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The Lao PDR is making the transition from subsistence to cash, and command to market. Rural communities are being drawn ever more tightly into the embrace of the market economy and of the central state. The construction of roads, schools and health centres, the provision of credit and new crops and technologies, and the arrival of traders and the panoply of the consumer economy are all, in their different ways, remoulding rural economy and society. This paper looks at one aspect of this multi- stranded process of agrarian transformation: the role and place of forests and, in particular, non-timber forest products, in rural people's lives and livelihoods. The paper highlights the contradictory and uneven livelihood-eroding/enhancing effects of these transformations. In many upland areas of Laos livelihoods are being squeezed from 'below' by environmental degradation and from 'above' by the operation of government policies and, more generally, by evolving market relations. While market pessimists see market integration as a largely destructive process, the paper highlights the opportunities that market integration can provide through diversification and livelihood reorientation. The challenge is that these opportunities are unequally available and are likely to promote social differentiation. Some households find themselves in a position to embrace new opportunities while others are forced to continue to rely on a declining and degrading forest resource. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1986 Lao PDR has greatly reduced the barriers to international trade and the government's direct controls over the economy. Aggregate growth during this reform period has been quite rapid. Although the benefits of growth have gone disproportionately to the non-poor and inequality has increased, poverty incidence is nevertheless estimated to have fallen from about 45% in 1992–93 to 30% in 2002–03. After surveying these developments, this paper discusses the policies that the government is currently proposing as ways to ensure that the benefits of further opening of the economy are more equally shared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the establishment of the Indochinese Federation, the French colonial government implemented policies to develop the transport system in the colonies, connecting Laos with other regions in the Indochinese Federation. Previous studies have mainly focused on demonstrating the development of the transport network in Vietnam or highlighting the limitations of the French colonial government in investing in the development of transport in Laos. This article aims to redefine the role of the French in developing the transport network and infrastructure in Laos in order to break its isolation and associate this country with the rest of the Indochinese Federation. These policies had a long-term influence on the development of modern Laos when the development of Lao trade shifted from dependence on the Mekong River and the port of Bangkok to commercial circulation by many transport services on many different transnational roads directed towards the ports of Indochina. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecotourism as a strategy for achieving biodiversity conservation often results in limited conservation impact relative to its investment and revenue return. In cases where an ecotourism strategy has been used, projects are frequently criticized for not providing sufficient evidence on how the strategy has reduced threats or improved the status of the biodiversity it purports to protect. In Lao PDR, revenue from ecotourism has not been directly linked to or dependent on improvements in biodiversity and there is no evidence that ecotourism enterprises have contributed to conservation. In other developing countries, direct payments through explicit contracts in return for ecosystem services have been proposed as a more cost-effective means for achieving conservation, although further research is needed to evaluate the impact of this approach. To address this need, a new model was tested in the Nam Et-Phou Louey National Protected Area (NPA) in Lao PDR using a direct payments approach to create ecotourism incentives for villagers to increase wildlife populations. Over a four-year period, we monitored along a theory of change to evaluate assumptions about the linkages between intermediate results and biological outcomes. Preliminary results show a negative correlation between ecotourism benefits and hunting infractions in target villages; no increase in hunting sign in the ecotourism sector of the NPA relative to a three-fold increase in hunting sign across the NPA’s non-tourism sectors; and an overall increase in wildlife sightings. This case provides key lessons on the design of a direct payments approach for an ecotourism strategy, including how to combine threat monitoring and data on wildlife sightings to evaluate strategy effectiveness, on setting rates for wildlife sightings and village fees, and the utility of the approach for protecting very rare species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article challenges the comprehended image of traditional Vietnam by looking at the form of government of a social organization's early history from the sea. In the Gulf of Tonkin area, a trading zone subsisted extending to Hainan Island and northern Champa by sea, and traveling over land to Yunnan and Laos. The author stressed that the crucial part in state formation for Vietnam is commerce and interactions of peoples in these areas.