Mono-crop
trees find more room over the borders in the Mekong region
The inter-meshing of
the six economies in the Mekong Basin since the 1990s has been fostered
under the Greater Mekong Sub-region economic cooperation programme.
This was aimed at increasing the flow of cross-border investment
from countries with considerable economic might such as China, Thailand
and Vietnam into neighbouring countries such as Laos PDR and Cambodia,
which have a ‘doors wide open’ approach calling for foreign companies
to come to invest. Extensive land and cheap labour have been used
as an incentive for drawing in investors to develop commercial tree
plantations in the form of hundreds of large-scale land concessions
in the period of the last 4-5 years.
We can distinguish
four forms of investment in monoculture tree plantations in the
Mekong: investment of foreign capital from outside the Mekong region,
cross-border investment of capital from within the Mekong region,
domestic investment by major capital groups, and household investment
by small-holder farmers on their own land. In this article
we will emphasise the first two types, since these tend to involve
the greatest concentration of land use and have brought the most
serious impacts for local communities. We can identify the main
actors in the different countries as follows.
Laos
Investments in plantations
in Laos are mostly in the form of large-scale state land concessions,
particularly for growing eucalyptus and rubber. These draw
on investment from countries outside as well as within the Mekong
region. Major investing companies include Oji from Japan,
with 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 grow eucalyptus in Savannakhet province. Actors
within the region include the Vietnamese rubber companies, Viet-Lao,
DacLac and Dau Tieng, which have agreements to invest in rubber
over an area of more than 30,000 ha in the southern part of Laos
or Champassak and Salavane provinces. Reports indicate that,
in total, Vietnamese companies are seeking to expand rubber investments
in Laos to 100,000 ha within the next twelve years. The two largest
pulp companies in Thailand, Advance Agro and Phoenix Pulp and Paper,
are also seeking to use Laos’s land to grow eucalyptus as a raw
material to supply their factories back in Thailand.
So far, the Lao government
has authorized an area of around 167,000 ha to foreign companies
to invest in monoculture economic trees and crops throughout the
country. Of this area, 80,000 ha is allocated for eucalyptus
and around 46,600 ha for rubber. Most land concessions are
located in the central region down towards the southern part of
the country.
The Lao government
resolved on May 2008 to suspend the issuing of land concessions
throughout the country. Despite this, continued pressure from
foreign investors and keenness to encourage investment within certain
sections of the government have apparently led the Committee for
Planning and Investment (CPI) of Lao PDR to continue to issue investment
licenses, even for commercial plantations which require access to
large areas of land. While the concession moratorium stands,
companies cannot legally gain access to more than 100 ha of land.
However it is clear that some companies are being given local authority
permission to access land, based on investment authorisation from
the CPI amongst other things. The present convoluted legal
framework, with rules that are inconsistently applied, creates confusion
amongst investors, government officials and locals alike.
In this context, villagers are insufficiently protected against
loss of their land to powerful and influential wealthy concessionaries.
Cambodia
The extent of land
alienation in Cambodia is much greater. Information from the
Council of Ministers in February 2003 specified that the government
of Cambodia authorized 40 economic concessions covering an area
of 809,296 ha. Since then, official figures have been hard
to come by, but recent reports indicate that during the global economic
boom since the turn of the century up to half the land area of the
country had been assigned to foreign investors either through land
concessions or long leases.
The major investors
in Cambodia tend to have strong links with senior politicians in
government. The law states that economic land concessions
cannot extend beyond 10,000 ha, and that larger pre-existing concessions
must be reduced accordingly. Nevertheless the government has not
taken action to recover land from powerful companies who hold much
bigger areas of land under concession (link to
Fast-wood Plantation Economic Concessions and Local Livelihoods
in Cambodia, 2006; Land concession and forest concession map
in Stung Treng province, 2006). The Wuzhishan L.S. Group from
China have a 199,999 ha concession to grow pine trees in Mondolkiri
province. Initial exploitation of 10,000 ha has been authorised,
but the status of the rest of the land is unclear. Other foreign
owned plantation companies with large concessions include the Green
Rich Company growing acacia and oil palm over 18,300 ha in Koh Kong
province, the Cambodia Haining Group which has acquired 21,250 ha
in Kampong Speu province to grow cassava, palm oil, and raise livestock,
and three companies -Asia World Agricultural Development Co, Global
Agricultural Development Co and Great Wonder Ag Dev Co- have been
granted around 10,000 ha each to grow teak in the same district
of Kratie province, with most of their various permits granted on
the same days.
In March 2006, the
representatives of the Hainan Natural Rubber Industry Group Corp
which is the largest rubber producer in China and the Suigang Investment
Development Co Ltd in Cambodia signed an agreement for a rubber
investment project covering an area of over 60,000 ha and including
the establishment of a processing factory in Cambodia. There are
additional reports that two companies from Vietnam received authorization
for a rubber plantation in around 16,000 ha of Mondolkiri province.
As in Laos, the Vietnamese rubber industry has set a target of obtaining
100,000 ha for extensive plantations in Cambodia. News reports from
November 2007 (Manager online 28 November 2007) specified that three
government rubber plantations over 22,000 ha were ‘sold’ to 3 private
companies from China on 99 year leases.
Not all foreign companies
access land directly via state authorities. Over 200,000 ha
of land in Stung Treng province has been acquired by 11 local companies,
which have invited foreign companies to invest as secondary investors.
Burma
Accurate reporting
of plantations development is very difficult to come by in Burma.
Sporadic news reports often indicate planned targets and very little
data is published on the actors involved. Xinhua News Agency reported
in May 2007 that according to the Myanmar Ministry of Agriculture
and Irrigation, up to 3.24 million hectares of agrofuel crops will
be grown to realize the projected increase of the agrofuel up to
20 million tons a year. Official statistics appear to show
that there were 302,000 ha of land under rubber plantation in 2007
(Myanmar Times, 2007).
China Vietnam and
Thailand: New actors
These three countries
are increasingly taking on the role of investors in their neighbouring
countries. Private companies in these countries have increasing
capacity for investment. It will not be necessary in future
for them to rely on grant money or loans from international financial
institutions, such as the ADB. Owing to the limited scope for expansive
plantation development in their own country, groups of investors
from China, Vietnam, and Thailand are scrambling to invest in large
plantations in Laos and Cambodia.
But behind the scenes
of large scale land concessions are the loss of farmland, orchards
and community areas for food collection and animal grazing. In Laos
and Cambodia, over 80% of the people live and rely on such resources
for their livelihood. In the midst of the increase in prices
of food crops recently, villagers who have lost their rice growing
land experience suffering and poverty. Those who lose their land
often become dependent on obtaining work with the plantation companies,
but full time jobs tend to be available only for a tiny minority,
particularly the able-bodied young, leaving the rest of the family
unemployed. Income from labouring with the companies is rarely
enough to feed the landless families.
In the context of complex
economic and political differences among the countries in the Mekong
watershed, civil society actors hardly have any spaces in which
to play their public role. Political and communications limitations
in countries like Laos and Cambodia, make public discussion difficult,
and harsh repression in Burma stifles public comment. Of the
countries which have superior economic and political power, like
China, Vietnam and Thailand, it looks as though countries such as
Thailand opens the most amount of space for civil society.
However, many civil society leaders, and people in wider society,
still do not have sufficient interest in or awareness of the cross-border
impacts of the profit seeking of national investors on neighbouring
countries.
By Pornpana Kuaycharoen,
TERRA, email: pornpana@terraper.org
For further information
about plantations in the region please link to:
Mekong plantations page on
www.terraper.org
