Abstract
Increasing global demand for natural rubber began in the mid-2000s and led to large-scale expansion of plantations in Laos until rubber latex prices declined greatly beginning in 2011. The expansion of rubber did not, however, occur uniformly across the country. While the north and central Laos experienced mostly local and smallholder plantations, rubber expansion in the south was dominated by transnational companies from Vietnam, China and Thailand through large-scale land concessions, often causing conflicts with local communities. In this study we use satellite remote sensing to identify and map the expansion of large-scale rubber plantations in Champasak Province—the first area in southern Laos to host large-scale rubber development—and document the biophysical impacts on the local landscape, which of course is linked to social impacts on local people. Our study demonstrates that the expansion of rubber in the province was rapid and did not always conform to approved concession area locations. The mono-culture nature of rubber plantations also had the effect of homogenizing the landscape, eclipsing the changes caused by local populations. We argue that by providing a relatively inexpensive way to track the expansion of rubber plantations over space and time, remote sensing has the potential to provide advocates and other civil society groups with data that might otherwise remain limited to the restricted domains of state regulation and private sector reporting. However, we also caution that while remote sensing has the potential to provide strong public evidence about plantation expansion, access to and control of this information ultimately determines its value.
Highlights
During the mid-2000s, the world began experiencing dramatic increases in demand and prices for raw rubber (Hevea brasiliensis), leading to the rapid expansion of plantation rubber in mainlandSoutheast Asia [1], especially in Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, southern China and Laos.Hundreds of thousands of hectares of rubber were planted in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR or Laos) [2,3,4] up until rubber prices began to dramatically decline in 2011 [5]
We argue that by providing a relatively inexpensive way to track the expansion of rubber plantations over space and time, remote sensing has the potential to provide advocates and other civil society groups with data that might otherwise remain limited to the restricted domains of state regulation and private sector reporting
This paper aims to fill some of these gaps, focusing on the rapid expansion of rubber plantations in southern Laos’s Champasak Province, the first area in the region to host large-scale rubber development
Summary
During the mid-2000s, the world began experiencing dramatic increases in demand and prices for raw rubber (Hevea brasiliensis), leading to the rapid expansion of plantation rubber in mainlandSoutheast Asia [1], especially in Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, southern China and Laos.Hundreds of thousands of hectares of rubber were planted in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR or Laos) [2,3,4] up until rubber prices began to dramatically decline in 2011 [5]. While northern and central Laos have experienced a mixture of different types of rubber development, ranging from small-scale private development to contract farming and larger land concessions [6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13], the geography of rubber planting in southern Laos has been far more uniform [14]. Even before rubber prices began to fall in 2011, little interest was seen amongst farmers in southern Laos for developing small-scale rubber plantations like in the north [15]. Large-scale land concessions for rubber in southern Laos have been highly controversial, and in recent years researchers have described serious problems associated with dramatic landscape and livelihood transformations [16,17,20,21,22].
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