World Food Policy
is fair in Laos?” The four people inter-
viewed were all critical, mentioning
possible corruption within companies
and stipulating that the government
should more responsibly defend public
interests. On Facebook, a media much
less controlled by the State, users post
and share videos showing trucks load-
ed with timber from illegal logging in
protected areas, lamenting this as an
alienation of national wealth by foreign
companies. Land issues are often im-
bued with nationalistic emotions, with
the feeling that national sovereignty is
at stake. This makes them a potential
leverage point for collective action.
on hundreds of thousand hectares
without any regard for the basic rights
of local farmers.
Such large-scale concessions to
foreign companies (mainly in the sec-
tors of agro-industry, electricity, and
mining) are presently the main topic
of land policy discussions, but this has
not been always the case. In the 1990s,
debates centered on policies barring
shifting cultivation in the highlands
and the ensuing resettlement of villag-
ers to the lowlands. A large national
report described the often-dramatic
consequences of these policies for those
resettled (Goudineau, 1997), beginning
a long series of publications that took a
critical stance toward such policies and
their consequences for rural popula-
tions.
Land policies are one of the
main topics through which the mo-
rality of the state has been debated in
Laos for two decades. International
watchers have played an important
role in the rise of such anxieties. Peo-
ple involved in the defense of human
rights, the environment, and ethnic
minorities have repeatedly denounced
the disastrous impacts of the Laotian
state’s “grand schemes” as well as the
global land grab perpetrated by for-
eign companies. 3 For example, in
May 2013, Global Witness published
a report titled “Rubber Barons”, with
a telling subtitle: “How Vietnamese
companies and international finan-
ciers are driving a land grabbing crisis
in Cambodia and Laos”. It denounced
at once Vietnamese rubber compa-
nies, political authorities in Laos and
Cambodia, and international donors
like Deutsche Bank. The companies
would have been granted concessions
3
Resettlements took place when
land-use planning was implemented
with the support of international aid
agencies. The land and forest allocation
policy was supposed to define licit and
illicit use of land around the villages,
while farmers were provided temporary
land-use certificates that would guaran-
tee them access to land (Evrard, 2004).
Ducourtieux, Laffort, and Sacklokham
(2005, p. 521) criticized this land re-
form unambiguously, arguing that “the
impact of the policy has been negative
both for rural development and for
environmental conservation” and that
it would engender counter-effects like
food shortages, especially among the
poorest.
Later, High (2008) took a differ-
ent approach in considering the issue of
See Dwyer (2013, pp. 309–312) regarding the coverage of land grabs in Laos by the Western media.
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