•There is increased interest in organic rice cultivation and consumption in Thailand.•A political ecology framework is appropriate for investigating organic rice certification in ...Thailand.•Certification nationalism has influenced the one million-rai project for organic rice in Thailand.•Scalar politics is important for understanding the emergence of certification nationalism in Thailand.•The organic certification system associated with the one million-rai project is not recognized internationally.
There is increasing interest in organic lowland rice cultivation in Thailand. Farmers are becoming more wary about the human health and environmental impacts of using herbicides and pesticides. In addition, consumers are increasingly demanding rice cultivated without the use of chemicals. There is also more interest in accessing international and local organic rice markets. Thus, in 2017 the government of Thailand’s Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives rolled out a project designed to promote organic rice farming through subsidizing the conversion of one million-rai (160,000 ha) of lowland rice farms to being organic over a three-year period. Although the initiative was well intended, and constitutes local agency, the project has faced serious obstacles because the organic certification standards associated with the project do not align with international standards. This has negatively impacted the structures that support organic farming, by giving farmers unrealistic expectations regarding what is required to produce organic rice for the international market. The Thai certification system also has different ecological implications compared to other certification systems, because value systems always affect certification systems and their material implications. Applying a political ecology approach—with an emphasis on political relations, economic structure, ecological change, and scalar politics—this article examines the one million-rai project. It is contended that ‘certification nationalism’ is manifesting, and that there are important lessons to be learned about planning and implementing such certification initiatives.
Indigenous Community Land Titles (ICLTs) in Cambodia promised to protect Indigenous land tenure and rotational swidden cultivation. However, the proliferation of microfinance institutions (MFIs) ...operating in Indigenous communities has threatened the process to establish ICLTs. Through a case study of an Indigenous Brao Tanap/Kreung community in Ratanakiri Province, I demonstrate how an ICLT process fell apart, primarily due to agrarian change, an increase in MFI loans, debt, and the desire for individual land certificates to collateralize MFI loans and sell land. This study is relevant for thinking about communal land titling's relationship with investment frontiers, uneven property formalization, and microfinance.
On 23 July 2018, up to five million cubic meters of water plummeted from the reservoir of the Xe Pian Xe Namnoy dam, causing the biggest catastrophic event ever to occur in Laos related to a ...hydropower dam. But even before the dam broke it was already causing considerable social and environmental impacts, ones that constitute slow violence. Catastrophic and slow violence are, however, not simply separate entities. Rather, catastrophic violence can variously shift into becoming slow violence. This indicates the importance of temporality, and the need to be increasingly vigilant in addressing problems associated with certain types of projects.
Large‐scale plantation land concessions are causing an array of serious social and environmental impacts in Southeast Asia as well as in other parts of the world. This paper, however, is focused on ...the many challenges and limitations that plantation developers face in southern Laos and northeastern Cambodia. These include price and market constraints, activism linked to villagers and others actors, management and financial difficulties, environmental and technical limitations, and limited government support. Investor responses to these challenges and limitations have varied. Some investors still hope that their plantations will succeed, while others have variously attempted to cut their losses and withdraw from failing investments. In particular, this paper considers how problems associated with plantation development often emerge due to fluctuating crop prices as well as poor planning that partially stems from investors adopting a “resource frontier” mindset.
The Mekong River, well known for its aquatic biodiversity, is important to the social, physical, and economic health of millions living in China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. This ...paper explores the social and environmental impacts of several Mekong basin hydropower dams and groupings of dams and the geographies of their impacts. Specifically, we examined the 3S (Sesan, Sekong Srepok) river system in northeastern Cambodia, the Central Highlands of Vietnam, and southern Laos; the Khone Falls area in southern Laos; the lower Mun River Basin in northeastern Thailand; and the upper Mekong River in Yunnan Province, China, northeastern Myanmar, northern Laos, and northern Thailand. Evidence shows that these dams and groupings of dams are affecting fish migrations, river hydrology, and sediment transfers. Such changes are negatively impacting riparian communities up to 1000 km away. Because many communities depend on the river and its resources for their food and livelihood, changes to the river have impacted, and will continue to negatively impact, food and economic security. While social and environmental impact assessments have been carried out for these projects, greater consideration of the scale and cumulative impacts of dams is necessary.
•Agrobiodiversity loss can occur in various ways.•Political violence often indirectly affects agrobiodiversity.•Agrobiodiversity loss can occur due to policies against swidden cultivation.•Lack of ...citizenship can indirectly affect agrobiodiversity loss.•Studying the indirect influences on agrobiodiversity loss is important.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the borderlands between southern Laos, northeastern Thailand and northern Cambodia were a hotbed of militarized conflict and insurgent activity. Various armed groups, on the political left and right, operated in what was later referred to as the Emerald Triangle. This article considers how ethnic Kuy (Souay) Indigenous peoples from the Lao side of the border in Mounlapoumok District, Champasak Province, southern Laos, fled to neighboring parts of Ubon Ratchathani Province, northeastern Thailand as political refugees after Pathet Lao communists took over Laos in 1975. Many later became stateless insurgents fighting for Lao anti-communist groups opposed to the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. In particular, the article considers the influence of political armed conflict on migration and citizenship status, and subsequently on agrobiodiversity loss, particularly of native varieties of upland rice cultivated in swidden fields. This includes considering the structural violence associated with Thai government policies and practices related to forest conservation and preventing swidden cultivation. Agrobiodiversity loss was not centrally influenced by political violence, but it significantly influenced the conditions that affected agrobiodiversity, emphasizing the potential usefulness of studying political violence and agrobiodiversity loss through considering indirect influences.
Spirits are ubiquitous and important in the everyday lives of ethnic Lao people. Amongst the most feared of those are ravenous spirits (phi pop), which are believed to use human hosts to cause ...illness or even kill other humans and livestock by eating their internal organs. Because of the severe danger that ravenous spirits are believed to pose, those believed to be harboring them are typically forced to leave their communities, sometimes permanently. So, where do these ravenous spirits go when they are chased out of their villages? Many accused phi pop from as far north as Luang Prabang and as far south as northeastern Cambodia end up in Nakasang, a bustling trading center on the banks of the Mekong River in Khong District, Champasak Province, in southern Laos. That is because Nakasang—and a few surrounding villages—are well known for welcoming those who are shunned in their own communities. In this article, I describe the process that allows those accused of harboring ravenous spirits to stay in Nakasang, and the cultural healing ritual program that they undergo once they have moved there. More important, I explain how the belief in ravenous spirits allows communities to expel disliked people even when they are not actually phi pop. Indeed, the belief in ravenous spirits has become a convenient way of ridding undesirables, with Nakasang playing a critical role in Lao cultural healing. Cultural healing helps locals deal with phi pop and position themselves in relation to the state.
Environmental and social impact assessment is now a widely accepted tool in the Mekong Region for assessing the impacts of hydropower dams and large-scale industrial tree plantations. However, the ...cross-sectoral and cumulative effects of such projects have not been sufficiently addressed. Where cumulative impacts have been considered, studies have focused on a single sector, such as multiple hydropower dams. A separation between land and water management frequently leads those assessing project impacts to overlook or underestimate project outcomes. Here we examine such interactions between industrial plantations and hydropower projects, demonstrating that it is the diverse livelihoods of local people - based on everyday use of multiple resources - that crucially connects aquatic and terrestrial environments. The combined social and environmental changes wrought by resource projects can thus produce particular challenges for these communities, as multiple systems are enclosed and degraded. We present case studies of social and environmental impacts occurring in the Mekong Region: in the Hinboun River Basin in Central Laos; the Xe Bang Fai River Basin, also in Central Laos; and the Sesan River Basin in northeastern Cambodia. We strive to demonstrate the practical usefulness of adopting political ecology frameworks for thinking about these crucial agrarian changes.
Laos has long been recognized as a country with a high level of ethnic diversity. At present, the government of Laos recognizes 49 ethnic groups and over 160 sub-groups. Over the last couple of ...decades the modern concept of “indigenous peoples” has been introduced in Laos, albeit unevenly, partially, and in a quite limited way. The three broadly defined groups that have played important roles in variously promoting the concept of indigenous peoples (xon phao pheun meuang) in Laos are non-governmental organizations (NGOs), multilateral banks (the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank), and United Nations organizations. In this article I employ the analytic of translocal assemblages to examine the ways that the concept of indigeneity is circulating in Laos, and drawing on international and local influences. I briefly examine two issues frequently linked to the indigenous politics: communal land titling and bilingual education, and assess the extent to which new indigenous identities are being adopted in Laos. I present an example of how a Hmong group in the USA with links to Laos is constructing translocal assemblages through an indigenous peoples framework in order to resist the government in Laos. Unlike some other countries in Southeast Asia, which have increasingly embraced the concept, the government of Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) has not, preferring instead to acknowledge ethnic diversity, but within a framework that recognizes all ethnic groups as equal.
Since taking control of Laos in 1975, the Lao People's Revolutionary Party and the government of the Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) have relied heavily on secrecy, denial and information ...management and control to govern. These tools have been used for presenting the Party and state as united in support of the country's one-party communist political system and as being the only real political option. This article presents a number of examples of the particular ways the Party and state have done this. The following are discussed: the little-known rift between the "Red Prince" Chao Souphanouvong and Kaysone Phomvihane; conflict between the Lao PDR and Vietnam and China; the anti-Lao PDR insurgency; calls for political change via the "Social Democratic Club" in 1990; unsuccessful student protests for political change in 1999 and 2009; the forced disappearance of Sombath Somphone; and recent attempts to control social media to publicise anti-government viewpoints. Secrecy, falsification and information management and control have important implications, both with regard to conducting research about Laos and in relation to how outsiders tend to analytically frame the study of Party and state.
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