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CSEAS Colloquium with Dr. Grace Wong, July 28, 2016

2016/07/28 @ 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM

20160728_colloquiumTThis is an announcement to invite you to the CSEAS Colloquium for July 2016.

Date & Time: Thursday, July 28, 2016, 16:00-17:30

Place: Middle-sized Meeting Room (No. 332), 3rd Floor, Inamori
Foundation Building, Kyoto University

Title: Costs, risks, incentives and the political economy of forest and land use: A case study of REDD+ implementation in Laos

Speaker: Dr. Grace Wong

Abstract:
Rural livelihoods and landscapes in Southeast Asia are undergoing rapid
change. An increasingly global economy with expanding markets for crops
and forest products and investments for converting forests and
agriculture land into commercial plantations are reaching even seemingly
remote corners. These have brought prosperity to a significant part of
the region over the recent decades, but the distributional effects have
been very uneven.
How well rural smallholder households are able to participate in and
benefit from the market economy is highly dependent on having access to
information, finance and skills, and on how the state, development
agency and/or other brokers mediate this access. The power imbalance in
rural forested landscapes can have distributional effects that further
marginalize the vulnerable. Swidden farming systems that have long
covered much of upland Southeast Asia, for example, have been generally
excluded from this recent wave of globalization despite having long been
active participants in trade and markets.
In this research, I explore how a new trend of investments for forest
management and conservation such as REDD+ (reducing emissions from
deforestation and forest degradation) interacts with the practice of
swidden in Laos. Laos is a useful case country for this study: over the
past 4 decades, Laos has kept a consistent political stance towards
swidden and have implemented numerous policies to variably “eradicate”,
“reduce” and “stabilize” swidden in favor of sedentary and modern
forms of agriculture.
This research has two parts: first, I use a political economy lens to
examine how REDD+ is being implemented at different scales. At the
national level for example, REDD+ policies and measures that are meant
to address deforestation drivers are instead directed towards activities
that are in line with its overaching forest policy objectives to
stabilize swidden and conserve protected areas, thus avoiding the real
deforestation drivers (expanding plantation agriculture, mining,
hydropower dams) and conflicts with national economic growth objectives.
The second part of the research relates to how REDD+ can be structured
appropriately to be relevant to swidden farmers and practices. We used
mixed methods of household surveys and focus group discussions to
understand swidden farmer livelihoods in Phonxai district and how they
cope with uncertainty and risks related to changing market demands,
prices and policy restrictions, and how they adapt to new opportunities.
We also applied field framed games to assess how swidden farmers will
respond to forest incentives such as REDD+. Preliminary analysis of the
data suggest that well-designed incentives can complement forest
management within swidden landscapes – and contribute to reducing
emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.
In assessing the implementation of REDD+ and interaction with swidden at
multiple scales, two questions remain for Laos: 1) whether new flows of
REDD+ finance over the past year will spur advancements in REDD+
policies or will business-as-usual interests prevail in driving
deforestation; and 2) could swidden farmers be seen as subjects for
engaging in initiatives, or merely as objects in advancing long-held
political objectives.

 


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Details

Date:
2016/07/28
Time:
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM
Event Category:

Organizer

Masayuki ITOH