Where Dead Tigers Come From

 I don’t know what I was doing when Puan found me. Maybe I was looking at the village swing or kicking the dirt or studying the social habits of chickens. Puan had something to show me but wasn’t giving me any hints as to what had him so excited

It was a poorly preserved cat skin on a bench at the the school house. What type of critter was anyone’s guess. Markings like a leopard cat, but too large, and not at all like a true leopard. The translation from Akha to Lue to Lao to English was losing quite a bit of info if there was ever any there to begin with. Small leopard was about as close as I heard with variations of mao (cat) and sua (tiger) thrown in to the confuse the issue.
I don’t think the cat was killed for the wildlife trade, more likely as proof of some hunter’s prowess. The village of Lao Sueng is not only a long way from any roads but also in an area where the Lao Government prosecutes the trade in wildlife. The villagers were unconcerned that I was taking photos of a cat skin and Puan has known me for years.

At the time I didn’t realize it but over the next couple of weeks I’d be skirting the edges of what is now the center of the international trade in tigers, leopards and other endangered species.

Tiger head and skin for sale at Mong La the border town up in Sipsongbana (twelve villages in the Dai language) I had no idea that taxidermy was this advanced in the Shan State. Someone must have sent away for a mold for a leopard as well as teeth tongue and nose.
In the early 90s I  befriended an ethnic Chinese from New York city who used to go to Mong La regularly to purchase gem stones to take home to his uncles jewelery business in NY. I think he used to bring in the gems informally. (hidden very discreetly) He would wait on the Chinese side for the traders to come over to sell, he made a trip to Mong La every two months. I think I was the only fellow American he bumped into on his trips, it was when I lived in Dali. Even back then Mong La had a reputation of allowing things that were often frowned upon in the more Puritanical Peoples Republic.

I’m an agnostic on the hunting of cats in the land of other peoples. Not my land, not my people. I will say the upland peoples have been hunting the same cats using the same firearms (black powder muzzle loaders) for hundreds of years. It's not them who have changed.

I remember a long time ago, in my own country once I got kind of a bad feeling when I saw the skins of a few bobcats stretched out on racks for drying in the back of someone’s pickup in Utah, it just struck me the wrong way for whatever reason. Cats are an interesting family of animals. They never seem to seriously overpopulate and they spread themselves out through being territorial. In general they don’t eat carrion. I like seeing the tracks of a mountain lion despite the fact that they probably eat a deer a week. Cats hunt by stealth, so do us humans sometimes.

I thought of writing when I saw this article on the website of Radio Free Asia. http://www.rfa.org/english/news/burma/tigers-11192010152041.html

Burma up in that part of the world isn’t under the control of, well, Burma. People call it Shan State, and has been fighting Burma since forever. The Mekong separates Burma from Laos and the river is very narrow and turbulent. A metaphor perhaps. I know that other foreigners travel in the area but I’ve never seen any. The only boats I’ve seen are Chinese freighters, local shallow bottomed Lao freight boats, the fast boats I’ve ridden and once an overpowered sleek Chinese passenger cruiser.

Looking north from the landing at Xiengkok. I don’t think the barely visible bamboo pier sticking out into the eddy created by the calving of that sandbar is a pier for offloading to Keng Larb. My map from Reise puts the town 15km upriver.

The Radio Free Asia (RFA) article is taken from a report from TRAFFIC an org that monitors trade in species. There are some gems such as this one.

The extreme decentralization of northern Burma "makes the situation more difficult to monitor and control,"  Translation: There is no government and no way any of us are going there.

Another one, “Mong La and Tachilek are areas in the Shan State of northern Burma, where rebels are waging a battle for greater autonomy against the junta.” Greater autonomy translates into not having their village razed to the ground and every living thing in it killed. There are no reporters or observers to bring word of the conflict to the outside world, it just happens.



The article goes on to claim Keng Larb in Burma is the new exit point for the trade. The mention of that town is what perked up my ears. So I looked at the map. Sure enough right where that birds beak type thing sticks into Laos. The bird beak is a big old turn of the Mekong, at the tip of the beak is the tiny port of Xiengkok, Laos. That’s where the Long river enters the Mekong. The river and the ledge jutting from the hill, form a slack water big enough for boats to pull out of the current and moor. Any place the river slows down enough to actually allow a boat to stop is a real big deal on the upper Mekong. There’s a customs house. 

Lao freight boat firing up it’s engines as it enters the fast water at Xiengkok. We all watched the boat silently swing out into the current without power waiting to see what the heck was going on. The captain hadn’t started the engine so to save a couple precious drops of fuel. The engine coughed a couple of times then caught and blew out this tiny cloud of smoke. Without power a boat would be dashed on the rocks within seconds of entering the rapids. The Chinese blasted a channel a few years ago but there is still a tremendous amount of water trying to squeeze through a very narrow passage.

Xiengkok is the place the backpacker Ryan Chicovsky disappeared under unusual circumstances four and a half years ago. http://ryanchicovsky.blogspot.com/ If anyone reading this travels to that  area, and hears anything about Ryan please contact his family as they are still seeking word of him.

I can see how the trade in tiger parts would find the Mekong along the Burma Lao border a good place to exit Burma. There is no law in Burma, the only outpost of the Lao government is the lone, very boring, customs house in Xiengkok a town known for being perhaps less regulated than the rest of Laos. The dirt road from Xienkok up to Sing and the local border crossing with China has no checkpoints before the border itself. At the border both times I’ve been there everyone has been playing dakaw that kind of cross between volley ball and soccer played with a hard wicker ball. It’s not a border for international travelers.


Further down the Mekong where Burma meats the Thai border is the town of Huay Xai with it’s hard surface road where in four hours you can drive to the big casino at Boten. The Chinese casino that is built on 25km of Laos with a 30 year lease and an option for  60 more. It would be very hard to tell where Laos ends and China begins. I saw an article recently with photos of tiger kits for sale there but I can’t seem to find it anymore.
Finally there is the possibility of going straight up the Mekong is China, with no Lao checkpoints at all. Those 3 possible routes out of Keng Lap, all very loosely regulated, offer inexpensive, quick passage to China for the wildlife trade, far away from developed towns.

An example of howe "out there" this stretch of river is, a few years ago a fast boat got shot up and a Chinese army guy killed. Something to do with the Chinese casino in Tachilek not paying it’s protection money. What a Chinese army guy was doing all that way down the river so far from the border of China just goes to show the confluence of corrupt officials, lack of any kind of government, and competing illegal enterprises.

Huay Xai is also the first place one ends up that has internet, electricity, hot water, and all the trappings of modernity. While walking down the main street I saw a store selling curios from the forest. Boar tusks, porcupine quills, exotic looking crystals, and such. Lying on the floor was this very beautiful skin from a marbled leopard.

I asked the young lady minding the store if the owner was there. He still wasn’t there an hour later and I politely asked permission to take the photo.

Logging Lord

liana or woody vine wrapping around itself.

Great You Tube video.

Sorry, embedding disabled by request of the producer, Journeyman Pictures.

Logging Lord

Great professional quality video about a military strongman logging and relocating in central Laos. The producer definitely take a dim view of the general and his methods. A more nuanced view would be of the traditional benevolent emperor which is what General Chang is.

I would reject characterizing the general using our culture and background as a measure, but I do think there are much less destructive ways to bring development and save the forests at the same time. I know that it is possible to use selective cutting and preserve the forests as well as the habitat that supports the peoples and animals that currently live there.

Joe Cummings Ponders State of SEA Tourism

above, Vang Vien Before Tourism

Before I do a cut and paste from The New Statesman I'll give some background.

Joe Cummings had a lot to do with my initial view of Thailand and Asia. He was the author of the Thailand edition of the Lonely Planet book when I first went there and his attitude and outlook made a lot of sense to me then, still does now.

Joe encouraged readers to dig a little deaper, look a little closer. Learn some words, eats some local food, talk to some people. Eventualy I lived in other countries, but I always used his template of learning about the people of the country as a guide.

Joe's books were exaustive and also up to date. His insight into the language, the people and culture gave him a perspecive unmatched by todays writers. After all how many guidebook writers can speak in the language of the country they write about, how many live there? More likely they are young, paid for a brief few week mad dash around the place collecting prices and names of hotels, and then it might well be off to the next country half way around the world.

Without further ranting here it is.

Beauty at a price

Joe Cummings

Published 17 July 2008
Concrete hotels, go-go bars and drug tourism have scarred Thailand, Laos and Cambodia - yet it is not too late to develop a less destructive travel industry. Part of the New Stateman's special focus on South East Asia

Tourism in mainland south-east Asia has entered a new era. Thailand, once something of an underground destination, has become hugely popular, attracting more than 12 million tourists every year. Its top resorts, such as Phuket and Koh Samui, are swamped by foreigners, particularly in the winter high season.

But political and social trends are reshaping the country's travel scene. The stereotype of Bangkok as a city that never sleeps was shattered by a "new social order", propagated by the conservative Thai Rak Thai political party (reformulated after an anti-TRT coup as the People's Power Party). Prompted by the then prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra's conviction that "dark influences" cause all manner of social ills after midnight, the Thai government began imposing early closing (between midnight and 2am) on bars, discos, massage parlours and every other entertainment venue.

Nowadays, tourists arriving in Bangkok expecting to party all night often say they feel cheated. "If I wanted to head home early when the pubs shut," I heard a young Englishman complain recently, "I'd have stayed in Brighton."

Although Thaksin himself turned out to be something of a dark influence (the state has filed or is considering more than 20 charges of corruption against the former premier, who was deposed in a military coup in September 2006), the new social order's strict closing times have remained in effect.

The city's notorious go-go bars along the neon-splashed lanes of Patpong, Soi Cowboy and Nana Plaza have been heavily affected by the policy. Their clientele was used to arriving around 11pm and staying until 3am or 4am, and even now the clubs remain relatively empty before 11pm. The owners and their female staff - many of whom depend on after-hours "dates" arranged while at work - now have to solicit business over the course of just three hours.
But in neighbouring Cambodia, Phnom Penh, once considered one of the region's more conservative capitals, is being touted as the "new Bangkok". Two of the city's most popular, long-established bars, Sharky's and Walkabout, now open 24 hours a day. Others won't close until the last customer leaves. Trendy bars and cafes, full of twenty- and thirtysomething businesspeople and tourists, have sprung up along Sisowath Quay, supplanting classic post-Khmer Rouge drinking holes such as the famous Foreign Correspondents Club.

Similarly, Siem Reap - not so long ago a dusty outpost humbly prostrated at the feet of the magnificent Angkor Wat temple complex - has recently been transformed into a city of art galleries, gelaterias and chic, architect-designed hotels such as the Hôtel de la Paix. The city has become such a destination in its own right that it's not unusual to meet a foreigner with no plans to visit the Angkor complex nearby.

The heady scent of marijuana, readily available for US$1 per neatly rolled, Bob Marley-sized spliff, wafts down the streets of both Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. No one in Bangkok - a target of Thaksin's deadly drug wars in 2004, during which more than 2,000 petty dealers were extrajudicially executed - would dare smoke cannabis in public. In tourist Cambodia, however, it is relatively commonplace.

The right kind of travel

Drug tourism also flourishes in neighbouring Laos, particularly in Vang Vieng, a small town wedged in a river valley lined by limestone cliffs. Dozens of limestone caves, many of them holy to the Lao people, are Vang Vieng's main daytime attraction, but when night falls, foreigners often drift towards the town's half-dozen opium dens. I asked one den owner about the intricate wood-and-bamboo pipes on display. "Those are for tourists," he replied. "The locals prefer these," - smaller glass pipes filled with ya baa, the crude, locally made amphetamine. "Much stronger."

But some tourism in other areas is more carefully managed. Si Phan Don is a cluster of impossibly scenic islands in the middle of the Mekong in southern Laos, close to the northern Cambodian border. Here, where the Mekong reaches its widest extent, a handful of islands are inhabited year-round. Peaceful and palm-fringed, they look like a mini-Polynesia.
Two of the islands - Don Det and Don Khon - are lined with guest-houses, constructed simply, in local styles. River breezes take the place of air-conditioning, and the islands' power generators are typically engaged from 6pm-10pm only. The main tourist activity is boating from island to island to observe Lao village life. Villagers also offer boat excursions to see one of the last surviving pods of Irrawaddy dolphins, found only in mainland south-east Asia. It is unknown how many are left in the area - perhaps as few as 20 - but the Lao provincial and district governments work hard to protect them from local fishermen, providing free dolphin-friendly nets in place of the deadly gill nets they used until recently.

Similarly, local people in the northern Lao province of Luang Namtha have, under their own initiative, created village-based eco-trekking programmes in and around the Nam Ha National Protected Area. Extending to the border with China and contiguous with Yunnan's Shiang Yong Protected Area, Nam Ha is one of the most important international wildlife corridors in the region. It is also home to minority hill-tribe groups, including the Lao Huay, the Akhas and the Khamus.

The hill-tribes supply and train leaders for the small group treks in tribal lands, which are scheduled so that no village or area is repeatedly inundated by tourists. The programme has been so successful that the United Nations Development Programme has recognised it as a "best practice" poverty alleviation intervention, and it earned a United Nations Development Award in 2001.

In many ways the late-blooming tourism industries in Laos and Cambodia, delayed by decades of war, have benefited from observing the mistakes Thailand made during its 1980s and 1990s economic boom. On Thailand's vast Andaman Sea and Gulf of Thailand coastlines, which still attract by far the majority of tourist visitors to the country, the negative impacts of overbuilding and congestion in parts of Koh Samui and Phuket have served as vivid lessons on how not to develop natural attractions.

The December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which devastated small portions of Thailand's Andaman coast and took more than 8,000 lives (roughly half of whom were foreign tourists), brought beach tourism to a virtual standstill for a full year afterwards. A few Thais argued that the tragedy offered the opportunity for lower-impact rehabilitation of the affected areas. However, most business owners simply created the same tourism landscape as before - which has, at least, helped Thais avoid the harmful aspects of extinct local practices such as tin mining and cyanide fishing.

Thailand, Laos and Cambodia are all increasingly struggling to identify and attract a market that lends itself to sustainable tourism. One of the latest buzz terms used by national tourism offices (NTOs) in the region is "high-yield traveller". On the face of it, the concept seems relatively clear: "We want visitors who leave behind a lot of money." But who are the real high-yield travellers? Unfortunately, most south-east Asian NTOs define them as the visitors with the highest expenditure per day. The NTOs believe their task is simple: target the richest and most spendthrift.

Yet per-day expenditures are not the whole story. Higher-spending tourists typically demand hotels packed with imported amenities and foods, and managed by foreigners or local people trained overseas. Tourism revenue leaves the country through the purchase of imported goods, through expatriated salaries and through overseas tuition. Most of the high-expenditure-per-day figures are eroded by such hidden costs to the host country.

Budget is better

Other hidden costs of the higher-spending tourist are environmental and cultural. The typical international hotel chain may offer a nod to local architecture, but neglects ways of cooling living spaces that do not involve using air-conditioning, for example. Local people, awed by the hotel monoliths, may gradually come to look down upon their own ways of building, thereby contributing to a loss of culture.

Meanwhile, the average backpacker or budget traveller - a sector of the market increasingly spurned by NTOs - stays at local-standard hotels and guest-houses, eats at local restaurants and buys local handicrafts direct from village crafts people. The income "leakage" is much less, and because the backpacker typically stays in the host destination longer, the net income is in fact usually greater than for the high-expenditure-per-day traveller.

For the moment, tourism in Cambodia and Laos seems aimed squarely - whether intentionally or not - at this high-yield, low-impact market. Thailand attracts a mix of mass-market, luxury and budget travellers; it cannot turn back the clock to a time when it was at the same level of development as Cambodia or Laos. However, it is not too late to adjust Thailand's tourism marketing policy and to work towards preserving the increasingly fragile cultures and environments in the country's less explored areas of the north and north-east.

The downturn in the global economy, and the resulting dip in south-east Asian tourism, provide another chance for the industry to reflect on its way of working, another opportunity to decide whether the region needs more multinational-dominated mega-resorts - or a more old-fashioned, local approach to welcoming visitors.

Joe Cummings, an author of Lonely Planet's Thailand guide for 25 years, has spent most of his adult life in south-east Asia

So Fa So Good

The Mekong just below Xienkok, the Nam Fa joins just out of the photo to the left

There is a steep sided valley tucked away in the mountains of Loas. It’s not on the way to anywhere. The river that flows through this valley crosses only one road far upstream and runs for 110 kilometres undisturbed until it empties into the Mekong unnoticed just below Xiengkok. Nature has also done her part to shield this valley from the covetous eyes of the modern world. Guarding both sides of the valley are steep mountains covered in thick forest, up and downstream powerful rapids make the river unavigatable by even the smallest open boat.

On the south bank of this valley on a sloped bench well above the reach of even the highest flood waters lies a tidy small village called Mongla.


Mongla..... I used the telephoto on my mini zoom to glass the town from 4km away, above Jakune. Large diptocarps rise above the canopy, tilled fields at higher elevations behind the village.

Mongla is not totally isolated. Fit and strong adults make a long one day walk to Muang Long or even Xienkok. They bring back manufactured items, such as lead for shot, fishhooks, gasoline for the generator, even tin for the roofs of the well off. But until recently the outside world had hardly made an impression on the remote valley and no one ventured in.



The Naiban of Mongla and a young boy who has been studying Laotian returning from Muang Long with fuel, a bucket, a woven mat, and some other manufactured goods. This is the ford below Jakune in the dry season. The flow is about ten cubic meters per second down by the Mekong, less than a tenth the volume of the wet season. Translation ; in August this river be rippin.

The people of this valley are Akha, the men can recite their lineage back to common ancestors with all the other Akha of Phongsali, Thailand, China, or wherever. They grow corn and rice above the river on the higher slopes of the mountains. For some reason they leave the trees and forests of the bottomlands uncut. Perhaps some sort of taboo reinforcing good conservation practices.

The trees are some of the tallest and oldest I’ve ever seen in Laos. Maybe it’s just the way they grow so close together amongst the large boulders. The trail is forced to climb up and over and around the roots of the trees in the perpetual twilight of the deep forest. Here the large predators and their prey survive in high numbers, not yet hunted for sale to the underground trade in tiger parts.

Tigers and leopards,
barking deer guar,
bears and civets,
slow loris sambar.



homemade muzzle loader it shoots a very small lead bullet with black powder

Fish eagle fly away,
Jakal can run.
What of the marten and badger,
For them it’s no fun.


Plants and vines growing on tree trunk

The other day bored and googling I came across this web site

Nam Fa Hydropower Project

I quickly scrolled through the article then slowly absorbed the map which is below.



When I enlarged the map all was fuzzy, still I remember enough of the river to recognise the basic lay of things. The Nam Fa trends west and joins a major tributary (Nam Kha) before joining the Mekong itself. I scrolled on back to the technical page. Max height 79 meters, ten kilometre access road. I could see the reservoir not quite reaching Vieng Phouka.

I already knew that many hydroelectric dams had been approved, on the Mekong, in Southern Laos, and a series of dams are planned to destroy almost all of the Nam Ou. I wasn’t surprised really but seing it in black and white really set me back on my heels. Knowing what the people looked like and having slept in their house and eaten their food didn’t help. They weren’t just any people.


Naiban Jakune


Naiban Mongla

Wife Naiban Mongla

Only in reading backwards to search for the start date and for particulars on where the access road would go did I realize the project had been discarded as not profitable enough. I hope it becomes less profitable as time goes by.



Nam Fa looking downstream from the ford below Jakune. After a short while the forest becomes very old and deep.

The following are the visits to the Valley that the Nam Fa runs through so far as I know.

At the beginning of the millennium Wildside Expeditions began to make an attempt to market the idea of a white water rafting trip to the area following their foray down the river on behalf of UNESCO and the Nam Ha Eco tourism folks. Writing in the advertising literature for a trip itinerary the writer, whom I assume must be Bill Tuffin of The Boat Landing Ecotourism Lodge, said, “ The Nam Fa offers one of the most pristine tropical river environments left on earth.”

The wildlife survey down the river by Wildside was the first known instance of outsiders entering the area. I don’t know if they were able to find any takers for their proposed 7 day raft trip. In 04 a mixed group of kayakers including Japanese and Lao nationals also paddled down the river. The rapids are rated at class IV, not too difficult for experienced kayakers, but not the kind of thing for the neophyte.

Beginning in the dry season of 06 Tui the manager of the tourism office in Muang Long started to take trekkers over the mountains on guided walks into the valley. He first took a pair of unknown hikers, then his friend Somjit took a very fast lone Scandinavian guy. Early in the dry season of 06/07 I hiked in with one of Tui’s students, Si Phan guiding me. Later in February 07 Tui hiked in for a second time with a trio of Italians. Even though the Italians were young fit twenty some things they didn’t reach Mongla on the second day until late in the evening. Just after that I too took my second hike, my guide this time was Somjit also his second walk into the valley.

I know that Sak the director of the agricultural department in Muang Long also hiked into Nambo and I assume Jakune as there were also public service health care type posters there. Probably he and Tui were assessing the viability of trekking in the area.

All in all six small groups of two or three people have headed into the valley of the Nam Fa, probably more by now.

I myself have entered or left by four different routes. The first time by cutting over to Nambo then down to Jakune. The river was still too high for crossing to Mongla and we hiked back up on the ridge to the north and tried to follow it down to Xiengkok. We got lost. Not lost lost, just couldn’t find a trail so we walked out to the road.

The first house we came to while headed for the road was perched on a steep side slope. The woman there seemed alone except for five or six dogs that were going wild barking and growling. At the time I thought that it must be a waste to feed so many dogs, now I realize why they kept so many, Asiatic Tiger.

The second time in we walked directly to Mongla due South of Muang Long by cutting over the crest of Phou Mon Lem and across the river below Jakune. We exited by crossing the Nam Fa a couple kilometres downstream of Mongla and regaing the ridge which we followed to Som Pan Yao and out to Xiengkok.



The bright wide blue lines are rivers, Nam Ma up top and Nam Fa below. The smaller darker blue lines are the various routes I walked in and out to the valley as best I remember and the red dots are also where I guess villages to be, from left to right, Som Pan Yao, Mongla, Jakune, and Nambo. Pink dots are abandoned villages one on ridge above Nam Ma valley and the other Jakune Gao.

A look at the map of the Nam Ha NBCA on the Boat Landing web site reveals lots of little animal profiles all over this area and many small house symbols indicating a village. You can easily see the tributary of the Nam Ma in Muang Long heading east and the proliferation of animal signs between it and the Nam Fa to the south. Someone went in there and spotted those animals or their tracks.

Map of the Nam Ha Protected Area on Boat Landing Web Site showing villages and animal locations

I know that Bill Tuffin worked in bringing health care to the area around Muang Long in the 90s, I would have to assume that he and others made perhaps quite a few trips in to the higher elevations and also down into the northern side of the river. Lots of animals are marked on his maps, and towns along both the tributary to the Nam Ma and the north side of the Nam Fa. I suspect many of the towns are now gone or moved. Nambo seems to be much closer to Vieng Phouka than I thought.. And I know one of the village symbols must be the recently abandoned Jakune Gao.

At least three large villages that I know of have moved either to another location or out to the road since this map was made. I covered a small portion of this area, there must be many more relocated ban nock.

The map from The Boat Landing has been invaluable in trying to make sense of where things are. I also cross reference between Google Earth and my old topos that date back to the war. It’s hard trying to remember the lay of the land from some walks I took a year ago. Especially as I was walking as fast as I could just to keep up. But then I am supposed to be able to keep my sense of direction while covering long distances off the trail, it‘s my background. It’s gratifying to see the three sources of information seeming to match my memory. The more I look at the maps and try to remember the shape of the hills, the more the maps and my memories seem to coalesce into a series of overlays in my minds eye with some points in common to all.

The distances between villages is prohibitively far. I don’t see how they can run treks in this area without some places to sleep halfway between the villages. One way or another more and more trips will be made into the valley that surrounds the Nam Fa. My only wish is that future walkers can also see those ancient trees with the wide buttressed trunks, and a wild river not yet dammed.


Ban Nambo

Lao Forests Plundered At Increasing Rate

Trucks with logs lined up at the border to Vietnam

In my wanderings across cyberspace I stumbled upon this photo a few weeks ago with the caption, "Trucks carrying logs from Khammouane Province in Laos to Ha Tinh Province in Vietnam".

At the time I assumed a fellow tourist had spotted the trucks and logs and taken a photo. The rest of the photos on the flikr account were also good and from out of the way places.

Then this week I ran across an article in Business Week .

Vietnam destroying Lao forests By DENIS D. GRAY BANGKOK, Thailand

Vietnam is acquiring huge quantities of illegally logged timber from neighboring Laos and turning it into furniture for consumers in the United States and Europe, an environmental group said Wednesday.

"Vietnam's booming economy and demand for cheap furniture in the West is driving rapid deforestation" in Laos, Julian Newman of the Britain-based Environmental Investigation Agency said at a news conference.

The group showed a video of fleets of trucks laden with logs crossing the border into Vietnam from Laos, which has banned the export of logs and sawn timber.

Every year, an estimated 17.6 million cubic feet of logs are smuggled across the border after false documents are produced and bribes paid, the group said.

The video included Vietnamese businessmen admitting that logs at their factories came from Laos in violation of the country's laws and were processed into furniture for export.

A huge pile of logs from Laos was shown in the Vietnamese port of Vinh, ready for sale.

Newman said businesses in Thailand are also buying illegally cut timber from Laos, which has some of the last great forests in mainland Southeast Asia.

"The cost of such unfettered greed is borne by poor rural communities in Laos who are dependent on the forests for their traditional livelihoods," Newman said.

Vietnamese and Thai officials were not immediately available for comment. The governments of both countries have in the past acknowledged the illegal trafficking of timber from Laos, although the scope of the trade has not previously been clear.

"The ultimate responsibility for this dire state of affairs rests with the consumer markets which import wood products made from stolen timber," Newman said.

Faith Doherty, another EIA staffer, said draft laws now before the U.S. Congress would curb such imports. She said the European Union was taking steps to certify furniture and other forest products as having come from legally procured timber.

An EIA report also released Wednesday noted that Vietnam has taken steps since the 1990s to conserve its own forests while at the same time expanding wooden furniture production, much of it with illegal timber.

Furniture exports from Vietnam totaled $2.4 billion last year, a tenfold increase since 2000. According to the Vietnamese government, 39 percent of the exports in 2006 went to the United States, 14 percent to Japan, 7 percent to Britain and 4 percent each to France and Germany.

"The plundering of Laos' forests involves high-level corruption and bribery and it is not just Vietnam which is exploiting its neighbor.

Thai and Singapore traders are also cashing in," the report said. Posing as investors, EIA staffers met one Thai businessman who bragged of paying bribes to senior Lao military officials to secure timber potentially worth $500 million, the group said.

Press Release: 19 March 2008

VIETNAM: HOW THE COUNTRY HAS BECOME A HUB FOR THE REGION'S ILLEGAL TIMBER TRADE.

EIA Web Site

Vietnam is operating as a centre for processing huge quantities of unlawfully-logged timber from across Indochina, threatening some of the last intact forests in the region, a major new report reveals.

Undercover investigations by the UK-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and Indonesian NGO Telapak have revealed how Vietnam’s booming economy and demand for cheap furniture in the West is driving rapid deforestation throughout the Mekong river region.

Field investigations in Vietnam and neighbouring Laos, including secret filming and undercover visits to furniture factories, have demonstrated that although some countries like Indonesia have cracked down on the illegal timber trade, criminal networks have now shifted their attention to looting the vanishing forests of Laos.

Urgent Action

This illicit trade is in direct contraventionof laws in Laos banning the export of logs and sawn timber and EIA/Telapak are calling for urgent international action.

Investigators visited numerous Vietnamese furniture factories and found the majority to be using logs from Laos. In the Vietnamese port of Vinh, they witnessed piles of huge logs from Laos awaiting sale.

At one border crossing on one occasion alone, 45 trucks laden with logs were filmed lining up to cross the Laos border into Vietnam. The report estimates at least 500,000 cubic metres of logs are moved in this way every year.

Plundering

Since the 1990s, Vietnam has taken steps to protect to conserve its remaining forests while at the same time, massively expanding its wooden furniture production.

Vietnam has an unenviable track record in using stolen timber. Past investigations have revealed it laundering illegal timber from both Cambodia and Indonesia

The plundering of Laos’ forests involves high-level corruption and bribery and it is not just Vietnam which is exploiting its neighbour; Thai and Singapore traders are also cashing in.

Posing as investors, EIA/Telapak investigators met one Thai businessman who bragged of paying bribes to senior Laos military officials to secure timber worth potentially half a billion dollars.

“The cost of such unfettered greed is borne by poor rural communities in Laos who are dependent on the forests for their traditional livelihoods,” said EIA's head of Forests Campaign, Julian Newman.

He said the local people gain virtually nothing from this trade, with corrupt Laos officials and businesses in Vietnam and Thailand, the profiteers.

The report concludes that to some extent the dynamic growth of Vietnam’s furniture industry is driven by the demand of end markets like Europe and the US.

Dire

“The ultimate responsibility for this dire state of affairs rests with the consumer markets with import wood products made from stolen timber,” said Julian.

“Until these states clean up their act and shut their markets to illegal wood products, the loss of precious tropical forests will continue unabated.”

EIA/Telapak are calling for: better enforcement by the timber-producing and processing countries and new laws banning the import of products and timber derived from illegal logging in the EU and US.

The Dispossessed

Slash and burn or swidden agriculture is a natural part of the ecosystem of Northern Laos. It has been going on for hundreds and probably thousands of years. Besides being the most efficient and highest yielding source of food it provides forest products and wildlife habitat during the years it lies fallow. Scientists have come to appreciate the idea that when practiced as it has always been, it is actually of benefit to the balanced environment of the uplands.

A while ago I started reading an online forum that is broadly concerned with agricultural development in the Lao PDR. This sounds like rather dry fare, mostly concentrating on rice yields or chicken diseases, and yes they do cover that stuff. When you realize though that most of the people in Laos are rural, and a fairly large proportion of the rural diet consists of things not cultivated but rather collected from the forest, the topics on the forum could potentially include a lot of Laos.

I read but don’t post. The contributors seem to be technical people working on development projects in Laos, and most of their posts seem to be links to reports generated by their respective agencies or comments on those same reports. Often there are links to newspaper stories and some commentary relating the stories to actual conditions. There are perhaps a score of regular contributors and a few hundred members of the group.

The good part is that some of the reports are uncut, meaning they are as written by the people doing the particular study, before editing for political or business interests. The downside is that readers are admonished not to quote or cite a specific report. I think the information might be of interest to a much wider segment of the public than is reached by the discussion forum.

Bear in mind when reading the following that I’m a tourist and not some sort of development worker. I speak travelers Lao not Hmong, Yao, Koh or whatever. No doubt people in Laos who have a background in the various specialties involved, have informed opinions, I on the other hand just have opinions.

One striking idea that recurs, is that the forced elimination of swidden agriculture (slash and burn) and the relocation of large numbers of upland villages is often not very good for the people involved. Most in the development community have now come to that realization as well as some key administrators of the Lao PDR in Vientiane.

Abandoned Namat Mai

There’s no doubt that in the near future most upland peoples will live with electricity, phone, schools, roads and so on. The question is how that change is going to come about and what affect it will have on the peoples involved.

Many of us tourists view “hill tribe” peoples as being one dimensional and primitive, whiling away their years in an idyllic circle of life, living some sort of noble savage existence amongst the thick trees of the dripping jungle. In reality they are advanced and multidimensional. They know what a cell phone, radio, and video player are. Most have seen cars and trucks and on the video they’ve seen Bangkok.

From other viewpoints relocation might be seen as having been a stunning success. Uprooting and relocating upland villages does help some. It makes it easier for NGOs to provide health aid and food. It also makes it easier to replace traditional crops with rubber and other cash crops. Concentrating a few villages in one place along the roads makes it very easy to track opium production and to punish those who plant it.

Abandoned Jakune

Domestic production of opium by any measure has been severely reduced when compared to the days when it was legal. Unfortunately rates of suicide and alcoholism are up. Also former opium addicts are now turning to heroin.

Adding to the problems is the fact that the folks who run the country and go to the Universities and own the wealth are what’s called “Low Lum” or lowland ethnic Lao. The upland Laotians and middle elevation Laotians are called Lao Sung or Lao Tung, and actually include many different ethnicities with their own languages, culture and beliefs.

The lowland Laotians often consider the other groups to be backwards and primitive, they are in earnest in wishing to “help” the uplanders. Of course they are using their own terms to define success, and poverty. Slash and burn takes lots of land. All of those years the land lies fallow the land is not growing rice. Fortunately one thing Laos has is a lot of is hilly land.

Lao Lum, the lowlanders who run the place figure everyone should live the way they do and have an abundance of rice every year, which would be great if there were enough low wet lands for all. Unfortunately there is no bottom land left. Similarly aid workers define success as a degree in one of the social sciences and working for a development organisation. I’m not sure how an upland farmer living a life very similar to the one he has been living for 300 years would define success. Perhaps to have lots of children and for each one to memorize their lineage back fifty generations as they are wont to do.

Where this leaves the regular Akha farmer I’ve no idea. Probably as usual if we just left his destiny up to him and went about our business he’d be fine. With or without the NGOers the uplanders are entering the 21st century.

Naiban (headman) Mongla. When I hiked from Muang Long with my guide the naiban and the teenage boy caught up to us an hour up the hill out of Muang Long despite leaving twenty minutes later. We shared lunch and the ten hour hike with them, when entering Mongla my guide asked the man, "which way to the naiban's house". So to ask permision to stay in the village for the evening. The man replied "follow me, I am the naiban".

Notice his hand woven and embroydered blue cotton pants and shirt, very trad. He is the headman of the village of Mongla. Mongla lies just above the river Fa on a slight rise of land to the east. There is a ford an hour above and an hour bellow the village. During the wet season you must swim making the village somewhat cut off from all routes to the west, Muang Long, Xiengkok, and so on. I'd assume there must be a way in from below Viengphuka.

The village appeared prosperous. Children well clothed and fed. The setting is breathtakingly beautiful. The timber along the river is taboo for cutting and contains many very large old trees. It is many miles to the nearest road, perhaps twelve or fifteen in both the closest directions, and besides Jakune they are the only village in this vast expanse of woods.

I would be happy to see health care, and for some people to become literate, I would also be happy to hear that they have retained ownership of this valley instead of some rubber company. What is this little Eden worth?

Since the time I began trying to write this blog entry the argument over relocation has spilled onto the pages of the New Mandela, an online site broadly interested in South East Asian issues. The site is out of an Australian University. I am delighted. Here at last is something online I can quote and link to.

The discussion began with a critique of a report by Baird and Shoemaker on whether or not aid agencies were having a negative affect on the well being of uplanders by helping to care for people who had been resettled. They further imply that it is impossible to decide which resettlements have truly been voluntary and which have been coerced to some extent. They aren’t prone to overstating things and yet they say the whole mess is having a “devastating impact”. For anyone with an interest I urge a read. The report is well written, made to be read.
Baird-Shoemaker

The critique on New Mandela is here. New Mandela Some of the comments are interesting and provide greater understanding.

I especially urge you to read the response here by the writers of the report all the dust up is about. response in New Mandela The first response refers to the PPA (Participatory Poverty Assessment) from 2000 and 2006, This exhaustive nationwide study, conducted on behalf of the Asian Development Bank unambiguously quantifies the impoverishment during the time between the two studies.

Glad to see so many bright informed people working on these problems, just wish they were more optimistic.

Pawn Still Gone

Pawn a local advocate of environmental protection and sustainable tourism

I think some background is in order.

Just about a year ago the co owner of the Boat Landing Guest house in Luang Namtha disappeared while enroute to an appointment with the police to discuss the recent attempted arson of his eco lodge by unknown parties. Nothing was heard from him since.

I, like many other people who didn't know him, and weren't intimately familiar with the local situation in Luang Namtha, could imagine many scenarios where he might have had conflicting interests with rubber plantation developers, loggers, the government agencies carrying on relocation of upland peoples on a massive scale, or more mundane private matters, loss of face, jealously, who knows what.

Bertil Lintner the writer of this artical has a long and very good reputation for reporting on Burma, North Korea and other reclusive regimes of East Asia. One would have to assume he has good sources in this case. Mr. Lintner is the only public new news from a reputable source I've seen since the incident first occured.

Asia Times

Southeast Asia
Feb 2, 2008

Fear of foreigners in Laos
By Bertil Lintner

LUANG PRABANG, Laos - It is has been one year since Sompawn Khantisouk was abducted by men believed to be local police officers. The whereabouts of the entrepreneur, the owner and manager of a small eco-tourism lodge in northern Laos, are still unknown - indeed, no one other than his abductors even knows if he is still alive.

Many at the time assumed he was taken away as punishment for trying to mobilize local villagers in the area against Chinese-sponsored rubber plantation projects. Now it seems more likely that Sompawn was victim to a new and pressing dilemma facing one of the world's last remaining communist-ruled countries: how to balance rapid market-driven economic growth with the strict



social controls that the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party has kept in place since it assumed power in 1975.

Sompawn ran the famous Boat-Landing resort, which is mentioned in most foreign guide books to Laos and had won several awards for its contribution to environmentally sound sustainable tourism. Eco-tourism promotion is even listed as one of the Lao government's five main development priorities, along with hydroelectric power, construction materials, agriculture and mining.

Last July, Laos hosted an Ecotourism Forum, which brought together tour operators, travel agents, hoteliers, development agencies and government authorities from throughout the Mekong river region. Those efforts have won significant international plaudits, including a New York Times survey that recently ranked Laos as the world’s top adventure tourism spot in 2008.

At the same time, there are entrenched official fears about growing foreign influence in the country, particularly in remote rural areas. Sompawn's partner was an American citizen and the country's security agencies were reportedly not pleased to see a foreigner help run the successful business. At about the time Sompawn disappeared, his American partner left the country and has not since returned.

Soon thereafter, at least two foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were ordered out of Luang Nam Tha, the province where the Boat-Landing is located. Other, lesser-known operators of small local businesses with foreign links were threatened with expulsion or stricter supervision of their activities, according to sources in northern Laos.

"On the one hand, the government welcomes the foreign revenue from tourism, while on the other it fears the security implications of allowing tourists to wonder at will around the country," wrote Song Kinh, an article published in the Irrawaddy news magazine. Officials overseeing the fast-growing tourism sector tend to be somewhat more accommodating to foreigners, while security personnel are less so.

The latter are particularly suspicious of foreign-run NGOs, many of which work to empower local communities by teaching them basic democratic principles and which security officials see as a challenge to the authority of the ruling Lao People's Revolutionary Party, the country’s only political party. While Sompawn's local business was not an NGO, many of its tourism activities were done in close consultation with local communities.

Foreign devils
As a legacy of wars in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, first against the French and then against the US in what the Lao government refers to as "the 30-year struggle", the country's communist rulers remain wary of foreign influences. For instance, some of the NGOs that have been targeted for harassment are known to have had Christian connections.

While the vast majority of the country's lowlanders are Buddhist, Christianity has made inroads in the highlands, home of several ethnic minorities that have a long history of resistance to integration into mainstream Lao society. There are historical reasons for their squeamishness. During the Indochina conflict, thousands of Hmong tribesmen - although ostensibly part of the then Royal Lao Army - were armed and equipped by the American Central Intelligence Agency to fight the communist Pathet Lao, which, in the end, emerged victorious in the war.

Then American Christian missionaries worked more or less openly for the CIA, among them the legendary Edgar "Pop" Buell, an Indiana farmer who was assigned to the Xieng Khouang area in and around the Plain of Jars, where he came into contact with the Hmong. Later, he became the principal contact man between the CIA and the Hmong, working closely with the Hmong warlord Vang Pao, who escaped to the US before the communist takeover in 1975, and, despite his now advanced age, has continued to campaign against the country's communist rulers.

In June last year, the authorities in California arrested him on charges of masterminding a plot to overthrow the Lao government with arms and equipment that were ready to be shipped to Thailand. Eight others were also arrested and charged with violating the federal US Neutrality Act, among them a former California National Guard, Lieutenant Colonel Harrison Ulrich Jack, a 1968 West Point graduate who was involved in covert operations during the Vietnam War.

The other seven were all Hmong from Laos who had been resettled in the US after the end of the war. The criminal complaint said Vang Pao and the other defendants plotted an insurgent campaign, "by violent means, including murder, assaults on both military and civilian officials in Laos and the destruction of buildings and property". In July, he was released on bail.

However, the events in California had repercussions in Thailand, where in a bid to ease bilateral tensions the government announced that it would repatriate thousands of Hmong refugees back to Laos. Now totaling about 8,000, their numbers have swelled in recent years due to fresh arrivals, indicating that all is not well in the Lao mountains. Although the Hmong insurgency, which simmered on throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, is now more or less over, there are reports of occasional skirmishes and ambushes involving hill-tribe bands, mostly in the area around Phou Bia mountains south of the Plain of Jars, and near the town of Kasi on the main road between Vientiane and Luang Prabang.

With the revelations of a Vang Pao's latest plot, the already paranoid security authorities in Laos may have seen a broader US conspiracy in the eco-tourism joint venture they broke up with Sompawn's abduction and the US citizen fleeing the country. They may also have read with some suspicion the US State Department's International Religious Freedom Reports, which frequently mention "abuses of citizen's religious freedom" in Laos, especially arrests of Christians and actions taken against the independent Lao Evangelical Church (LEC). The 2007 report mentions closure of LEC-affiliated churches and the detention without charges of local Christian community leaders.

Costly xenophobia
With that bad publicity, the security authorities seem to believe that remote provinces such as Luang Nam Tha are better cleansed of foreign, especially Western, influences. Wealthy Chinese tourists to the newly opened casino on the Lao side of the frontier at Boten bring in only money, not new potentially destabilizing ideas about human rights and democracy, so they remain welcome. Aloon Dalaloy, vice governor of Luang Nam Tha, is reported to have told a public gathering in the province last year that "we are still fighting the revolution, not against the enemy's bombs and guns, but the Americans and the Christians are still our enemies."

Such rhetoric, of course, overlooks the more pressing national challenges the transition to a free-market economy represents. As the Lao economy continues is rapid expansion, with gross domestic product growth up over 7% in the past two years, there is an acute and growing shortage of skilled labor. And there is no remedy in sight, unless the government moves to employ more outside experts. In a paper dated December 14, 2007, the Asia Foundation pointed out that Laos has only one university, which opened only 11 years ago. Prior to that, students were sent to the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Poland and other Eastern Bloc countries for higher education, but that training is often irrelevant to the country’s current human needs.

When the National University of Laos enrolled its first class in 1996, there were just over 8,000 students. Today there are nearly 27,000 at the university, but, the Asia Foundation says, the shortage of human and economic resources poses constant challenges and most faculty members have no degree beyond bachelor's level. With the country's few skilled professionals opting to work in better-paying foreign-led private enterprises, according to the Asia Foundation, it is hard "to imagine how departments like engineering, natural sciences and business will be able to keep their best and brightest teachers, all but eliminating the mechanism for building a future generation of capable Lao professionals".

That means the Lao government can either dramatically raise the salaries of professors and technocrats, or employ more foreigners to fill the gaps - and hope that foreign donors will pay for their much higher expatriate salaries. But that also means more foreign influences, not only in sectors like ecotourism and small-scale rural development schemes but in central government institutions as well. That arguably would pose an even graver threat to central control than foreign-managed eco-tourism resorts or NGO and missionary activities in politically sensitive highland areas.

The ruling Lao People's Revolutionary Party has arrived at a crucial crossroads and the direction pursued will likely make or break its still tentative economic reform experiment. Clearly there are still elements in the party who are reluctant to change their repressive ways, accept new social and economic realities and move the country forward.

Sompawn’s arrest and disappearance is testament to that inertia. But with the country's greater integration into the global economy, party officials will sooner or later have to face the fact that even landlocked Laos cannot remain insulated from foreign influences.

Bertil Lintner is a former correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic Review, for which he wrote frequently on Lao politics and economics. He is currently a writer with Asia-Pacific Media Services.

Two Ways To Steal Land and Timber In Laos

Strangler Fig.... First it uses the original tree for support in it's climb up to the sun, eventually it surrounds the host tree and chokes it to death.

Get healthy forests to be designated as infertile degraded land and therefore available for sale. Buy the land, cut all the timber while making a token effort to employ locals cutting and replanting, and then as soon as the timber is cut declare bankruptcy and disappear back to the country you’ve come from.

Or, again using the effort to eliminate swidden agriculture entirely by 2010, get fallow land reclassified as degraded, buy a 50 year lease and plant rubber. Bear in mind that 9 out of 10 given acres are at all times allowed to lie fallow in traditional swidden agriculture.

Oh, I forgot one more. Start a company to build a hydroelectric plant on a river, cut all the trees which grow thick and tall in bottom lands, then disappear after the trees are sold. Also known as how to turn a timber company into a hydroelectric company then into thin air.

Ban Sok Ngam on the Nam Ngam, a tributary of the Nam Ou. Is this village slated to be drowned for one of the five dams being built on the Naom Ou?


Old Growth burnt, then cut, then planted in rubber. Luang Namtha Province

The following is by Rebeca Leonard, of The Foundation for Ecological Recovery I've added the link to my sidebar.

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.

Nam Phou San Gao (I think the "nam" reffers to the fact that there is water on the mountain "phou" rather than the name of any river.)

The Foundation for Ecological Recovery

Environmental Destruction a Go Go

I read a couple of online sources of information about Laos and lately it seems like I should leave my computer off. Every time I log on a new source of eco destruction awaits me.

Within the last month I have learned of;

A proposed lignite (soft sulphurous coal) power plant to be built in Xayabouli province at the site of the former annual elephant ho down in Hongsa. New Mandela



Ferry Boat at the Thadua crossing Xaiyabouli

A hydro power dam on the Nam Tha, would flood out 15 villages some of which are resettled Lao seung. You know those people brought down to the river valleys to “modernize” them and wean them from growing opium. It’s all in Nalae district, which I’m unfamiliar with. More Mandella

I found out about an intended 1410 mega watt plant in Luang Prabang while trying to find a link for this post. Reuters

The one that hits home the hardest is the dam on the Nam Ou of about 600 mega watt capacity with three more in the plans. It’s the most beautiful big river I’ve seen in Laos. Pnomsin Blog


Kids making ripples on the Nam Ou above Hatsa

In Vientiane the Tat Luang marsh is slated to be developed by a Chinese investor into an instant city. When driving out of town this tributary of the Mekong called Houay Mak Hiao was always my indicator that the city had been left behind. It’s beyond the two big markets of Ban Tat Luang. When driving over the bridge you can see all the rice growing up and down stream. The Lao government proposed a site further from downtown, but the Chinese insisted. Whose city is it anyway? I guess the person with the money’s.

One ray of hope is the simple math of this message posting to an online group, sorry can’t link.

"Given that the Lao Government budget revenues amount to around $500 million a year, a simple calculation indicates that a 20% investment in the hydro scheme would amount to around a third of government budget revenues for any given year. Given also that the government is concurrently signing several such agreements I wonder where the government contribution is coming from. Is it simply a gift from the developers in return for government complicity? "

The writer is referring to the one hydro plant on the Nam Ou, estimated cost $700 to $800 million.

My worry is that modernization will mean that corrupt officials are now better able to quickly strip Laos of it’s existing timber, poison it’s watersheds with effluent from various mines, and flood all the lowlands for exported electricity? Is China the example of what Laos will look like in twenty years?