Continuity and Discontinuity in Land Use Changes: A Case Study in Northern Lao Villages(<Special Issue>Land Use Changes in the Uplands of Southeast Asia: Proximate and Distant Causes)

Abstract

This article highlights land use changes of composite swidden farming villages in the northern part ofLaos under the drastic transformation of political and economic systems at national and regional levels, including civil war, independence, implementation of a planned economy and the introduction of a marketorientedeconomy, during the last several decades. Interpretation of remotely sensed images and farmingsystem analysis of the selected study villages revealed the extensive development of agriculture coupledwith a rapid deforestation in the 1970s and the early 80s and the intensification of land use and commercializationof farming in the following period. These findings suggest two kinds of mechanisms of land usechanges: continuous and gradual changes under a social regime and discontinuous and drastic changeswhen the social regime collapses. This article concludes that the latter mechanism is much more destructiveand exploitative than the former and dominates the long-term tendency of land use changes.