Lao development trends suggest decreased food security and resilience

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

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