Lao development trends suggest decreased food security and resilience

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Development in Lao PDR: The food Security Paradox, by David Fullbrook
Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC)
FEB 2010

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Food security will remain out of reach for many people, especially women and children, in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, or Laos, if the country continues to emphasize commodities and resources development at the expense of the environment and livelihoods while ignoring global trends for food and energy. Development might be expected to improve food security, but the indications and trends suggest otherwise. This is the paradox of food security in Laos.
Policy is pumping up the economy with investment in resources through dams, mines and plantations. The promise of this big push for development is jobs, incomes and revenues to end poverty. It is a worthy and ambitious effort threatened by its scale and weak administration. The allure of windfall riches masks the high toll on the environment. Developments are tearing at the environment breaking down the foundations of food production and livelihoods.

Opportunities are passed up for sustainably increasing food production for domestic and foreign markets. Chronic food insecurity is therefore unlikely to decline and may indeed intensify.
Furthermore vulnerability to acute food insecurity will persist and may well increase.
It is understandable to pursue resources-led investment given the extent of poverty in Laos amid so much natural wealth. However similar strategies elsewhere have with but a few exceptions fallen short of expectations. There is much to suggest that expectations will also fall short in Laos.
This dynamic is not evolving in isolation. Its mechanisms are increasingly interlocking with the big wheels of global trends, shifting gears as part of the transition from an age of plenty to an age of scarcity. Questions of great uncertainty hang over prospects for global production of food with implications, not least Laos, for supplies, prices and food security. Imports of food into Laos at affordable prices are at risk. Events elsewhere are more likely than before to echo in Laos as acute food insecurity.
These challenges – domestic and global – are not yet reflected in perceptions of risks and opportunities. Food insecurity policy is fragmented and secondary to investment policy.

Prime Minister Bouasone Bouphavanh has drawn connections between land policy and food production. Meanwhile land is being divided between concessions and proposals for dams and mines continue.
This will not be enough to safeguard Laos against vulnerability to the twin perils of acute and chronic food insecurity. The hunger, poor nutrition and disruption they cause weaken people, the cornerstone of national security. The cause of vulnerability lies not in food-production potential but with policy gambling all on resources to underwrite development while inadvertently sacrificing ecosystems underlying food production. Left unchanged policy is on track to ensure food insecurity will continue to threaten national security.

Food security depends upon an intact, robust and healthy environment, secure livelihoods and political recognition of the costs and risks of uncontrolled resources development.

Laos is not condemned to being a weak state.By tuning policy to nurture natural advantages in agriculture and secure the environment, Laos can achieve food security enabling its people to focus on development to build a stronger society and enhance national security. Other developments may then follow in harmony without compromising food security while opening opportunities for sustainable pathways out of poverty. The food security paradox is not inevitable, but it will require a change in perception to open the door to new paradigms of development playing to the natural advantages of Laos. Without change, it will be business as usual which will deepen problems and sustain threats to national food security, leaving many to face a future of hunger, sickness and poor well-being security.

FOOD SECURITY IN LAOS
 Food security is a rising priority
 Policies: National Nutrition Policy 2008 and plans for national rice reserve
 Official concerns: land concessions and agriculture
 Declining poverty & new opportunities for livelihoods

THE BIG PUSH
 Resources are attractive and abundant
 Hydro-power dams, mining and plantations are developing rapidly on a vast scale
 They form a Big Push reordering the environment, economy and society
 Investment trends are likely to continue for a decade or more and may intensify
 Big Push projects are land and water intensive
 Big Push projects promise substantial revenues that the state could use to reduce poverty and eliminate food insecurity

LIVELIHOOD IMPACTS
 Big Push costs are immediate because they damage or eliminate food-producing livelihoods
 Benefits lie in the future mostly as revenue promises for the state plus some jobs
 Communities suffer impacts from multiple projects leaving food security precarious
 People affected may be hidden because they live beyond the immediate impact area
 Dams may affect up to 2 million people and their livelihoods including food production
 Mining and plantations are replacing farms and forage forests undermining the food security of local communities and production for national food security
 Depeasantization is underway weakening communities and risking the loss of traditional farming know-how that will undermine food production capacity
 Collective trends and cumulative impacts are crippling livelihoods and food security

ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES
 Mining poses a serious pollution risk to food production for local and national needs
 Forests are being stripped of foods at unsustainable rates undoing their ecologies
 Mono-culture plantations pose a risk to the ecology and are at risk from disease and unsustainable water use posing long-term threats to food production
 Water flows, quality and availability are suffering damaging food production especially fish
 The scale of change and development carries consequences that can interact, compound and cascade across the ecosystem posing unforeseen dangers to food security

A CURSE LOOMS FOR FOOD SECURITY
 Policy reflects decision-making which under-values food security and its foundations upon strong environment, sound ecology and sustainable livelihoods
 Environmental regulators lack manpower, budgets, knowledge and political will to monitor compliance and enforce legislation that would protect food security and livelihoods
 Administration is ineffective, unable to produce or maintain comprehensive land data nor exercise full power over investment across national and provincial authorities
 Investment is out of control
 The resource curse stands over Laos, it may already be taking effect
 Administration and regulation are inadequate to protect sustainable agriculture and food security in the face of the huge demands and powerful influence of investment

PEAKS AND CRUNCHES
 Land-linked Laos is exposed to global trends of intensifying energy and food stress
 Hydro-power exports face uncertainty from domestic, decentralized energy production
 Competition for land to grow fuel, food, fibre and bio-plastics to meet global demand and reduce use of oilWater stress – drought, irrigation, aquifer depletion – in China and Thailand will impact water and food production in Laos
 Crop and livestock diseases are a growing threat that may partially be countered by agricultural biodiversity, stocks and sufficient capacity to withstand shocks
 Falling global fish stocks and rising demand could increase hunger for fish from healthy, free-flowing rivers like those that remain in Laos
 Global food production is at its limits and vulnerable to shortages and price spikes
 Today’s transition from an age of abundance to an age of scarcity is a threat and an opportunity for Laos

FOOD (IN)SECURITY ANALYSIS
 Sustainable Food Security – current political policy paradigms are not generating enough assets for a sustained and rapid reduction in food insecurity
 Food Livelihood System – the Big Push is not only threatening food security but is also stressing and undermining the families, communities and their social ties that produce food
 Sustainable Security – food security, a key pillar of national security, is under threat because it is not being defended against assault from many quarters behind which lie the power of global demand for energy and land
 Comprehensive National Power – threats to food production and food security in Laos drain the holistic strength of society destabilizing the country from within
 Policy – recent initiatives are encouraging but the incomplete, reactionary ad-hoc approach is unlikely to make a qualitative difference to the food security situation in the face of mounting local and global challenges

FOOD SECURITY ASSESSMENT
 Structural shifts are fundamentally affecting the environment, ecology, society and economy to the loss of food security
 Repressed food production hampers efforts to protect and expand food security
 Consequences are not always apparent, suggesting a ‘slow-burn’ crisis that may manifest as a phase-change from peace to violence
 Response is inadequate because policies are borne of the prevailing development paradigm which is the fundamental cause of food insecurity vulnerability

Full Report PDF can be downloaded by clicking HERE

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