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Changing local land systems: Implications ofa Chinese rubber plantation in Nambak

District, Lao PDR

Cecilie Friis,1,2 Anette Reenberg,2 Andreas Heinimann3 andOliver Schönweger3

1The Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

2Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen,Copenhagen, Denmark

3Centre for Development and Environment, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

Correspondence: Cecilie Friis (email: [email protected])

This paper investigates the direct and cascading land system consequences of a Chinese company’s

land acquisition for rubber cultivation in northern Laos. Transnational land acquisitions are increas-

ingly acknowledged as an important driver of direct land use conversion with implications for local

land-based livelihoods. The paper presents an empirical case study of the village of Na Nhang Neua

in Nambak District, Luang Prabang Province, using a mixed methods approach to investigate the

positive and negative implications for household agricultural strategies, income generation and food

security. Combining the conceptual lenses of land systems and livelihood approaches, this paper

demonstrates how the land use system has changed substantially because of the establishment of

the rubber plantation by the company, notably in the linkages between livestock rearing, upland

shifting cultivation and lowland paddy rice cultivation. The changes go beyond the immediate

competition for land caused by the rubber plantation: a penalty scheme introduced by the rubber

company for damage to rubber trees caused by browsing animals has led the villagers to abandon

livestock rearing, causing a cascade of negative effects on the entire land use system, especially on

soil fertility, rice yields and food production.

Keywords: Chinese investment, crop-livestock interaction, land systems, cascading effects, rubber,

livelihood

Introduction

Transnational land acquisitions have increasingly become a force in global change pro-cesses and constitute a major driver of land use conversion and transformation ofland-based livelihoods (Li, 2011; Anseeuw et al., 2012; Cotula, 2012). The acquisitionshave added an important dimension to the growing competition for the Earth’s limitedland resources and transformed agricultural systems around the world (Liu et al., 2013;Eakin et al., 2014). In Southeast Asia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDRor Laos) has increasingly attracted attention from investors from the growingneighbouring economies of China, Vietnam and Thailand, which are seeking to capital-ize on the country’s rich natural endowments (Schönweger et al., 2012; Heinimann &Messerli, 2013). Over the past decade there has been a boom in transnational land acqui-sitions in Laos granted by its government as concessions, long-term leases or various con-tract farming arrangements. This trend has been facilitated by a governmental push foreconomic development and poverty alleviation based on the conversion of extensivelyused lands to intensive cash crop and tree plantations (Lestrelin et al., 2012; Schönwegeret al., 2012; Heinimann & Messerli, 2013; Baird, 2014). Though the areas targeted forconcession development are often portrayed as ‘idle land’ or classified as ‘degraded’ by

doi:10.1111/sjtg.12137

Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 37 (2016) 25–42© 2016 Department of Geography, National University of Singapore and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd

government officials and foreign investors (Harms & Baird, 2014), access to such lands isvital for the livelihood security of the local populations inhabiting them.

In the northern provinces of Laos, rubber cultivation has been a main driver of landacquisitions (Schönweger et al., 2012). While estimates based on the national inventoryof state granted land concessions show that less than 10 per cent of all large-scale rubberconcessions are granted in the north, mainly due to location factors (e.g., accessibilityand topography) (Schönweger et al., 2012), a significant share of the total rubber areais planted in the north through contract farming arrangements and by smallholders(Li & Fox, 2012). Recent studies have however emphasized that many of the contractfarming schemes granted in the north resemble concessional arrangements in theirstructures and consequences for local populations (Shi, 2008; Schönweger et al., 2012;Dwyer, 2014).

In the north, both rubber concessions and contract farming schemes are dominatedby Chinese investors. Initially, rubber was introduced by small-scale minority Chinesefarmers with close familial and ethnic ties across the border in Laos (Lagerqvist, 2013;Sturgeon, 2013). Both Chinese investors and Lao government officials have subse-quently used the relative success of these smallholders in raising household incomesto promote rubber through large-scale concessions and contract farming schemes(Sturgeon, 2013). Today, China is the world’s largest consumer of natural rubber, and itis estimated that domestic Chinese productionwill notmeet the domestic demand for nat-ural rubber by 2020, because of increasing land constraints (Mann, 2009; Fox & Castella,2013). In addition, the Chinese government has given subsidies and loans to Chinesebusinesses investing in for example rubber cultivation in Laos as ameans to combat small-holder opium production and eradicate cross-border opium trade (Fox et al., 2009; Hickset al., 2009; Mann, 2009; Thongmanivong et al., 2009). The expansion of rubber cultiva-tion in Laos, especially in large-scale concession and contract farming schemes, has trans-formed local agro-forestry systems considerably, by facilitating a rapid conversion ofextensively used forest lands to intensive monocultural plantations with detrimentaleffects for the local people living in the area (Thongmanivong et al., 2009; Baird, 2010;Kenney-Lazar, 2012; Li & Fox, 2012; Fox & Castella, 2013). Furthermore, the widespreadconversion of uplands—consisting of mosaics of cultivated land, bush fallow and patchesof forest—to rubber plantations in Laos and across Southeast Asia has severe impacts onenvironmental and ecosystem functions (Mann, 2009; Ziegler et al., 2009b; Guardiola-Claramonte et al., 2010a; Li & Fox, 2012).

This paper explores the implications of a large-scale rubber plantation in northernLaos. The paper investigates how the rubber plantation’s direct occupation of land thathitherto supported local shifting cultivation practices and collection of nontimber forestproducts affects farmers’ access to resources and livelihood opportunities. Furthermore,the paper adds an important perspective to the studies of land acquisition consequencesand ongoing agrarian transformations, by illustrating how concession effects can cascadethrough the entire land and livelihood system beyond the concession site. In order tocapture such cascading effects, the paper uses a combination of land system scienceand livelihood approaches.

The point of departure is an in-depth case study of Na Nhang Neua village in NambakDistrict, Luang Prabang Province. In Na Nhang Neua, the Chinese Sino-Lao ChilanRubber Development Company Ltd. (the Sino Company) set up a rubber plantation of100ha in 2006 as part of a 7000-ha land concession granted to the Sino Company bythe provincial authorities in Luang Prabang in 2004. The Company started establishingplantation plots in 2005–2006 in several villages in Nambak District on land identified

26 Cecilie Friis, Anette Reenberg, Andreas Heinimann et al.

in close collaboration with the district authorities. Village authorities and householdswere informed about the concession in late 2005–early 2006 but had limited influenceto oppose the plantation. Since the land was formally classified as state land, the villagersdid not receive any compensation. By 2012, the Company had established rubber con-cession plots in 12 villages in the district, and many households had been incorporatedin contract farming and smallholder out-grower schemes as well. The contract farmingwas set up as a so-called 2+ 3 scheme (Hicks et al., 2009; Dwyer, 2014), where farmersprovide land and labour and the company delivers the seed, equipment and market.Profits from the latex sales are split, with 65 per cent going to farmers and 35 per centto the Company. Smallholder out-growers, on the other hand, invest in the rubber seed-lings themselves but still rely on the Company to buy the latex once the productionstarts. Because of the long maturation period of rubber trees (usually 7–8 years), theCompany had not started tapping the trees in any of the villages at the time of theempirical work for this study. Consequently, this paper focuses on the immediatechanges following the initial phase of plantation establishment.

Theoretical lenses

The study combines the theoretical lenses of land system science (Global Land Project(GLP), 2005; Lambin & Geist, 2006; Turner et al., 2007; Reenberg et al., 2012; Rounsevellet al., 2012; Verburg et al., 2013) and livelihood analysis (Chambers & Conway, 1992;Carney, 1999, 2002; De Haan & Zoomers, 2005; Scoones, 2009). Both approaches havesuccessfully been employed in the literature on large-scale land acquisition but have sofar rarely been applied in combination.

Land system science emphasizes the integrated nature of terrestrial human-environmental systems spanning the local to the global (GLP, 2005; Turner et al., 2007;Reenberg et al., 2012; Verburg et al., 2013). The land system approach conceptualizes,among other things, how land use decisions are embedded in a context of nested socialand biophysical enabling and constraining conditions, which operate with complex link-ages and feedbacks across multiple scales (GLP, 2005; Reenberg et al., 2012). The frame-work highlights the direct and indirect effects of land use and management decisions onboth ecosystems and social systems, where indirect effects include unexpected or unin-tended changes in a part of the system as a result of land use and land managementdecisions in another seemingly unconnected part. Land change processes have tradition-ally been seen as driven by a set of proximate and underlying driving forces (Lambinet al., 2001; Geist & Lambin, 2002; 2006). The accelerating process of globalization adds,however, to the complexity of identifying and explaining change in land systems. In thisregard, Lambin and Meyfroidt (2011) suggest distinguishing between four importantland use change mechanisms: 1) displacement of a land use from one land system toanother disconnected system; 2) rebound effects, which happen when new technologiesintended to reduce resource use instead increase demand for the resource; 3) cascadeeffects, which happen when a trigger of change in one part of the system sets in motiona chain of change events in the entire land system; and 4) remittance effects, which hap-pen when rural outmigration reduces productive labour availability but also reduces theneed for food production and generates new capital flows from remittances. Recently,the concepts of teleconnections and telecouplings in land systems have been introducedin land systems science to stress the increasing spatial disconnection between drivers andoutcomes of land use change (Seto et al., 2012; Liu et al., 2013; Eakin et al., 2014).

27Changing local land systems in Laos

Livelihood analysis and the sustainable livelihood framework place the analysis ofchange in rural communities in a local, place-based context and stress the relationbetween local people’s assets, capabilities, vulnerabilities and poverty alleviation (Ponte,2002; De Haan & Zoomers, 2005; Galloway et al., 2007; Scoones, 2009). Livelihood anal-yses explore the questions of how, why and under what circumstances local people canadapt their strategies to change, as well as what factors increase or reduce their vulner-ability to internal or external shocks, trends and seasonality. Livelihood research increas-ingly recognizes the importance of historical developments and contingencies forshaping people’s livelihood choices (De Haan & Zoomers, 2005; Reenberg et al., 2008;Nielsen & Reenberg, 2010). Furthermore, this approach has made important contribu-tions revealing how diversification of livelihood strategies is taking place among ruralhouseholds around the world, because of a broad range of globalization drivers (Ellis,2000; Barrett et al., 2001; De Haan & Zoomers, 2003; Rigg, 2006).

In other words, while land system science provides effective means to analyse localland use change and their effects in complex coupled human-environment systems,including impacts beyond the immediate conversion of land use, livelihood perspectivesdraw attention to the factors that shape the concurrent changes in people’s assets andabilities to pursue livelihood activities. Combining the two theoretical approaches thusallows for a more holistic analysis of the local-level consequences of large-scale landconcessions.

Methods

The study builds on the case of Na Nhang Neua village, Nambak District. Fieldwork wasconducted between October and December 2012. A mixed methods approach combiningqualitative elements (from semi-structured interviews, focus groups and participatorymapping and observation) with quantitative elements (from a household questionnairesurvey) was adopted to address the full complexity of the consequences of the conces-sion. The qualitative methods were used to explore the interviewees’ interpretation ofthe changes induced by the concession, whereas the quantitative method assessed themagnitude and distribution of these changes. Table 1 shows a summary of the methods,their quantitative density and the themes covered.

The case study village was selected on the basis of a round of exploratory visits andinterviews in six villages in the area, which were hosting the concession according tothe national inventory of land concessions (Schönweger et al., 2012). Na Nhang Neua vil-lage was selected for in-depth study, because it featured the entire range of engagementswith the company, including a concession plot managed by the company, contractfarmers and smallholder out-growers. A household questionnaire survey was carriedout with 36 out of 170 households in Na Nhang Neua to explore villagers’ assets, landuse and livelihood strategies, as well as their perception of the consequences of the rub-ber concession. A 10-year time frame was chosen to assess the drivers of change in pastand current strategies. This time frame set a reference point for changes taking placebefore the establishment of the plantation and allowed a manageable span of time forpeople to relate to. However, some uncertainty inevitably arises when one attempts toreconstruct temporal developments on the basis of people’s memories. The time framewas used in all methods applied. Households for the survey were selected to be a repre-sentative sample of three simple wealth categories (‘wealthy’, ‘average’ and ‘poor’),which were defined in consultation with the village headman (Table 2). Households


Table 1. Synthesis ofmethods. Synthesis ofmethods employed in the field, their thematiccoverage, and the informants and quantitative density.

Method Informants andquantitative density

Themes covered

Semi-structuredinterviews

4 provincial officers Details on the concession9 district officers Implementation process,

land identification andland allocation

Company director Main positive and negativeconsequences of the concession

Village survey Village headman or villagedeputy headman

Village land use and livelihoodstrategiesExperience with the concession,including involvement in landallocation process

12 villages surveyed (out of17) in the Na Nhang andNhamdouan cluster

Perceived positive and negativeconsequences of the concession

Householdquestionnaire survey

36 households interviewed(out of a total 170)

Livelihood strategies, incomeactivities and diversificationLand assets and agricultural practicesFood security and rice productionEngagement with rubber cultivationand the concessionPerceived positive and negativeconsequences of the concession

Focus group interviews 8 group interviews Village resources, access, distributionand usesLand assets and agricultural practicesLocation and consequences of theconcessionEngagement in rubber production:smallholder vs. contract farming

Participant observation,village walks andinformal conversations

Presence in the village Agricultural practicesLand assets, access and useLivelihood strategies and diversification

Table 2. Household categories for interview survey. Household types and wealth categoriesas described by the village headman in the study village, including indicators specifyingcharacteristics of each type of household and estimates of the numbers of households ineach category.

Household type/wealth category

Indicators No. of households in thiscategory in the village

No. of householdsinterviewed

Wealthy Large amount of paddy land Very few (approximately 2) 1Big permanent brick houseOwn business or shop

Average Paddy land The majority of households 30Permanent house, brick ortraditional wood house

‘Normal families’

Farmers; rice, tobacco, cashcrops and some livestock

(approximately 153)

Poor No paddy land, only smallupland field (borrowed/rented)

Mainly ethnic Khmuhouseholds recentlyresettled in village

5

Small house (bamboo)Must work for othervillagers

(approximately 15households)


were identified on the basis of the headman’s knowledge of their wealth status, and anumber of households in each category were selected for interviews.

Study area

Na Nhang Neua village is located in Nambak District in the northeastern part of Laos(Figure 1). The area has a monsoonal climate with the main rainy season in the summerbetweenMay andOctober, followed by dry and coolmonths fromNovember to February,and warm dry months from March to April. The landscape is characterized by hillyuplands and narrow river valleys with elevations ranging from 300m to around 1000mabove sea level (Hurni et al., 2012; Heinimann et al., 2013).

Na Nhang Neua village has a population of 663 people in 170 households. It is locatedaround 11km from Nambak District Town and has been accessible from the main roadsince the beginning of the 1990s. Themajority of the population is ethnic Tai Lue (a subgroupof the majority Lao-Tai population (Kingsada, 2011). A small minority of ethnic Khmuhouseholds (an ethnic minority group of Mon-Khmer origin) (Kingsada, 2011) have, how-ever, relocated to the village by choice or through government resettlement programmessince 2006. The district authorities selected the village as a focal development centre in2012, which implies an increased presence of district officials in the village and plans to builda new market square, as well as the promotion of local business development.

The Sino-Lao Chilan Rubber Development Company arrived in Na Nhang Neuavillage in 2005. The Company initially wanted access to 250ha of plantation land;however, the village authorities managed to use their personal relationships with thedistrict officials to negotiate the size of the plantation plot down to 100ha and to pushfor a location further away from the village paddy and garden land than initiallyplanned. In addition to the 100ha of plantation owned by the company, 56ha of rubberwere planted by smallholder out-growers and contract farmers.

Figure 1. Map indicating location of study area in the northern part of Luang Prabang Province, Laos.


Results

The results of the study demonstrate how the land system in Na Nhang Neua has beensubstantially altered by the rubber concession through the enclosure of part of the uplandarea previously used for rice cultivation, vegetable gardens and livestock grazing. An im-portant consequence has been the abandonment of buffalo rearing with negative effectsfor lowland paddy rice production, as well as for the composition of income sources.

The local land systemAt the time of the arrival of the plantation scheme, the land system in Na Nhang Neuawas a mixed upland-lowland-livestock system, typical for villages located in the lower-lying valley areas of the district (Figure 2).

Figure 3a shows the important linkages in this integrated land system, indicating theprovisioning and supporting services of each system component. In the first systemcomponent, the lowland production system, paddy rice was cultivated during the wetseason with one annual harvest that constituted the main subsistence crop in the village.Following the rice harvest, a range of other crops such as tobacco, garlic, onion and greenvegetables was cultivated on the paddy land in the dry season for household consump-tion and for sale at local markets.

Prior to the plantation, there were a number of important links between the lowlandcultivation component and the second system component, the livestock productionsystem (Figure 3a). Buffalos and cattle were used as draught animals for soil preparationin the paddy fields, and their grazing in the dry season helped to control weeds andfertilize the fields. In addition, the livestock provided meat for household consumptionand represented a capital reserve for large investments or emergencies.

The third main system component was the upland production system. Here, villagersengaged in traditional shifting cultivation of rice intercropped with a range of vegetablesand other annual and perennial crops such as maize, cotton and chilies. The fallow andforested areas provided nontimber forest products (NTFP), such as bamboo, grassand fern, important for household subsistence, as well as timber for house constructionand for sale. During the wet season, livestock grazed in the uplands. Villagers explained

Figure 2. The mixed farming landscape in Na Nhang Neua with farmers harvesting paddy rice (foreground)

and the hilly uplands with patches of rubber plantation (background). Photograph by Cecilie Friis, 2012.


that though the paddy rice harvest yielded enough to cover subsistence requirements,the combination of paddy and upland rice was advantageous, since paddy rice has acomparatively lower input/output ratio (labour/yield), while upland rice has a highermarket price due to better quality and taste. In times of harvest failure in the paddies(e.g., due to pests, rainfall variability), the upland rice could buffer subsistence needs.

The use of the upland component of the land system in Na Nhang Neua had changedgradually in the years leading up to the concession. Some households had reduced or

Figure 3. a) The land-crop-livestock system prior to the establishment of the plantation, consisting of an up-

land subsystem with rice, fruit and vegetable gardens; a lowland subsystem with paddy rice and tobacco as

the main cash crops; and a livestock production system with buffaloes and cattle. Each system contains

provisioning services and supporting services for the villagers and other subsystems respectively. The arrows

indicate the links between the subsystems. b) The land-crop-livestock system after the establishment of the rubber

plantation. The rubber plantation was established in the upland production component, the livestock

production system has been abandoned, and the rice yields in the paddy component have declined. The size

differences between the bubbles in figures 3a and 3b indicate the changes induced by the plantation.


abandoned shifting cultivation before the arrival of the plantation company in responseto various land zoning efforts and land use restrictions imposed by the district authorities,age and health issues or the labour intensity of upland farming. However, none of thesemodifications were as widespread as the changes induced by the concession.

Concession-induced land system changeThe rubber plantation was established on land previously used by the villagers for riceand vegetable cultivation in the uplands, as well as for collection of NTFP and livestockgrazing. Figure 4 shows a village land use map (with the official land use zones) preparedby the provincial authorities in November 2012. Based on the scale bar in the map,1 thetotal village area can be roughly estimated to be 1250 ha. Of this, around 800ha are clas-sified as ‘village-reserved land for agricultural expansion’, which represents the uplandland system component. Though the map was prepared six years after the establishmentof the rubber plantation, the plantation does not figure directly on the map but is in-cluded in the category of ‘village-reserved land for agricultural expansion’. Based onthese numbers, the 156ha of plantation, smallholdings and contract farming plotsoccupy about a fifth of the village upland area.

Among the 36 surveyed households, 19 households in the ‘average’ category lost oneor more plots of upland fields to the rubber plantation without monetary compensationor alternative land allocation. Information on the exact number of households losingfields in this manner was not available. However, village authorities stressed that mostvillagers had used the fallow and young forest in the plantation area for gathering NTFPsand timber. Almost all households had in that way lost an important source of food andincome when the plantation was established. Table 3 shows land and livestock assets interms of the average number of plots and animals and size of land per household in

Figure 4. Author’s photo of an official poster presented in Na Nhang Neua that illustrates the official village

land use zoning. The additional lines are inserted by the authors and indicate the approximate extent of the rub-

ber concessions area (full line) and smallholder rubber area (dotted line). On the map, the title reads ‘Land use

map of Ban Na Nhang Neua’. The legend reads from top to bottom: 1) road, 2) river, 3) village-reserved land for

agricultural expansion, 4) wet paddy land, 5) individual residential area, 6) cemetery, 7) village protection forest,

8) village production forest, 9) village conservation forest and 10) industrial tree plantation area.


October 2012 and 10years before. Most notably there has been a decline in householdsthat have upland fields and in the average number of plots per household. Prior to theconcession the majority of the respondents cultivated rice on their upland fields. Follow-ing the implementation of the concession, 22 households in the ‘average’ category con-verted their upland fields to rubber gardens out of fear of losing land to the Company. Ofthese, 10 households were only smallholders and 10 households were only contractfarmers, while two households were both. The contract farmers said that the lack ofmoney to buy the rubber seedlings was their main reason for entering into the contractswith the Company. Consistently, smallholders emphasized their economic ability to buyrubber seedlings and the avoidance of profit sharing as the main reasons for plantingrubber independently. The remaining eight ‘average’ households and the five house-holds in the ‘poor’ category had not converted their upland fields to rubber plantations,because of the lack of capital, suitable land or labour.

While 29 out of 30 ‘average’ households had paddy land, only one household in the‘poor’ category had access to a small plot of paddy land. The remaining four householdsin the ‘poor’ category had recently moved to or been resettled to the village after the con-cession was granted. Challenges related to immigration and resettlement have increasedin the village, because the rubber plantation had enclosed parts of the upland area thatpreviously functioned as a common land reserve for newly established or newly relocatedhouseholds. Therefore, these newcomers were left to buy, rent or borrow small upland fieldsfrom other villagers. This situation shows the discernible difference in land assets betweenhouseholds in the ‘average’ and ‘poor’ categories, yet with the necessary caveat that the dataon ‘poor’ households is limited by the small sample size (i.e., five households).

Table 3 also indicates, by the decline in households owning buffaloes, that buffalorearing has been completely abandoned in the village. With the support of the district

Table 3. Land and livelihood assets among households in Na Nhang Neua. Source:Household survey.

Land type Number of householdswith land type/livestock

Average number of plots oranimals per household

Average size of landper household (ha)

Oct. 2012 10 yearsbefore

Oct. 2012(range)

10 years before(range)

Oct. 2012 10 yearsbefore

‘Average’ households (N = 30)Paddy fields(wet season)

29 27 2.2 (0-4) 2.5 (0-8) 1.0 (0-1.9) 1.1 (0.0-3.0)

Paddy fields(dry season)

26 27 1.4 (0-3) 1.7 (0-6) 0.6 (0-1.6) 0.8 (0.0-3.0)

Upland fields 18 28 0.7 (0-3) 2.5 (0-8) n/a n/aBuffaloes 0 27 0 7.0 (0-20) – –

Cattle 2 5 0.1 (1-3) 0.7 (0-10) – –

‘Poor’ households (N = 5)Paddy fields(wet season)

1 1 0.2 (0-1) 0.6 (0-3) 0 (0-0) 0.3 (0-1.5)

Paddy fields(dry season)

1 1 0.2 (0-1) 0.6 (0-3) 0 (0-0) 0.5 (0-2.5)

Upland fields 3 5† 0.6 (0-1) 2.5 (0-4) n/a n/aBuffaloes 0 1 0 3 – –

Cattle 0 1 0 3 – –

†Four of these households refer to families having upland fields in their old villages before settling in NaNhang Neuan/a = not available.


authorities, theSinoCompany imposeda strict penalty schemeon thehostingvillages foranydam-age caused to the rubber trees by animals browsing the plantation. The penalty for destroyingone rubber seedling was reported to be between 50 000–100 000 Laotian Kip (LAK) orUSD 6.24–12.48 according to the US Treasury exchange rate of 31 March 2014. Thoughno respondents in Na Nhang Neua had paid any penalties, stories from neighbouringvillages of penalties up to 300 000 LAK had scared the villagers into selling off alltheir buffaloes and cattle. The majority, 24 of 27 ‘average’ household survey respon-dents, stated that the rubber plantation was the direct reason for abandoning buffalorearing. The remaining respondents, including the ‘poor’ households, attributed thesale of buffaloes to covering general household expenses, relocation costs or medicalexpenses.

Figure 3b shows how the villagers portrayed the land-crop-livestock system and thelinkages between each system component after the establishment of the plantation. Soilfertility in the paddy lands has decreased as a result of the abandonment of livestockrearing. One third of the interviewed households reported a decline in the paddy riceyields since the establishment of the plantation and unambiguously attributed thisdecline to the lack of manure as fertilizer. As only a few households reported using pur-chased fertilizers on their paddy fields, the deterioration of paddy soil quality continuedwith the lack of manure in the paddies. Villagers also reported increasing problems withweeds in the paddy fields and in the forest, where buffaloes had previously kept grassgrowth under control. Some of the ‘average’ households were able to replace buffaloeswith cutters and tractors for soil and field preparation. The use of agricultural machineryhad considerably reduced the labour requirements in the field preparation period forthese households, while simultaneously increasing the need for money to cover the highinvestment costs, maintenance and gasoline expenditures.

Moreover, evidence suggests that the rubber plantation had consequences for anearby watershed. The villagers described how the water levels in the streams and rivershad dropped after the rubber plantation was established as a consequence of forestdestruction. Prior to the plantation, the villagers had a customary system for protectingmature patches of forests around streams and rivers by prohibiting logging and clearanceof new fields in these areas. The Sino Company, however, cleared the forest when estab-lishing the plantation without regard for these customary mechanisms and theecosystem services protected by the villages. As noted by one villager, ‘now the rubberis stocking the water and not sending it back to the river’ (pers. comm., 60-year-old malevillager, Na Nhang Neua, 26 October 2012). Moreover, the villagers expressed safetyconcerns about collecting NTFPs and using the water sources near the plantation site,because of the Company’s high use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers.

Implications for livelihood activitiesThe establishment of the plantation had also influenced the livelihood activities and in-come generation in Na Nhang Neua. Among the 30 surveyed households in the ‘average’category, 20 indicated that their sources of income had changed, and one third of the‘average’ households indicated that their level of income had decreased since the estab-lishment of the plantation (Table 4). This decrease was mainly ascribed to the loss ofbuffaloes and upland agriculture.

While the majority of the households had used the income generated from sales oflivestock for general household expenses including food, clothes and medicine, a fewhad managed to reinvest the money in small businesses, e.g., small convenience ormotorbike repair shops, or in agricultural machinery. After the establishment of the


plantation, an increasing number of households, in both the ‘average’ and ‘poor’ cate-gory, were generating income from handicrafts and wage labour. More villagers werealso migrating to the larger cities or to Thailand for work in service or constructionsectors. The increasing migration was attributed to a decline in agricultural activitiesand the decline in employment opportunities in the rubber plantation after the initialphase of establishment. This increasing diversification in livelihood strategies and incomegeneration is in line with a general commercialization trend in the agricultural produc-tion. Trade in agricultural and forest products had increased over the past 10 years,mainly because of the development of road infrastructure and the recent widespreaduse of mobile phones.

The employment opportunities anticipated by the plantation development had so farnot materialized to any great extent. Most households were employed on a daily basis tocut the forest, clear the soil and plant the rubber seedlings when the plantation wasestablished. Subsequently, the Company employed villagers to weed the plantation threetimes a year. Among the surveyed households, 16 ‘average’ households had memberswho were employed to weed in the start-up phase of the plantation development, but13 of these employees had quit because of poor working conditions. Villagersexplained that the work-to-wage ratio was too low for the plantation work to be attrac-tive compared to alternative income opportunities, such as lowland agricultural activitiesand trade of products. The villagers anticipated employment opportunities in tappingonce the rubber matures; however, these jobs had not yet materialized. The sameuncertainty applies for the expected future income potential from latex production inhouseholds’ own rubber plots.

Implications for food securitySince the establishment of the plantation, one third of the households in the ‘average’category has experienced a decline in rice production and reduced opportunities tocollect food in the forest (Table 5). Villagers explained that the general loss of forestand fallow areas together with the fear of chemical pollution from the plantation haddecreased the availability of NTFPs. Eight households had increased their purchase offood and mainly attributed the additional purchases to the general loss of livestock as asource of meat.

Despite the decline in paddy rice yields, 25 households in the ‘average’ categoryproduced sufficient rice for the entire year in 2012, and 14 of these had been able to sellsurplus rice from the October–November 2011 harvest. The majority of the ‘average’households had never experienced a rice shortage, despite abandoning upland rice

Table 4. Changes in income sources and levels among ‘average’ households in NaNhang Neua.

Main sources of income Level of income (N = 30)

Decrease Same Increase Not related Not available Total

Changed 11 4 1 1 3 20Not changed 1 2 1 0 0 4Not available 3 1 0 0 2 6Total 15 7 2 1 5 30

‘Not related’ means that the respondent experienced a change in level of income but did not attribute it tothe concession. Data were unavailable for two Khmu households that did not live in the village before theconcession arrived. Since only one ‘poor’ household was living in the village prior to the concession, datafor ‘poor’ households have been excluded here. Source: Household survey.


production. Household size in relation to household land and labour assets was the mainreason for rice shortages in some households. However, only one of the households inthe ‘poor’ category interviewed had produced enough rice in 2012 to meet the house-hold’s needs. The remaining four ‘poor’ households lacked rice for between 3 and12months, with an average of 8.8months. The main reasons given were insufficientaccess to agricultural land, labour and wage work.

Discussion

The rapid expansion of rubber plantations in northern Laos illustrates how land systemsmay be significantly changed by economic and political drivers originating in spatiallydisconnected places. The consequences of such teleconnections can go far beyond theland investors’ immediate conversion of land use and have implications for the function-ing of the entire land systems and livelihoods in the territory hosting the plantations,especially because the targeted lands are rarely ‘idle’ or ‘empty’ wastelands, as portrayedby some government officials (Baird, 2014; Harms & Baird, 2014) but importantresources for local people. A number of important observations from the present studycan be discussed based on the notions of ‘displacement effects’, ‘cascade effects’ and‘remittance effects’ proposed by Lambin andMeyfroidt (2011) to classify land use changemechanisms.

The anticipated growing demand for rubber on the Chinese market and the economicincentives provided to Chinese businesses through opium replacement schemes havecaused a significant expansion of rubber plantations in the larger Mekong region inrecent years (Fox et al., 2009; Hicks et al., 2009; Mann, 2009; Thongmanivong et al.,2009). Coupled with the emerging land scarcity in southern China, this demand causesa considerable displacement of rubber plantations across the border to northern Laos.The Sino Company rubber plantation in Nambak is part of this land use displacement.

At the local level, the displacement sets in motion a range of cascade effects with majorimplications for the local land-crop-livestock system that constituted the backbone ofpeople’s livelihoods. The allocation of land to the rubber company prohibited thevillagers’ access to the upland resources in their territory with important consequencesfor agriculture, grazing and the collection of forest products. Hence, the conversion ofthe upland areas to rubber set in motion a cascading ‘chain of events’ (Lambin &Meyfroidt, 2011: 3466), which impacted on the entire local land system. Combined withthe Company’s penalty scheme for damage to rubber trees caused by browsing animals,the loss of grazing resources led to an abandonment of livestock production in the studyvillage. This significant modification of the agricultural strategies corresponds to trends

Table 5. Changes in food sources among ‘average’ households in Na Nhang Neua.

Change Rice production Collection of food in forest Purchase of food in market

Decrease 11 10 1Same 10 16 14Increase 0 0 8†

Not related 5 0 1n/a 4 4 6

†Includes two households that purchased more food, but these purchases are not related to the concessionSince only one ‘poor’ household was living in the village prior to the concession, the data for ‘poor’households have been excluded here.Source: Household survey.


found in the southern provinces in Laos, where upland enclosures of grazing lands havecaused a similar loss of livestock (Obein, 2007; Baird, 2010; Kenney-Lazar, 2011). Theabandonment of livestock production, in turn, resulted in lack of manure for the paddyfields and an associated decline in the paddy rice yields. In this way, the introduction ofrubber substantially reduced the agricultural productivity in a part of the land systemthat was seemingly not directly affected by the establishment of the plantation.

The implications of these changes appear to be particularly negative for the liveli-hoods of the ‘poor’ and recently resettled ethnic minority households, given their lackof access to land. In this way, the rubber encroachment contributes further to thenegative consequences of forced resettlement policies for livelihood activities, access toresources and income opportunities in all parts of Laos (Vandergeest, 2003; Evrard &Goudineau, 2004; Baird & Shoemaker, 2007). For the ‘average’ households, the liveli-hood consequences were largely associated with the loss of buffaloes as a source of meat,manure and capital reserve, as well as with the loss of the buffer of upland rice produc-tion against poor paddy rice harvest.

Another cascade of changes in the local land system concerns access to naturalresources outside the concession area, which have contributed extensively to thevillagers’ livelihood. The Company’s use of fertilizers and pesticides in the plantationhas caused fear of chemical pollution among some of the villagers, leading to a reluctanceto collect NTFPs as well as to use the small upland streams in the areas surrounding theplantation. These concerns are in line with the elsewhere documented spectrum ofenvironmental implications of the conversion of upland agriculture to intensive rubbercultivation, e.g., decreased soil quality and carbon storage (Bruun et al., 2009), decreasedforest biodiversity (Padoch et al., 2007; Rerkasem et al., 2009) and decreased water flowsin rivers, since rubber plantations decrease subsurface soil water and reduce discharge tostreams (Mann, 2009; Ziegler et al., 2009a; Guardiola-Claramonte et al., 2010b).

The study furthermore exemplifies how migration from rural areas can have impor-tant implications for land use caused by decreases in labour availability and food require-ments or by the inflow of remittances (Adger et al., 2002; Rigg, 2007; Baird, 2011;Kenney-Lazar, 2011). The rubber plantation led to a decline in traditional land useactivities, which, in turn, led to an increase in outmigration for nonagricultural work.Such a remittance effect may relieve the pressure on the land resources, since income isgenerated outside the local sphere and outside agriculture. However, the resettlementof new households to the village through government policies seems to counter theremittance effect.

The introduction of rubber in the land use systems holds a number of potentiallivelihood diversification opportunities for future income generation. Once the latexproduction commences, employment opportunities will potentially be available inthe plantation, and households’ own rubber production might make up for the lossof livestock and upland agriculture. However, the Sino Company’s varying degreesof support for individual households’ rubber production accentuates existing patternsof differentiation in the village, i.e., the difference between households with the abilityto invest in their own rubber seedlings and households that need to enter intocontract farming arrangements. Once tapping begins, this differentiation between con-tract farmers and smallholders will potentially be aggravated, since contract farmershave to share their profits with the Company. Furthermore, households without anyrubber plots will be entirely left behind. This situation may have serious implicationsfor the long-term adaptation and development outcome for the different householdsin the village.


Conclusion

The experiences of the village of Na Nhang Neua in Nambak District, Luang PrabangProvince show how the incorporation of land perceived to be ‘idle’ by local authoritiesinto the concession scheme has implications for local land and livelihood systems, whichgo far beyond the direct loss of land to plantation purposes. The land concessions set inmotion cascading land use effects with consequences for the entire land system. Payingattention to cascading effects, even at a local level, is important when one is assessingthe full range of consequences of concessions. The combined theoretical lenses of landsystem science and livelihood analysis enhance insights into the land system changescaused by the rubber concession’s conversion of upland, as well as into the associated(negative) impact on people’s livelihood activities, assets and income generation. In thiscase, the losses of livestock, upland agriculture and forest products have been especiallyproblematic. These negative consequences should, of course, be assessed against thepotential gain from future rubber activities. Once the rubber matures, the potentialeconomic benefits from latex production could mitigate the current loss of livestock,income and rice production. Yet, because of the long maturation period of rubber trees,it is not possible to make a full assessment of the long-term economic outcomes in thevillage on the basis of the present case study.

Acknowledgements

This study was part of a comparative research project entitled ‘Large-scale land acquisitions in

Southeast Asia: Rural transformations between global agendas and peoples’ right to food’ imple-

mented by the Centre for Development and Environment (CDE) at the University of Bern, the

Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, and the Geneva Academy

of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights. The field research has been supported by the

CDE Laos Country Office, Vientiane. The study furthermore contributes to the Global Land Project

and has been supported by the GLP-IPO, Copenhagen University. The authors would like to express

their appreciation for the assistance of Mr Choy Chiem Tang andMr Phounsavanh of the TABI office

in Luang Prabang during the fieldwork process. Thanks are also extended to the local communities

in Nambak District for their hospitality, patience and contributions to the study. Finally, we would

like to thank the anonymous reviewers of this paper. Any remaining shortcomings or mistakes

are ours.

Endnotes

1 The scale bar in the map has been cross-checked against the Google Earth tool. Thoughsuch verification is obviously rough, the scale-bar appears to be quite accurate.

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