Agrarian Land Use Transformation in Northern Laos: from Swidden to Rubber(<Special Issue>Land Use Changes in the Uplands of Southeast Asia: Proximate and Distant Causes)

Abstract

Land use and farmers' livelihoods in mountainous regions of northern Laos are rapidly moving away fromsubsistence to market based agricultural systems, changing farmers' relationship with land and naturalresources. The current study examines patterns of land use change in northern Laos, especially focusingon the expansion of agricultural land in upland areas. It also examines factors that influence local farmers'livelihood and their decisions on land use. A series of government policies that were implemented sincethe 1980s restricted upland farmers' access to upland fields and fallow forests, and led to the relocation ofupland communities. The opening of regional borders for trade in the early 1990s, which brought neweconomic opportunities for local farmers, further accelerated the demand for agricultural land and led to aconcentration of population in settlements along the road. A combination of both external and internalfactors are influencing households in rural areas to actively seek new economic opportunities and adapttheir livelihood basis, as well as altering their relationship with land and resources. This rapid transformationalso questions the effectiveness of the government's resource management policy that developedduring the 1990s aiming to control expansion of upland shifting cultivation practices through delineationof resource boundaries.