Building the Politics Machine: Tools for ‘Resolving’ the Global Land Grab

Not just another variable: untangling the spatialities of power in social–ecological systems

“…Alongside these direct outcomes, the LFA also introduced scalar mismatch between the management spaces of local communities and broader social-ecological system processes by delimiting and reducing the effective spaces of their operation (Cash et al 2006, Cumming et al 2006. Because of the legal ramifications of these categories, the particular spatializations produced through the LFA process in Laos have remained remarkably persistent through time, in many cases, showing very little change over the past two decades despite subsequent planning processes and changing market dynamics (Dwyer 2013). Thus, the LFA system functioned to harden system boundaries at a particular point in time according to predetermined use zones, limiting the ability of local communities to respond adaptively to changing system conditions, resource use, and conservation needs through time, potentially undermining system resilience (see Cumming 2011, Nelson et al 2007.…”

The Art of Neighbouring. Making Relations Across China's Borders

“…Some of the new plantations take advantage of the Chinese government's opium substitution subsidies. It also generates tropical hardwood as an extremely valuable initial by-product of plantation agriculture (Diana 2009, Dwyer 2013, Shi 2008. Chinese truckers and traders followed (Tan 2010), and the mountainous region, inhabited largely by ethnic minorities disenfranchised by the Lao state, has been catapulted from a largely self-sufficient and in part slash-and-burn agriculture into the global cash economy (Lyttleton et al 2004).…”

Assessment of governance mechanism, livelihood outcomes and incentive Instruments for green Rubber in the Lao PDR

“…However, not all farmers are able to or prefer to wait seven years to harvest latex and gain an income, and thus in certain cases, they have preferred to get paid immediately in the tree-sharing schemes (Shi 2008). Furthermore, tree-sharing contracts target large areas of village communal land, similar to a concession, and thus can lead to the conversion of larger areas of swidden fields and fallows, driving swidden agriculture into more remote forest areas (Dwyer 2013a). …”