Linking land tenure security with food security: Unpacking farm households’ perceptions and strategies in the rural uplands of Laos

Land Use Policy 90 (2020) 104260

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Land Use Policy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/landusepol

Linking land tenure security with food security: Unpacking farm households’ perceptions and strategies in the rural uplands of Laos

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Oulavanh Keovilignavong⁎, Diana Suhardiman International Water Management Institute, Southeast Asian Regional Office (IWMI-SEA), PO. Box 4199, Vientiane, Laos

ARTICLE INFO

ABSTRACT

Keywords: Land use planning Local livelihood Land policies Land tenure security Food security Laos

Land tenure, or access and rights to land, is essential to sustain people’s livelihoods. This paper looks at how farm households perceive land tenure (in)security in relation to food (in)security, and how these perceptions evolve throughout different policy periods in Laos. The paper highlights the centrality of farmers’ strategies in configuring the dynamic relationships between tenure (in)security and food (in)security, by demonstrating how farmers’ perceived and de facto land tenure insecurity shapes their decisions to diversify livelihood options to ensure food security. While the paper’s key findings reveal the close interlinkages between land tenure (in) security and food (in)security, we argue that the first does not automatically result in the latter. In contrast, we show how perceived and de-facto land tenure insecurity pushes farmers to explore alternative strategies and avenues to ensure food supply, through farm and non-farm employment. From a policy perspective, the paper highlights the need to put people’s livelihoods at the center of land governance, thus moving beyond the current positioning of land as merely a means for agricultural production or environmental conservation.

1. Introduction

Following Laos’ political revolution in 1975, the central government has positioned land as a means to promote economic development, including through agricultural collectivization (Evans, 1990), land use planning and land allocation to eradicate swidden cultivation and promote industrial tree plantations, while also aiming for forest conservation (Baird and Shoemaker, 2005; Dwyer, 2007; Lestrelin, 2010; Kenney-Lazar et al., 2018a,2018b). The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) has pursued a development strategy that seeks to expand agricultural land and productivity in lowland areas while also conserving forest cover in the uplands. According to the Agricultural Development Strategy (2011–2020) of the Department of Agriculture under MAF (2010b), the aim is to increase irrigated agriculture and market-oriented agricultural production for smallholder farmers.1 Similarly, the Department of Forestry under MAF (2005) aims to increase forest cover to 16.9 million hectares or about 70% of the country’s total land area by 2020. To achieve this target, various programs such as sustainable forest use and management have been implemented to protect wildlife and watersheds to increase forest cover from 41% to 53% by 2010 and 70% by 2020.2 The Government of Laos (GoL) approaches land governance mainly

Land governance plays an important role in shaping national development goals and strategies. This is most apparent from the way land is often positioned as an economic asset, ranging from agricultural production, resource extraction (e.g. mining), to environmental conservation. Recently, the need for people-centered land governance has been emphasized, as access to land and tenure rights is seen as a requirement for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015 for the year 2030 (Oxfam International, International Land Coalition, Rights and Resources, 2016). Globally, land tenure security is identified as one of the key determinants for food security, environmental protection, reversing land degradation, biodiversity conservation, and sustainable livelihoods. Access and rights to land is central to achieving most of the goals in the SDGs (goal 5 on gender equality, goal 10 on reduced inequalities, goal 11 on sustainable cities and communities, goal 13 on climate action, goal 15 on life on land, among others), but it is particularly crucial for achieving no poverty (goal 1) and zero hunger (goal 2).

Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (O. Keovilignavong), [email protected] (D. Suhardiman). This is in line with MAF’s (2010a) earlier Agricultural Master Plan 2011-2015 to raise food and income security through increased rice productivity and diversified farming systems by smallholder farmers. 2 For a discussion on key challenges to implement these programs pertaining to overlapping boundaries between forest and agricultural lands, see Forest Trends (2014) and Suhardiman et al. (2019). ⁎

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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2019.104260 Received 10 February 2019; Received in revised form 16 September 2019; Accepted 29 September 2019 0264-8377/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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O. Keovilignavong and D. Suhardiman

from the perspective of agricultural production and environmental conservation (e.g. forest protection), but much less focus is given to how these strategies affect farm households’ access to land as a source of livelihoods, especially for those practicing swidden cultivation in the uplands. For example, MAF’s (2010a) Agricultural Master Plan focuses its food security target mainly within the context of (irrigated) rice production systems in the lowlands. Similarly, MAF’s 70% forest cover target is hardly linked with how it would affect people’s livelihood options especially in relation to upland farming systems3 (MRLG, 2018). In 2018, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment released the National Master Plan for Land Allocation (MoNRE, 2018). The plan seeks to balance economic development with environmental conservation by allocating land for specific uses (e.g. agricultural development, forest protection) based mainly on criteria such as soil quality and topography. The plan is in line with MAF’s (2015) Agricultural Development Strategy to 2025 and Vision 2030, targeting 70% of the country’s total land area to be forest cover, while preserving an additional 19% for agricultural development. In practice, however, the distinction between forest and agricultural land as stated in the plan does not always match realities on the ground (Forest Trends, 2014). The mismatch is most apparent from the overlapping boundaries between forest land and upland agricultural areas (Suhardiman et al., 2019). According to a report by Mekong Regional Land Governance (MRLG, 2018), about 227,000 farm households (or 22% of the total households in the country) live in protection, conservation, and production forest areas. This exemplifies how the government’s land use categories and land allocation plans do not adequately take into account the realities of farm households’ land tenure, especially for those relying on swidden cultivation for their livelihoods. The paper contributes to the current discussion on land governance in two ways. First, it focuses on government land policy as a key driving force shaping farmers’ perceptions on land tenure (in)security and how these change over time. Our findings show that government land policies can either increase or reduce farmers’ rights to access and use of their lands, and to a certain extent their physical, social and economic access to food. Second, it unpacks the interlinkages between land tenure (in)security and food (in)security, and puts farmers’ coping strategies at the center of these connections. The paper highlights the importance of farmers’ perceived and de-facto land tenure insecurity in shaping farm households’ strategies to diversify livelihood options to ensure food security. In particular, it reveals how farmers’ perceived and de-facto land tenure insecurity has pushed farmers to opt for alternative strategies and avenues to ensure food supply, through farm and non-farm employment. Farm employment includes farming activities conducted in another person’s farm, such as earning an income from rice harvesting and/or laboring on rubber plantations. Non-farm employment includes earning an income from family businesses, weaving and handicrafts, wage labor, among other activities. From a policy perspective, it highlights the need for the government to broaden its current view of land as primarily an economic asset and unit of production, and to give adequate attention to the connections between land tenure and food security in formulating national policies and plans for land use and land allocation. We select two villages in northern Laos as our case study to examine three interrelated issues. First, we look at how farm households perceive their land tenure (in)security in relation to respective government land policies and programs over time. We then consider how the latter impacts farm households’ de-facto access to land. Third, we examine the overall shaping of farmers’ strategies to ensure land tenure security and food security (e.g. through food production, wage labor, etc.) based

in part on their views of the close/loose linkages between the two. The four government land policies and programs we examine are the village relocation and consolidation program, the Land Use Plan and Land Allocation (LUP/LA) program, the policy to grant land concessions for private investment, and the participatory Forest and Agriculture Land Use Planning Allocation and Management (pFALUPAM) program. While we refer to village relocation and consolidation as a “program”, there has never really been a single program applied systematically across the country. Rather, the government has applied a policy of village consolidation and associated resettlement as a general approach to develop ethnic minority areas. Since the late 1970s, the GoL has pursued a policy of resettling upland communities from remote mountains to lowland areas close to roads (Evrard and Goudineau, 2004; Baird and Shoemaker, 2005, 2007). The official intention of the plan was to bring remote upland ethnic minorities closer to public infrastructure and services such as roads, markets, schools, and hospitals, and also transition their livelihoods away from upland swidden cultivation toward lowland, paddy rice production. The plan formulation was first driven by security concerns about armed rebel activities in the late 1970s (Baird and Shoemaker, 2005). Later, it was linked with the government’s rural development and poverty reduction policies in the early 1980s (Cunnington, 2011), and the government’s forest and land allocation policy in the late 1980s (LSFP, 1998). Hence, resettlement is more a mode of governing ethnic minorities that is assimilated into various policies, rather than a separate or specific government program. Supported by international donors, LUP/LA was formulated and implemented in the early 1990s to facilitate rural economic development and environmental conservation by delineating village boundaries, separating agriculture and forest zones, and strengthening rural land tenure (Sysomvang et al., 1997; LSFP, 1998). The program was also intended to be a mechanism for implementing the government’s goal of stabilizing and eventually eliminating swidden cultivation – which was believed to be a major cause of deforestation, environmental degradation, and impoverishment. LUP/LA thus resulted in limiting the area available for swidden rotational cycles (Rigg, 2005; Lestrelin, 2010). In 2011, the Agro-Biodiversity Initiative (TABI), a joint project between the GoL and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), further modified land use planning exercises with the development of the pFALUPAM approach. The approach tries to integrate agroforestry livelihood practices into the land use planning process, such as by allocating land for swidden cultivation (MAF, 2017). Finally, we examine the period when Chinese rubber concessions arrived in the case study villages in 2005. The latter is linked to the government’s strategy to attract foreign investment for national development, which was supported by the 2003 Land Law allowing foreign companies to acquire large-scale land concessions of up to 10,000 ha4 (Baird, 2019). Later, the umbrella policy of “Turning Land into Capital” was coined at the 8th Party Congress in 2006 (Dwyer, 2007; Kenney-Lazar et al., 2018a,2018b). Under this approach, new territories of commodified land, especially in the form of concessions, were created. Companies acquired farmers’ land and communal forests as part of land concession agreements resulting in widespread land dispossession (Schumann et al., 2006; Suhardiman et al., 2015; KenneyLazar et al., 2018a,2018b). In the next section we discuss the close interlinkages between land tenure security and food security, before describing our research methodology. We then present key findings from the research, focusing on how farm households perceive land tenure (in)security, food (in) security, and their interlinkages. We discuss how the government’s policies on land have significantly influenced farm households’

3 For a discussion on the framing of swidden cultivation as a backward agricultural practice which constitutes poor land management, see Lestrelin et al. (2012), Lestrelin (2010), Rigg (2005).

4 In reality, some large-scale land concessions were larger than 10,000 hectares in contravention to the Land Law.

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decisions to diversify their livelihood strategies to ensure food security, including moving away from food production-based to food accessbased livelihoods.

emphasize land degradation as a threat to food security, as the latter is caused by reduced land productivity and a shortage of productive land. Furthermore, Kenney-Lazar (2016) outlines how land tenure security links to four pillars of food security by providing incentives to produce more food (food availability), ensuring rights to access to food (food access), consuming food in nutritious ways (food utilization) and stabilizing food access for a long time (food stability). These four pillars also reveal that those with less or no access to land can still have access to food if they have access to employment opportunities. Similarly, those with less or no access to land but better access to employment opportunities (e.g. due to higher education) can at times have better or more secure access to food. Building on these works, this paper provides empirical evidence of how the government’s land policies shape farm households’ perceived and de-facto land tenure (in)security and food (in)security. We highlight the need to better understand farmers’ strategies as a means to unpack the close interlinkages between land tenure (in)security and food (in)security. Linking the overall notion of land tenure (in)security with farm households’ (in)ability and strategy to have adequate access to food, we show that the first does not automatically result in the latter (Nguyen, 2014; Van Gelder and Luciano, 2015; Zevenbergen, 2002; Bugri, 2008). For example, in the context of perceived and de-facto land tenure insecurity, farm households opt for a strategy to diversify their livelihood options through earning additional income from farm and non-farm employment. Here, farm households shift their strategy from food availability (through agricultural production) to food access (through food purchase) to ensure food security.5 Put differently, while land tenure security is often a condition enabling food security, insecure land tenure also discourages farmers from investing in their agricultural land. How do government policies on land shape farm household perceptions of land tenure security, and how is this linked to food security? How do farm households cope with both perceived and de-facto land tenure insecurity and how does this impact on their food (in)security? What implications does the government’s current positioning of land as the country’s development asset have for farmers’ (in) ability to ensure food security and improve their livelihoods? These are primary questions explored here.

2. Conceptual approaches to land tenure security, food security and their linkages Land tenure security concerns not only how to secure rights to access, use and own land but also how these access and ownership rights are protected and enforced. Scholars have come up with various definitions of land tenure security, centering on the role of institutional arrangements and rights. Maxwell and Wiebe (1999, p. 825) define land tenure as “the system of rights and institutions that govern access to land and other resources.” Place et al. (1994, p. 19) consider land tenure security as present “when an individual perceives that he or she has rights to a piece of land on a continuous basis, free from imposition or interference from outside sources, as well as ability to reap the benefits of labor and capital invested in that land, either in use or upon transfer to another holder.” Quizon (2017) also highlights three main types of land tenure security at community level. These include: 1) perceived tenure security, whereby individuals perceive they will not lose their land rights through forced eviction; 2) de-facto tenure security – the actual control of land and property, regardless of the legal status; and 3) legal tenure security – tenure protection backed up by state authority. Quizon (2017, p. 16) also defines “security of tenure [as] not solely … the legal right of ownership of land … [but also land that is] protected by customary law or practice and community norms”. In this paper, we look at land tenure security from the perspective of farm households’ livelihood strategies, and how these strategies are partly shaped by perceived and de-facto land tenure security (Quizon, 2017). Taking two villages in Laos as a case study, we link the overall notion of institutional arrangements with farm households’ decisions as a means to adapt to the changing policy environment. Since 1975, the GoL has formulated and implemented various policies and programs to develop the country. Some of these land policies and programs have altered agricultural land use, particularly in rural areas. For example, through the village relocation and consolidation program, the government has merged smaller villages with less than 50 households into larger villages (with a minimum of 200 people in upland areas and 500 people in lowland areas), while also relocating remote upland villages to lowland areas (Baird and Shoemaker, 2005; Jones et al., 2008; Cunnington, 2011; Lestrelin et al., 2012). Similarly, the LUP/LA program delineated and separated forest and agricultural land for villagers’ use to stabilize agricultural practices. While these policies and programs were purportedly formulated to reduce poverty by promoting commercialized agricultural production in the uplands, contain or eliminate swidden cultivation and improve access to government services in remote areas, they significantly limited farm households’ access to agricultural and forest land (Jones et al., 2008; Lestrelin et al., 2012). Our research focuses on identifying patterns and trends in the way farm households perceive land tenure (in)security and food (in)security, and how these change over time throughout the different policy periods in the country. Scholars have explained the conceptual linkages between land tenure and food security (Blarel, 1994; Maxwell and Wiebe, 1999; Miggiano et al., 2010; Holden and Ghebru, 2016; Kenney-Lazar, 2016; USAID, 2016; ANGOC, 2017; Quizon, 2017). For example, Borras et al. (2015) view them as intertwined. Miggiano et al. (2010) claim that land tenure and land governance are central to food security. With reference to Cambodia, Nepal and Philippines, Quizon (2017) argues that food security at the household level is directly linked to access to land and the type of land tenure. Holden and Ghebru (2016) put land productivity at the center of the relationship between tenure security and food security, while emphasizing the role of land for agricultural production. Following a similar line of thinking, Utuk and Daniel (2015)

3. Research methodology We conducted in-depth case study research from October 2017 to April 2018, looking at how farmers perceive their land tenure (in)security, and compared these with their de-facto land tenure (in)security and households’ food (in)security throughout different policy periods. We designed and developed the methods for case study research following the approaches of Burawoy (1991) and Yin (1994). While looking at patterns and trends in the way farmers perceive land tenure (in)security and food (in)security, we focused on two key elements: 1) farmers’ strategies to sustain and improve their livelihoods as a means to adapt to the changing policy environment; and 2) how these strategies shape land tenure-food (in)security interlinkages. We selected Houaykong and Namai Villages in Nambak District, Luang Prabang Province, as our study sites. Located 150 km northeast of Luang Prabang town, the two case study villages are part of nine villages under the Nayang development village cluster (or KoumbanNayang). According to official data from the Provincial Agriculture and Forestry Office of Luang Prabang (Louang Prabang PAFO, 2017), both villages have undergone a series of government land policy implementation processes. We identified four distinct policy periods against which to examine changing trends in farmers’ perceptions on land tenure (in)security and food (in)security. These include 1) the 5 In the context of perceived land tenure insecurity, but de-facto land tenure security, farm households would opt for rubber cultivation as their means to justify and claim their rights to the land.

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period prior to 1995 when government and external interventions were still relatively limited6 ; 2) the period during which both the village relocation and consolidation program and LUP/LA were actively implemented (1996–2005)7 ; 3) the period when rubber land concessions were introduced to the district, resulting in farmers from both villages losing all or part of their land (2006–2015); and 4) the period of pFALUPAM implementation (2015-present). While we categorize the above government policies and programs into four distinct time periods, it is important to note that they do not always fit neatly into the time periods we have allocated to them. For example, we attribute the village relocation and consolidation program to have had the greatest impact in our case study villages in the period 1996-2005. However, as noted in the preceding section, this policy has existed in Laos since the 1970s and is still ongoing today. The first author collected both qualitative and quantitative data in four iterative steps. First, key informant interviews were conducted with village authorities from the two villages to better understand farmers’ strategies to strengthen land tenure security and food security, and the policy and institutional context shaping these strategies. Second, focus group discussions (FGDs) were conducted in Houaykong and Namai (n = 5 in each village). Based on the household survey data collected by TABI (2015), we divided farm households in both villages into five different groups, with each group attending a separate FGD. In Houaykong village these groups included: 1) Khmu original settlers who have lived in the village since before 1975; 2) Khmu settlers who arrived in the late 1980s; 3) Khmu settlers who arrived after 2000; 4) Khmu women including those working in agricultural and non-agricultural sectors; and 5) Khmu farmers who still practice swidden cultivation. In Namai village, they included: 1) Tai-Lue original settlers who have lived in the village since before 1975; 2) Khmu recent and new settlers who arrived since the 1980s; 3) both Tai-Lue and Khmu women including those working in agricultural and non-agricultural sectors; 4) farm households who practice upland farming including Tai-Lue and Khmu farmers; and 5) farm households who practice lowland farming including Tai-Lue and Khmu farmers. For each FGD, 10–12 participants were selected using secondary data from a TABI report and database on household socioeconomic and agro-biodiversity characteristics (TABI, 2015). Following the FGDs, ten farmers (n = 1 from each FGD) were selected for in-depth semi-structured interviews. Based on the information and insights gathered from the FGDs and interviews, we then developed a survey questionnaire to identify patterns and trends in how farm households perceive land tenure (in)security and food (in)security, how these trends evolve over time, and key drivers shaping the trends. For this, the first author conducted a random household survey (n = 80 in each village) with support from six students from the Northern Agriculture and Forestry College in Luang Prabang. Based on

preliminary data analysis from the survey, the first author conducted semi-structured interviews with selected farm households to better understand key rationales shaping patterns and trends in people’s perceptions of land tenure and food (in)security, how these are linked to their farming strategies, and vice versa. 4. Farmers’ perceptions on land tenure security and food security In this section, we examine farm households’ perception of land tenure and food (in)security under the four different periods of government-implemented land policies and programs. As noted above, these perceptions were recorded during fieldwork from October 2017 to April 2018. The authors thus rely on farmers’ recollection of past and more recent policies and their impact on land tenure and food security, which are assessed from the point of the present. We then move to examine the various strategies employed by farm households to ensure their food security, and how these strategies are related to their perceived and de-facto land tenure (in)security (Quizon, 2017). To identify patterns and trends in how farmers perceive their land tenure and food (in)security, we look at percentages of farmers who view their land tenure and food (both in terms of access and supply) as either “secure” and/or “insecure”. Farmers who were not sure and those who were not settled in the village during the defined policy periods are categorized as “unsure” and “not relevant”, respectively. 4.1. Farm households’ perceptions on land tenure (in)security Throughout the different policy periods, farm households’ perceptions on land tenure (in)security changed considerably. Key factors contributing to these changes include the strong presence/absence of customary land rights, the degree of implementation of government policies and programs, and changing mechanisms to secure land access from informal local institutional arrangements (e.g. reserved land and informal land rental agreements) to formal procedures defined by the national government (e.g. land registration and land tax payment). While the study covers farm households’ perceptions on land tenure and food (in)security over four different policy periods, these perceptions are based on farmers’ views of the past in the present which might not be the same as their views at the time of the policy implementation. Before 1995, the majority of farm households perceived their land tenure as secure (34%) compared to only a small number of households who viewed their land tenure as insecure (6%) (see Fig. 1). About 61% of sampled farm households are marked as not relevant as they had not yet settled in the two villages during this period. Farmers’ perception of their land tenure (in)security was linked to their access to upland agricultural land. According to local institutional arrangements and customary land rights, farmers were entitled to use these lands for agricultural purposes to support their livelihoods, as they inherited these lands from their parents. The absence of direct external interference also contributes to farmers’ perception of their land tenure being secure, as they were unaware of potential threats that would come from the village relocation and consolidation program. While the program implementation resulted in Khmu people settling in Namai and Houaykong villages as early as in 1987, Khmu original settlers who lived in both villages for generations and used upland areas as part of their livelihood activities, perceived their land as secure because they considered upland areas to be sufficient to incorporate the newcomers during this period. For the same reason, Khmu recent settlers, or groups of farmers that arrived in both villages in 1987 following the government’s policy on village relocation and consolidation also perceived their land tenure as secure in this period. During 1996–2005, more widespread implementation of the village relocation and consolidation program resulted in additional villages being resettled into Houaykong and Namai villages. This, together with the application of LUP/LA, changed farm households’ perceptions on

6 Between the late 1970s and mid 1980s, the GoL also adopted agricultural collectivization as a national policy, although it was short-lived (see Evans, 1990; Bourdet, 1995). In this paper, we do not specifically include land collectivization as part of the four defined policy periods as most farmers in the selected two villages neither brought up nor recalled land collectivization during the focus group discussions. This might have to do with the fact that land collectivization was implemented mainly in the context of lowland agriculture, not incorporating upland swidden agriculture. Moreover, it was highly unpopular, leading to passive resistance and non-implementation throughout the country (Evans, 1990; Bourdet, 1995). With only 40% of farmers joining the government-induced agricultural cooperatives, the latter’s poor functioning led to its suspension in 1979 (St. John, 2006) and the return to individual farming by households in the late 1980s. 7 While village consolidation in the 1990s involved physically moving people together, recent village consolidation has focused on having two or more villages administratively consolidated to be a single village, without anyone actually being moved.

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Fig. 1. Household perceptions on their land tenure (in)security. Source: Calculated by authors.

provincial authorities in Luang Prabang in 2004. The Company started establishing plantation plots in 2005–2006 in several villages in Nambak district on land identified in close collaboration with the district authorities. Arriving in both villages in 2005, the company initially claimed a total of 328 ha of farmers’ agricultural land as part of its land concession. At that time, the village authorities managed to negotiate with the company to reduce the area of land that would be confiscated (down to 100 ha), relying on their personal relationship with the district officials. This forced the company to look for land located further away from farmers’ farmland. In addition to the 100 ha of plantation claimed by the company, 56 ha of rubber was planted by farmers, including through contract farming arrangement with the company. During 2006–2015, the land concession obtained by the Chinese Rubber Company (CRC) for rubber plantations resulted in a 27% increase in the number of farm households who perceived their land tenure as insecure. While 42% of farm households still viewed their land tenure as secure because they had formal land titles (mostly for lowland paddy), 57% of farm households who did not have legal documents viewed their land tenure as insecure. Farmers with upland areas not overlapping with the CRC land concession converted their lands to rubber plantations and other cash crops in order to secure their land tenure while earning additional income. In the absence of legal documents to formally secure their land rights, farmers used cash crops and rubber in particular to mimic the company’s land use and secure their de-facto land tenure (Suhardiman et al., 2015). While farmers’ decision to shift from swidden cultivation to rubber and other cash crops was driven by a wider process of agrarian transformation (Fox and Castella, 2013; Kenney-Lazar, 2012; Baird, 2010; Manivong and Cramb, 2008), our study also reveals how farm household decision making and livelihood options were influenced by the government’s land policies and programs. Other farmers who lost their upland farm to the CRC land concession were forced to diversify their livelihoods, relying more on farm and non-farm employment. Land dispossession significantly changed farm households’ perceptions on land tenure (in)security and also shifted their strategy to ensure food supply from agricultural production to food purchase. A reversal of this trend occurred during 2016–2018, when more farm households perceived their land tenure as secure compared to the previous policy period. A key element in this change was the introduction of local land use planning under pFALUPAM. Viewing pFALUPAM as an effective means to resolve land conflicts between original and recent settlers and identify clear land boundaries, 59% of farm households perceived their land tenure as secure. Some households believed that having a defined land use plan would be sufficient to secure their land tenure, while others continued to secure their land tenure by planting rubber and other cash crops. Many Khmu recent settlers perceived they would have better access to upland areas, as pFALUPAM would group them into specific zones and reallocate the

land tenure security. On one level, the majority of farmers (53%) still perceived their land tenure as secure, as they had already acquired land (either by originally claiming it or buying it from others) and received a land use registration form from the local government. With the introduction of LUP/LA in 1996, farmers also paid land tax for their upland farming, which they perceived as a legal means to secure their land tenure. However, our findings also show an increase in the percentage of farm households that perceived their land tenure as insecure (totaling 30% of farmers). This view comes mainly from Khmu recent settler groups. Unlike the Tai-Lue and Khmu original settlers who acquired land rights by clearing, cultivating and also reserving upland agricultural areas in the village, Khmu recent settlers acquired their rights to access upland farmland by renting or requesting it from the original settlers. In both Houaykong and Namai villages, most Khmu recent settlers reserved and/or bought their land (mostly in the uplands) without any legal documents, and/or practiced swidden cultivation in remote areas far away from their villages. In this period, the policy interference started to infiltrate at the village level and changed farm households’ perceptions of their land tenure (in)security. Unlike before when farmers could practice swidden cultivation in nearby forest areas, the introduction of LUP/LA strictly demarcated the boundaries between forest and agricultural land, thus to a certain extent also limited farmers’ access to their farmland area now classified as forest land. While many were aware of the need to have legal documents to protect their access and rights to the land, not everyone was entitled to have their land registered, especially when their farmland was officially classified as forest land under LUP/LA. The policies also changed local communities’ reliance on internal relationships as a means to secure land tenure. Increasingly, external connections with the state were necessary for land registration. While farmers had previously relied mainly on customary institutions to obtain and secure access to land, the introduction of LUP/LA positioned customary land rights as inferior to the formal land registration introduced by the state. Here, farmers’ perceptions of the sources of authority that consign legitimacy over land claims began to shift from purely informal arrangements to include formal/legal land registration systems set up by the central government. In 2005, the Chinese Sino-Lao Chilan Rubber Developmnet Company Ltd. (hereafter the Chinese Rubber Company or CRC) received a large land concession from Nambak district and provincial authorities covering 1,161 ha (ha) of upland agricultural land in Koumban-Nayang. The concession area incorporated 73 ha of upland farming areas in Houaykong village and 255 ha in Namai village. Although the concession overlapped with land cultivated by farmers, no compensation was given to people who lost their land. According to Friis et al. (2016), the company established a rubber plantation of 100 ha in 2006 as part of a 7,000-ha land concession granted by the

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Fig. 2. Household perceptions on their food (in)security. Source: Calculated by authors.

family labor for cultivation as key barriers to securing sufficient food supply during this period, despite the fact that they had access to sufficient upland agricultural land. During 1996–2005, the majority of farm households (60%) still viewed themselves as food secure as they continued to have access to food (rice) during the year. This is despite the implementation of the village relocation and consolidation program that resulted in an increased percentage of farm households perceiving their land tenure as insecure. A key factor shaping farmers’ ability to secure food access is their de-facto land tenure security. While farmers might have perceived their land tenure as insecure due to lack of legal documents, this did not affect farm households’ ability to secure food as they continued to have access to their land and relied on it for agricultural production. The combination of this perceived land tenure insecurity and de-facto land tenure security is also key in shaping farm households’ strategies to diversify their livelihood options. Some farm households began expanding their livelihood strategies to include non-farm activities (e.g. wage labor and handicraft production), as well as engaging more with commercialized farming activities (e.g. cash crop cultivation) to increase overall household income and ensure food security. For example, Tai-Lue women practiced weaving and sold their cotton products, while Khmu women collected and sold Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs) for income to buy food. Nonetheless, 24% of farm households viewed themselves as food insecure due to unproductive or insufficient land. Population growth was also mentioned as a factor affecting farm households’ perceptions of being food insecure. Some of the recent Khmu settlers continued to rent agricultural land from the original settlers in both villages, while others continued to work on their land, located far away from their villages. This highlights the close interlinkages between land tenure (in) security and food (in)security. It also brings to light that food security does not depend on land tenure security alone, but also other factors, such as additional household income from wage labor in farm and nonfarm activities which farmers use as alternative strategies to ensure their food supply (Fig. 2). During 2006–2015, when some farmers lost their farmland to the CRC rubber concessions, the percentage of farmers who viewed themselves as food secure decreased from 60% to 50%. Such a decrease was due to farm households not being able to secure their food supply completely, despite their strategy to diversify. While all affected households were trying to cope with land dispossession in various ways to ensure their food supply, not all were successful in doing so. This affected the way farm households perceived their food security when we asked this in our survey in 2018. Despite land dispossession, the percentage decreased by only by 10% because many farm households earned additional income from diversified livelihood activities, which

land accordingly or as generally agreed between the original and recent settlers.8 Compared to the earlier policy period, fewer farm households (a reduction of 18%) described their land tenure as insecure. Nevertheless, 39% of households continue to perceived their land tenure as insecure because they still lack a legal land document, have already lost their land to CRC, or lost trust in any external intervention on land management. Unlike Khmu recent settlers, many Tai Lue and Khmu original settlers opposed the land use plan defined under pFALUPAM. As the plan will technically divide upland areas into different cultivation zones, they fear that the division and land reallocation will not be done fairly, as it may result in them receiving less productive land, or their fields being located further away from their village. Throughout the different policy periods, farmers’ changing perceptions of their land as either secure or insecure is closely linked with how respective government policies on land redefine, threaten, or change their access to upland agricultural areas. Unlike in LUP/LA, which limited farmers’ access to upland areas by formally reclassifying their agricultural land as forest land, pFALUPAM has significantly contributed to increasing the number of farmers who perceive their land tenure as secure. This is because pFALUPAM recognizes swidden cultivation as an integral part of the upland farming system and tries to integrate it into land use plans. Rather than classifying farmers’ upland fields as forest land, pFALUPAM recategorizes the land as upland agricultural areas, while introducing and increasing fallow time in the overall rotation schedule for swidden cultivation to ensure it does not result in further forest degradation. 4.2. Farm households’ perceptions on food (in)security While farm households’ perceptions on land tenure (in)security changes throughout the different policy periods, their perceptions on food (in)security remains relatively stable over time. Here, we use farm households’ experience of rice insufficiency since the last harvest season in each policy period as our indicator for farm households’ perceived food (in)security. Before 1995, 32% of farm households viewed themselves as food secure, as they had sufficient access to food (year-round rice) from their land. Traditionally, Tai-Lue farmers often cultivated lowland paddy-rice, while the Khmu practiced upland swidden cultivation. With sufficient family labor, Khmu were able to use all of their land to produce sufficient food. In this period, only 8% of farm households perceived themselves as food insecure, due to unproductive or degraded land. Some also flagged health problems and insufficient 8 At time of writing, the land use plan was not yet fully implemented due to internal power struggles between the different groups within local communities (Suhardiman et al., 2019).

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then contributed to their ability to buy food. Some of these incomes came from employment opportunities brought by the rubber plantation. For example, farmers could work as laborers to tap rubber latex. Other farmers who had planted their own rubber trees could also sell their rubber latex to CRC. In some cases, farmers used this additional income to start a small business (e.g. opened up a shop or transportation service). This way, they secured their food, relying on the additional income they got from farm and non-farm activities. Nonetheless, our findings also show that the percentage of farm households who perceived themselves as food insecure nearly doubled from the previous policy period, with around 50% of farmers viewing their lost access to land as a key determinant behind their food insecurity. This not only highlights the close interlinkages between land tenure (in)security and food (in)security, but also how farmers diversify their livelihood options to increase their ability to secure food. While farming continued to be a source of food production, farm households with perceived, de-facto and de-jure land tenure insecurity also realized that they had to explore other livelihood options to ensure their food security. During 2016–2018, the number of farm households who viewed themselves as food secure increased to 66%. Farmers from both villages earned an income to buy food from diversified livelihood activities including farm and non-farm employment (e.g. selling rubber-latex, wage labor). Some Khmu recent settlers were also able to buy land informally, and planted cash crops, rubber and teak trees, and/or raised livestock, while relying on additional income from farm and non-farm employment. With this income and new land, they were able to increase their options for sourcing food from their farms or buying it from local markets. Recent Khmu settlers who rented land to cultivate rice and agricultural products viewed pFALUPAM of TABI to be making a positive contribution to their food security. This view emanates from a perceived increase in land tenure security, as producing a defined land use plan would give them better access to upland areas (with secure tenure) that had previously been reserved for Khmu original settlers. About 33% of Khmu recent settlers perceived their food as insecure due to CRC’s land concession. This confirms the close interlinkages between land tenure security and food security, especially for farmers who depend on their own farming activities for food production. Some also pointed to limited income, labor and unproductive land as key contributing factors to insufficient access to food. Farm households’ strategies to cope with food insecurity throughout the different policy periods reflects a changing trend from securing food through agricultural production alone, to securing access to food via purchases. The larger percentage of households who perceive themselves as being food secure suggests that farmers increasingly rely on other resources apart from land to ensure their food security (e.g. earning an income as laborers). When government policies on land resulted in perceived, de-facto and de-jure land tenure insecurity, affected farmers resorted to alternative livelihood options, including farm and non-farm employment, to secure their food supply beyond the context of agricultural production alone. The above highlights the centrality of farm households’ strategies in shaping the close/loose interlinkages between land tenure (in)security and food (in)security, and how these interlinkages are influenced by the government’s policies on land over time. For example, when farmers lost all or some of their land to the CRC land concession, perceptions of land tenure insecurity manifested in both de-facto and de-jure land tenure insecurity. While this pushed affected farm households to find alternative livelihood options to secure their food through both agricultural commercialization (e.g. rubber plantation) and additional income from non-farm activities, it also shaped other households’ strategies to diversify their livelihood options. Hence, many households who viewed their food supply as secure were also those households who were able to change their strategy in ensuring food security, from production-based (relying on agricultural land) to access-based (food purchase). These households were able to draw on their socio-economic

assets (e.g. savings, labor, social capital) to make these changes. Similarly, households who perceived their food supply as insecure were those who lost their farmland to the CRC land concession and lacked socio-economic assets and opportunities to earn additional income from non-farm activities that would have otherwise enabled them to change their strategy and make the transition. Moreover, farm households used their income not only to secure their access to food but also to ensure their land tenure security by obtaining legal land documents. The underlying rationale here is that when their land tenure is secured, they can reinvest in their land and rely on it for agricultural production to ensure food security.9 5. Linking land tenure security with food security We applied uni-directional linkages to our analysis of the relationship between land tenure security and food security, as explained by Holden and Ghebru (2016) (see also Fig. 3). While we recognize that factors shaping the relationship between land tenure and food security are multi-dimensional, we argue that establishing the direct/indirect linkages between land tenure security and food security is an important first step to unpack how these factors work in each context and locality. A positive-direct link indicates that if land tenure is secured this will also influence farm households’ ability to secure food supply (upper loop). A negative-direct link, on the other hand, indicates that if land tenure is insecure, then food is not secured (lower loop). At the village level, a household can make choices not to use their land to produce food and to obtain food from other sources. These choices are influenced by factors such as perceived land tenure insecurity, poor soil quality, shortage of agricultural labor, or access to opportunities for non-farm employment. The choice to transition from farm-based to non-farm employment is refered to in the diagram below as “indirect/ no links” between land tenure security and food insecurity, or land tenure insecurity and food security. In this section, we analyse whether and how households use their land to produce agriculture products to secure food. Overall, we find close interlinkages between farmers’ land tenure security and food security. This is most evident from the higher percentage of households perceiving direct links compared to those perceiving indirect/no links throughout the different policy periods. Our findings also show that when farmers perceive their land tenure as insecure and fear that this will affect their food security, they opt to diversify their livelihood options if they are able to do so. This strategy to diversify does not necessarily weaken the linkage between land tenure security and food security. Rather, it establishes a new, alternative link between food security and non-farm activities. Such linkage emerges as part of wider agrarian transformation processes pertaining to access to markets, migration, agricultural labor availability, and wage labor opportunities outside of the agricultural sector. Farmers employ different strategies to ensure their food security and these strategies change when perceived de-facto and de-jure land tenure (in)security changes. 5.1. Patterns and driving factors of “indirect/no links” Throughout the different policy periods, the pattern of indirect/no links indicates that farmers view each policy as a threat to their land tenure security in different ways in terms of access, low productivity and uncertain zoning. However, as farmers presume policies will result in food insecurity, they quickly resorted to alternative livelihood means, through farm (e.g. earning income from rice harvesting, rubber 9

Nonetheless, Baird (2019) have shown how farmers would not invest in their farms, but rather in education for their children, thus implying the importance of agrarian transformation processes (e.g. migration, labor availability) in shaping farm households’ strategies to transition from farm-based to non-farm employment livelihood options. 7

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Fig. 3. Linking patterns and driving factors at village level. Source: Created by authors.

Fig. 4. Household perceptions on the linkages between land tenure security and food security. Source: Calculated by authors.

plantation) and non-farm employment (e.g. family businesses, wage labor). Here, farmers’ coping strategies contributed to and formed an integral part of wider agrarian transformation processes. Before 1995, when major policies such as the village relocation and consolidation program and LUP/LA were formulated but not yet fully implemented, food insecurity was hardly driven by land tenure insecurity (see Fig. 4). Similarly, land tenure security in terms of access to land did not automatically result in food security due to a lack of other determining factors (e.g. household labor, good quality land). For example, while large parts of upland areas were available, some farm households could not use it to ensure their food security due to health problems and lack of labor. Lack of non-farm employment and poor farming practices were also identified as key factors driving farm households’ food insecurity at that time. In this case, secured land tenure does not automatically result in secured food supply because other factors distort the linkage. Similarly, the village relocation and consolidation program affected farmers’ access to land but it did not automatically result in food insecurity because farmers quickly realized they needed to change their livelihood strategy from subsistence farming to farm and non-farm employment in order to cope. During 1996–2005, when the government actively implemented the village relocation and consolidation program and LUP/LA, 13% of households registered an indirect/no link by indicating their land tenure as insecure (e.g. land cultivated or reserved without legal documents), while their food remained sufficient. This is because their defacto land tenure security enabled ongoing access to land and because of their strategies to earn additional income from farm and non-farm employment. Farm employment consisted of farming activities conducted on another person’s farm, while non-farm employment included

selling handicrafts and NTFPs, wage labor, among others. Following the strategy to include farm and non-farm employment as part of farm household’s livelihood activities, they did not have to produce their food, but could buy it from nearby markets. Some also said that while the agricultural lands they had inherited from their parents were secure, they had insufficient food due to unproductive soil, small farming areas, water scarcity and climate hazards (see also Fullbrook, 2010 and Utuk and Daniel, 2015). During 2006–2015, and 2016–2018, with the granting of a rubber concession to CRC and the start of pFALUPAM, 33% and 40% of farm households showed indirect/no links, respectively. After losing upland agriculture areas to CRC, some farm households changed their strategy from relying mainly on agricultural production to farm and non-farm employment. This included earning an income from family businesses, working in rubber plantations or laboring in other farm and non-farm employment (see also Miggiano et al., 2010). Others who indicated their land was insecure, unproductive or degraded could still secure their food supply due to better road access to markets where they could purchase food by using cash-income earned from working as wage laborers. Furthermore, some farmers identified factors other than land as causing food insecurity, including climate change, floods and natural disasters, lack of irrigation water, insufficient family labor and poor pest management leading to low agricultural yields (Blarel, 1994; Fullbrook, 2010). The trend and driving factors of indirect/no links suggests that many farmers became less dependent on land access and tenure security as their means to ensure food security. As these farmers have little influence and lack the ability to secure their land tenure, the strategy is to increasingly move away from subsistence farming, while relying more 8

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on the market, labor conditions, and non-farm activities. While this is linked with farmers’ perceived de-facto and de-jure land tenure insecurity throughout the different policy periods outlined in the paper, it also reveals how farmers’ strategies are shaped by wider agrarian transformation processes (Barney, 2009; Thongmanivong et al., 2006), particularly the flow of an agricultural labor force from rural to urban areas (Rungmanee, 2014; Kelly, 2011). Nonetheless, we argue that farmers’ strategies to ensure food security outside agricultural production does not necessarily mean there is no direct linkage between land tenure security and food security. Rather, it shows that land tenure insecurity has prompted farmers to cope differently by diversifying and moving away from farming. Fig. 4B shows an overall pattern of increase over time in households displaying indirect/no links between land tenure and food (in)security, and a corresponding decline in households where there is a direct link between these factors.

Table 1 Percentage of positive and negative links. Source: Calculated by authors. Periods

Direct link in Figure-4

Positive link in Figure-5

Negative link in Figure-5

Before 1995 1996-2005 2006-2015 2016-2018

35.00% 70.63% 65.63% 56.88%

85.71% 72.57% 45.71% 65.93%

14.29% 27.43% 54.29% 34.07%

66% and the negative-link declining down to 34%. The rise and fall of positive and negative links in the three periods suggests that various government land policies forced farmers to change their livelihood strategies from subsistence-based agricultural production to cash crop production and non-farm employment, when they perceived and experienced land tenure insecurity. With less access to land and less land available to secure food production, particularly in the period when local authorities granted the CRC land concession, farmers were partly forced to find alternative means to secure food supply outside of the agricultural sector. The introduction of pFALUPAM has slightly improved farmers’ confidence regarding their land tenure security, as indicated in their attempt to return to agricultural production as their means to ensure food security during 2016–2018. On the one hand, the expansion of farm households’ livelihood options from subsistence-based to include farm and non-farm employment has been influenced by how farm households’ perceive their land tenure and food (in)security in relation to each government’s policy and program. On the other hand, farm households’ decision making has also been driven by wider forces shaping agrarian transformation processes in rural Laos such as migration, labor availability, commercialization of agriculture, among others (Thongmanivong et al., 2006; Kelly, 2011).

5.2. Patterns and driving factors of “direct links” We find a significant linkage between land tenure and food (in)security as the percentage of households with direct links is higher overall than those showing indirect/no links (as presented in Fig. 4). This shows that land tenure security is key to food security in Laos. To unpack the trend and driving factors of the positive and negative directlinks in different policy periods, we split percentages of direct links in Fig. 4 into 100% ratios of positive and negative direct-link(s). This is illustrated in Fig. 5 and Table 1. Before 1995, from a total of 35% of farmers that identified direct links, 86% of them perceived a positive link between land tenure and food security, mainly because the availability of productive land made accessible through customary land rights enabled them to produce sufficient food. Farmers perceived their land tenure as secure and this significantly contributed to food security. In contrast, 14% perceived a negative link between their land tenure insecurity and resulting food insecurity. Uncertainty about the legal status of their land ownership claims, insufficient labor force, or perceptions of their lands as unproductive, degraded or otherwise limited, affected their ability to produce sufficient food. During 1996–2005, when the village relocation and consolidation program and LUP/LA were widely implemented and penetrated at the village level, the positive-link ratio fell from 86% to 73%, while the negative-link ratio increased from 14% to 27%. In the period 2006–2015, when CRC was granted the land concession, the positive link further declined to 46% while the negative link increased to 54%. However, during 2016–2018 when pFALUPAM of TABI was implemented, the trend was reversed with the positive link increasing to

6. Conclusion The paper illustrates and discusses government land policies as one of the key driving forces shaping how farmers perceive land tenure (in) security and how these perceptions (including perceptions of past tenure (in)security) shape their strategies to diversify livelihood options to ensure food security. Such an approach highlights the current gap in the country’s land governance approaches, rooted in the central positioning of land as an economic asset and a unit for agricultural production and environmental conservation. By presenting land merely as a physical entity (e.g. soil suitability for agricultural production), the central government reduces the country’s land governance approaches to a technical, administrative exercise, involving mainly government ministries and provincial/district authorities. It significantly sidelines farm households’ perceptions of their land tenure (in)security, how it relates to their food security, as well as their overall strategies to ensure the latter. Most importantly, it misses key insights on how the shaping of these strategies could potentially impede and/or contribute to the government’s agricultural development policies in particular, and the country’s socio-economic development in general. These key insights include the shifting trend in farmers’ strategies to ensure food security from producing food (e.g. use of agricultural land) to accessing or purchasing food (Kenney-Lazar, 2016). Our case study brings to light local communities’ and farm households’ ability (to greater and lesser extents) to cope with various government policies on land. It unpacks farm households’ various strategies to deal with their perceived and de-facto land tenure (in)security throughout different policy periods, and how these strategies are partly driven by their objective to secure food, while placing these within the wider context of agrarian transformation. This is most apparent from how farm households who perceived their land tenure as insecure made the move towards non-farm employment to access cash income for their

Fig. 5. Ratios of positive and negative direct-links between land tenure (in) security and food (in)security. Source: Calculated by authors. 9

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food security. Similarly, farm households who lost their land to a rubber concession were forced to take farm and non-farm employment opportunities as means to adapt to less land-dependent livelihood options. It shows how shifts in farmers’ perceptions of land tenure insecurity are key in shaping farm household decisions and their development pathways. Our study shows the centrality of land and its importance in securing and improving people’s livelihoods. Evidence from the two trend-lines of positive and negative direct-links illustrates that government land policies can either increase or reduce farmers’ rights to access and use their lands, as well as their physical, social and economic access to food. Thus, we argue that maintaining households’ land tenure security is key in achieving local community’s food security and livelihoods. From a policy perspective, the current gap in the country’s land governance approaches shows that government policies on land should move beyond the current distinction between agricultural land and forest land, and instead put farmers’ livelihood strategies at the center of the overall shaping of land tenure security and food security interlinkages.

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Acknowledgement This work was undertaken as part of, and funded by, the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) led by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). PIM is in turn supported by these donors. The opinions expressed here belong to the authors, and do not necessarily reflect those of PIM, IFPRI, or CGIAR. The authors would like to thank TABI, CDE, SDC, NAFRI, PAFO Luang Prabang, DAFO Nambak, and six students from the Northern Agriculture and Forestry College in Luang Prabang for their support and collaboration throughout the (field) research. We would like to thank Natalia Scurrah for going through the various versions of the manuscript for thorough copy editing as well as the two unanimous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. References ANGOC, 2017. From the Farmland to the Table: Exploring the Links between Tenure and Food Security. Asian NGO Coalition for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development and Global Land Tool Network, Quezon City. Baird, I.G., Shoemaker, B., 2005. Aiding or Abetting? Internal Resettlement and International Aid Agencies in the Lao PDR. Probe International., Toronto, Canada. Baird, I.G., Shoemaker, B., 2007. Unsettling experiences: internal resettlement and international aid agencies in Laos. Dev. Change 38 (5), 865–888. Baird, I.G., 2010. Land, rubber and people: rapid agrarian changes and responses in Southern Laos. J. Lao Stud. 1 (1), 1–47. Baird, I.G., 2019. Changes in Understanding of Land in Laos: From State Sovereignty to Capital Mobilization. Retrieved 25 April 2019 from. Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia 25. https://kyotoreview.org/issue-25/land-in-laos-from-state-sovereignty-to-capitalmobilization/. Barney, K., 2009. Laos and the making of a ‘relational’ resource frontier. Geogr. J. 175 (2), 146–159. Blarel, B., 1994. Tenure security and agricultural production under land scarcity: the case of Rwanda. In: Bruce, J.W., Migot-Adholia, S.E. (Eds.), Searching for Land Tenure Security in Africa. Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, Dubuque, Iowa, pp. 71–95. Borras, S.M., Franco, J.C., Suárez, S.M., 2015. Land and food sovereignty. Third World Q. 36 (3), 600–617. Bourdet, Y., 1995. Rural reforms and agricultural productivity in Laos. J. Dev. Areas 29 (1), 161–182. Bugri, J.T., 2008. The dynamics of tenure security, agricultural production and environmental degradation in Africa: evidence from stakeholders in North-East Ghana. Land Use Policy 25 271-185. Burawoy, M., 1991. The extended case method. In: Burawoy, M., Burton, A., Ferguson, A.A., Fox, K.J. (Eds.), Ethnography Unbound: Power and Resistance in the Modern Metropolis. University of California Press, Los Angeles, pp. 271–287. Cunnington, P., 2011. Resettlement in Laos. European Commission, Vientiane. Dwyer, M., 2007. Turning Land into Capital: a Review of Recent Research on Land Concessions for Investment in Lao PDR. INGO Working Group on Land Issues, Vientiane. Evans, G., 1990. Lao Peasants under Socialism. Yale University Press, New Haven. Evrard, O., Goudineau, Y., 2004. Planned resettlement, unexpected migrations and cultural trauma in Laos. Dev. Change 35 (5), 937–962. Forest Trends, 2014. Forest Conversion in Lao PDR: Implications and Impacts of Expanding Land Investments Policy Brief. Washington DC. .

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