Lao development trends suggest decreased food security and resilience

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.