Environment in Laos Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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The Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR), or Laos, is a nation of 6.4 million people and nearly 237,000 sq. km. situated in the heart of mainland Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China and Vietnam to its north and east, respectively; Myanmar and Thailand to the west; and Cambodia to the south. The climate is dominated by tropical monsoons, with a fairly well-defined rainy season from May through November alternating with a dry season from December through April. Laos is, by many socioeconomic measures (such as life expectancy, infant mortality, and literacy) one of the least-developed countries in the world.

Ethnically diverse and largely dependent on agriculture and natural resources for their livelihoods, the people of Laos practice rice paddy cultivation in the low-lying plains (only four percent of the land area of the country is arable) near the capital city of Vientiane, while those living in the mountainous regions of the north and east rely on a variety of livelihood practices, including upland rice cultivation, fishing, collection of nontimber forest products, and hunting of wild game.

The most pressing environmental issues facing the Lao government and people revolve around efforts to stimulate economic development through the exploitation of the country’s two primary natural resources: forests and hydropower. Nearly half of Laos’s entire Gross National Product is generated through the sale of these two resources. Deforestation and the exploitation of resources more generally has accelerated since the government’s adoption of economic reforms in the late 1980s stressing foreign investment and market-oriented policies.

While forest cover remains at an estimated 55 percent in Laos, illegal logging continues to present a major challenge to the government. Although Laos has been ruled by the socialist Lao People’s Revolutionary Party for the past 30 years, the governors of its 16 provinces and individual military commanders retain a good deal of independence from the central state. This has contributed to the unregulated sale of timber at the provincial and regional level to firms from Thailand, South Korea, Japan, and other Asian countries.

The Lao state has long planned to convert the energy of its numerous streams and rivers into electricity through the construction of large hydroelectric dams on the main stem of the Mekong River and its numerous tributaries. Major hydroelectric dams include the 1,150-megawatt Nam Ngum project on the Ngum River near the capital city Vientiane and the 210-megawatt Nam Theun-Hinboun project on the Theun River in the province of Khammouane. The government is constructing the massive Nam Theun 2 project on the Theun River in Borikhamsai province with funding provided by the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and other sources of international finance. The Nam Theun 2 dam has engendered considerable controversy, with several transnational and regional NGOs arguing that the project’s social and ecological disruptions, including displacement of local communities and loss of valuable fisheries, are considerable and not fully accounted for in dam planning.

The conservation of biodiversity is another major issue in Laos. The territory of Laos comprises several ecological zones of high biodiversity, especially in terms of large mammals and other large fauna. Endangered species found within Lao territory include the Asian elephant, Eld’s deer, western black-crested gibbon, Siamese crocodile, and tiger. While the Lao government, with the assistance of international conservation groups such as the World Conservation Union, has designated over 14 percent of its land area as National Biodiversity Conservation Areas (NBCAs), illegal logging and other environmentally damaging activities remain rampant in these sites.

Another critical environmental issue concerns ongoing soil erosion and loss of arable land, particularly in the highland areas where a form of shifting cultivation continues to be practiced by a variety of the region’s ethnic groups such as the Yao and Hmong minorities. A relic of the war between Vietnam and the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, unexploded ordnance in the form of land mines, artillery and mortar shells, rockets, and grenades continue to present a tremendous danger to rural families, particularly in those provinces bordering Vietnam.

Bibliography:

Grant Evans, , Laos: Culture and Society (Silkworm Books, 1999);
Michael Goldman, “Constructing an Environmental State: Eco-governmentality and other Transnational Practices of a ‘Green’ World Bank,” Social Problems (v.48, 2001);
Philip Hirsch and Carol Warren, , The Politics of the Environment in Southeast Asia: Resources and Resistance (Routledge, 1998).