part of Laos or Champassak and Salavane area of 809,296 ha. Since then, official figures have been hard to come by, provinces. Reports indicate that, in total, Vietnamese companies are but recent reports indicate that during the global economic boom since the seeking to expand rubber investments in Laos to 100,000 ha within the turn of the century up to half the land area of the country had been next twelve years. The two largest pulp companies in Thailand, Advance assigned to foreign investors either through land concessions or long Agro and Phoenix Pulp and Paper, are also seeking to use Laos’s land to leases. grow eucalyptus as a raw material to supply their factories back in Thailand. The major investors in Cambodia tend to have strong links with senior politicians in government. The law states that economic land concessions So far, the Lao government has authorized an area of around 167,000 ha to cannot extend beyond 10,000 ha, and that larger pre-existing concessions foreign companies to invest in monoculture economic trees and crops must be reduced accordingly.