by province, in Lao PDR Data Source: Epprecht et al.
2018a, authors’ analysis
Distribution of the land resource:
Turning whose land into whose capital?
The ways in which the land resource base is distributed across society is a core concern for development and food security, and central to questions of justice and equity. Particularly for agrarian societies such as Laos, wherein the vast majority of the population is engaged in agriculture, the issue of agricultural land distribution is a core national concern and a hotly-debated topic. While national policy and various strategies, such as MAF’s Strategy to 2025, emphasize the critical role of household agriculture as the basis of the rural economy, other policies—most notably policies relating to TLIC—signal a movement away from a focus on smallholders toward large-scale investments in land through FDI and domestic concessions of land, with immediate implications for land resource distribution.
Agricultural land distribution
The distribution of rural society and agricultural land uses and have been in a state of flux since the mid-20th Century. During and after the revolutionary conflicts up until the early 1990s, nearly half of the population of Laos was displaced or resettled due to various causes, including avoidance of conflict areas and, in the years immediately following independence, state-based efforts to establish national identity, reshape and modernize rural areas, and ensure internal security (Baird and Shoemaker, 2009). While the government’s official policy of broad-scale resettlement more or less ended during the 1990s and early 2000s, resettlement driven by village consolidation policies and from investment projects have continued to produce displacement across many rural areas. While official policies have sought to mitigate these impacts
through compensation and other forms or remuneration, implementation has been limited and inconsistent. The 2011 Agriculture Census indicated conservatively that around 10 percent of all villages had been resettled nationally but in the uplands this almost doubled, with 19 percent of households having been resettled.
Between 1999 and 2011, average land holdings of agricultural households increased by nearly 50 percent, to 2.4 ha per family, but the distribution of these land holdings has been irregular. While differences in the classes of land holdings may not necessarily indicate inequity (i.e. unfairness in distribution), in a largely agrarian, socialist society whose landholdings are ostensibly distributed according to need, equity in land holdings would be expected. However, the pace of commercialization and the unevenness of economic development at the household level have played an important role in shaping the irregular expansion of land holdings and conglomeration in some areas.
Nationally, 27 percent of agricultural households operate three hectares or more of land, in the aggregate, accounting for a disproportionately high—
nearly 60 percent—proportion of agricultural land.
Sixty-five percent of farming households operate between 0.5 hectares and 2.99 hectares of land. The Gini Index—showing equality and disparity through values ranging from 0 (complete equality) to 1 (complete inequality)—here presented at the provincial level, provides insights into disparities in land holdings across Lao PDR (Map 38). The evenness of distribution of land holdings also serves as an indicator of conglomeration, a common feature of commercialization. Luang Prabang province has the greatest equality of agricultural land holdings, while Vientiane Capital and Phongsaly show highest disparities. Taking into consideration only household
Gini Index of Land Distribution
< 0.3 0.3 - 0.4 0.4 - 0.5 0.5 - 0.6
Figure 30: Number of land concessions granted in Lao PDR between 1989 and 2016
67 Though not all of this land has been developed Source: Hett et al. forthcoming
agricultural land holdings, the country as a whole has a Gini coefficient value of 0.34. Factoring in agriculture and forest concessions to foreign and domestic firms, the national coefficient jumps to 0.49. By way of comparison against Gini Indices for income (the more common application of the Gini coefficient), the world’s top 15 most unequal countries have Gini Indices of 0.49 and above.
The Gini Index of land here relates to land managed by agricultural households, but does not reflect the degree to which those households have tenure security over these lands. This is particularly relevant given the low coverage of land titling programmes and the default policy stance which situates the government, rather than the community or household, as the land owner (see below). The Gini Index of land also does not take into account disparities with regard to land quality, prices, or other aspects relevant to understanding resource disparities more generally.
Despite the expansion of agricultural land and increases in the average size of land holdings in recent years, land shortages remain a persistent obstacle to development and food security (MAF 2013), with 29 percent of households indicating that lack of available agricultural land was a major constraint.
Landlessness
In 2011, there were approximately 6,200 landless households for whom agriculture was their primary occupation. While this represents a relatively low proportion of total agricultural households (around 1 percent), the number of landless households tripled since the 1999 census period. Further, approximately 7 percent of the agricultural population operates less than 0.5 ha and thus may be considered at risk of
functional landlessness, with holdings below a minimum threshold to allow for subsistence crop production. While landlessness results from a variety of causes, including the sale of agricultural land use rights for repayment of debts or the purchase of livelihood inputs, increased public attention has been paid to landlessness that has resulted from the concession of community land to investment projects.
Dispossession through the improper granting of land concessions has been arguably the most contentious issue in contemporary land debates, explicitly referenced in, for example, the Politburo Resolution on Enhancement of Land Management and Development in the New Period in 2017.
Land leases and concessions
Lao PDR has aggressively pursued a model of economic growth through export-oriented FDI and a heavy reliance on the primary sectors of forestry, agriculture, hydropower and mining in an effort to promote national development, eradicate poverty and achieve other socio-economic goals. While foreign investments in land and forest resources have occurred since at least the 1970s, recent years have seen the rapid expansion of such investments through TLIC-related policies (UNDP, 2010; Baird, 2011). During the years 2010-2014, government figures indicate that FDI in Lao PDR grew at an average rate of 47.4 percent per year (MPI, 2015).
LSLAs through state-sponsored concessions have expanded over the past ten years at a startling pace (Figure 30). At present, 1,521 land deals have taken place, involving 1,019,340 ha of land67, with a further 237 deals, involving 10.7 million ha (45 percent of the total land area of Laos) granted for mineral exploration (Hett et al. forthcoming).
Area (ha)
Number of deals Area granted (ha)
Number of deals
2000 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016
State of Land in the Mekong Region State of Land in Lao PDR 105
State of Land in Lao PDR
68 Excluding exploration concessions
69 Importantly, hydropower concession area here refers only to land concession areas for the hydropower facility itself and does not include inundation areas or access roads, etc., the inclusion of which would increase this figure signficantly. Conservative estimates based on data available from the CGIAR Water, Land and Ecosystems project (available at: https://wle-mekong.cgiar.org) based on reservoir area data for operational dams in Laos indicate around 280,000 hectares, excluding dams planned and under construction, and impact footprints of transmission lines, access roads, and workers camps.
Figure 31: Share of land under concession, by land use, in Lao PDR
Figure 32: Share of land under concessions, by investor origin, in Lao PDR in 2010 and 2017
Vanida Khouangvichit, Responsible Agriculture Investments (RAI) Project Manager, Village Focus International
Perspectives: Free prior and informed consent
In many cases, communities have not been meaningfully engaged during investment planning and decision-making processes. Communities are often given few opportunities to participate in these processes, and they also have limited knowledge about their rights. To address this issue, all stakeholders, including the private sector, government and civil society organisations need to be more aware of good practices and tools. One such example is the principles of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), which should be upheld to make sure that communities are fully consulted with and consent is sought by project developers for all investment activities. A multi-stakeholder approach is a key way to foster positive collaborations to ensure community empowerment as well as responsible and sustainable investments.
Data Source: Hett et al.
forthcoming
Data Source: Hett et al.
forthcoming
Land concessions predominate in the central and southern provinces (Maps 39 and 40). Just three provinces—Savannnakhet, Khammouane and Bolikhamxay—comprise 47.5 percent of all land involved in concessions. Of these, Savannakhet has the largest share, with a total of 228,611 ha. Agriculture and tree plantation concessions account for the largest share of land under concessions, with 593,357 ha, followed by mining concessions68 (with 415,527 ha), tree plantations (138,981 ha) and hydropower stations69 (10,456 ha) (Figure 31).
Between 2010 and 2017, an important shift occurred with regard to the ownership of concessions. While domestic investments comprised only 17 percent of total concession area in 2010, this proportion grew to 29 percent in 2017, signaling the localization of state-sponsored land acquisitions and increasing prosperity among some segments of Lao society (Figure 32).
Large-scale investments in land have resulted in massive changes in the ownership and the use of land resources. Rural communities and government regulatory agencies have struggled to keep up with the pace of change and adapt to its impacts, particularly with regard to land, but also forest resources, as land-based investments are playing an increasing role in deforestation (Ingalls et al., 2018).
Mining
2010 proportion by area 2017 proportion by area
11% 17% 11%
29%
72% 60%
Map 39: Agriculture and tree plantation concessions, by investor and size, in Lao PDR