Laos:
Promoting tree plantations
Over the last two years, Laos has seen
a dramatic increase in foreign direct investment for commercial
tree plantations. The Lao Committee for Planning and Investment
shows 21 projects worth US$17.3 million value were approved in
2005, which rose to 39 projects approved with a value of US$458.5
million in 2006 and by February 2007, 9 projects had been approved
and 16 were pending, with a total value of US$342 million. To
give a somewhat simplified overview: Chinese investors are investing
in rubber plantations in the north of Laos, Vietnamese rubber
companies have set up in the south of Laos and four companies
are establishing pulpwood plantations in the central area (Japan's
Oji Paper, Thailand's Advance Agro, India's Grasim and Sweden-Finland's
Stora Enso). The reasons behind this year on year increase are
complex, but a key set of government policies have been instrumental
in promoting industrial tree plantations. There have been a series
of national forest plans and strategies implemented since the
1989 ban on exports of processed wood and the 1991 decree to ban
commercial logging.
The latest is the Lao National Forestry
Strategy to the Year 2020, published in July 2005 after a 5 year
process. The 2020 Strategy plans to increase “forest” cover from
40% to 70% by 2020, involving the planting of over 1 million hectares
of bare land with industrial tree crops. Tree plantation businesses
are exempt from land taxes and fees, and gain rights of land use
for 30-50 years or longer in special economic areas.
However the roots of the plantation
boom cannot be explained without a discussion of the land and
forest allocation programme which has been (and remains) instrumental
in making land available for commercial plantations.
Land allocation activities began in
the early 1990s, and were eventually consolidated into a national
programme for forest land allocation in 1996. The Land and
Forest Allocation (LFA) programme was established as the primary
mechanism for delineating customary village boundaries, giving
villagers temporary rights to utilise forest resources, as well
as land resources with a (mostly unfulfilled) promise of granting
permanent rights in the later stages of its implementation.
The Land and Forest Allocation process
soon became one of the major tools to achieve the target area
of tree plantations. The land within the traditional village’s
boundary was consolidated and reclassified to fit a new map. This
new village map was designed to accommodate the current population
of the village with some reserve land kept for future generations.
Agricultural land was allocated according to statutory entitlements
per labour unit, and the forest land was categorised according
to the five forest types identified in the forest law.
While there were many progressive elements
to this programme, this reorganisation and reallocation had serious
impacts for the traditional communities who form 80% of the Lao
population. This is because it was implemented hand in glove
with the policy to stabilize and then eliminate traditional shifting
cultivation by 2010.
With pressure from this ‘national goal’,
unfarmed swidden fields were no longer recognised as a valid land
use and they were systematically designated under the LFA process
as ‘degraded forest’. In fact, this represented a stark deviation
from the terms of the forestry law which states that degraded
forest land is land where the forest will not regenerate naturally.
Fallow land is normally just the opposite – land which has been
set aside under the traditional rotational swidden farming system
specifically for the purpose of regenerating the land and returning
it to its natural state, which in most cases is forest.
The area classified as unstocked and
degraded forestland under the LFA reached one third of the total
land area, that is, vast tracts of fallow land were erased from
the maps and reallocated for tree plantation development across
the country.
This of course served the tree plantation
companies who were keen to gain access to the fallow lands, rather
than being constrained (by law) to the worst and most infertile
degraded lands where no forest would regrow. In some cases companies
actively influenced the classification of fertile land as degraded.
The Decree formalising land and forest allocation programme allowed
both Lao groups and foreigners to gain rights to forest land for
tree plantation.
One such company was BGA, a New Zealand
based company, whose plantation concession was later taken over
by the Oji Paper company from Japan. Although there are examples
of villages refusing to allow Oji to establish tree plantations
on their land, in many cases plantation company staff were able
to get the choicest lands by joining the land and forest allocation
team at the local area and then pointing out which land should
be considered “degraded” according to satellite images. Then the
government officials helped the company to obtain the land from
the village people.
The Lao government’s enthusiasm for
tree plantations has been shown time and again to be misplaced.
In far too many cases companies who applied for land for plantation
simply exploited the rules, obtained healthy forested land, logged
it for the plentiful and valuable timber species on the land,
replanted with a sorry looking tree crop, folded up quietly and
fled. Earlier this year, the government acknowledged the problems
and the government declared a moratorium on new land concessions
larger than 100 hectares.
By 2003, a total area of 113,000 ha
of plantations had been established in the country. The area rose
to 146,000 ha of plantations in 2005, with a 66% survival rate.
As the Strategy 2020 itslef acknowledges, the productivity is
lower than anticipated. Unfortunately the plans for improving
the situation include improved tree growing technology, and larger
plantations. This is likely to lead to another wave of problems
for local people who have little opportunity to voice their opposition
to these changes.
On a more positive note however, the
latest news is that government has now
taken stock of the decline in forest areas
and the massive increase in land concessions handed to both foreign
and domestic companies across the country. In 1982 forests covered
47 percent of land in Laos; this has now
been assessed to decline to 35% of the country. The new
National Land Management Authority has called a moratorium on
land concessions for agriculture and tree plantation projects
in order to reassess the policy and review the past projects to
ensure they are in line with the law. The Laotian people will
be anxious to know the results of this review.
By: Rebeca Leonard, http://www.terraper.org
