ABSTRACT
We drove along the winding road, surrounded by grassy hills in the foreground, forests in the distance, struck by the poignancy of the situation. Many in the Lao-PDR government were trying to manage the area in such a way as to improve people’s livelihoods. But formal government policy was tied to an 18th century political philosophy of human social evolution that hid from them the complex agroforestry and governance systems which local peoples had evolved to organize and sustain themselves over the millennia. The government’s forest reform involved managing the forests and communities across the land in a uniform way, designed from an office in the capitol – an approach deemed easiest to implement. The policies involved uprooting peoples from remote areas where their forest gardens flourish with mature trees from which they harvest fruits, bark and wood, and around which carefully tended swiddens and gardens provide food, medicines, spices and herbs for their families and their community. Resettlement would establish family clusters along the road, in small areas of land according to pre-set formulae. Age old forms of customary practice, leadership and laws were cast aside, as the government ignored the wealth of cultural diversity and appropriate local governance, resulting in an uprooted people, a damaged landscape, sad disempowerment.
