麻豆社

Contested forest governance in Southeast Asia: Chinese commercial tree plantations and livelihood transformation of ethnic minority communities in Northern Laos.

Dr. Karen McAllister
麻豆社

The integration of commercial tree crops into swidden landscapes has long been a feature of holistic forest-farm livelihoods across Southeast Asia. However, since the mid-2000s, there has been a rapid expansion of transnational and domestic investment in economic tree plantations under a diversity of different governance regimes across the region. This is being driven by a combination of: a) government desires to promote economic development and 鈥榯urn land into capital鈥�, b) national legal frameworks that encourage foreign and domestic investment, discourage traditional agricultural practices and override customary resource rights, c) transnational companies seeking 鈥榠dle鈥� land and labour for capital ventures, and d) local desires to improve incomes and become 鈥渦p to date鈥�. 聽The expansion of commercial tree crops is resulting in rapid transformation of the livelihoods and landscapes of forest-dwelling communities, who both resist and are complicit in this transition. Within the broader context of Southeast Asia, this presentation will focus on the impact of Chinese transnational investments in plantation agriculture in Northern Laos and how this is transforming the forest landscapes and livelihoods of ethnic minorities. I will focus specifically on the struggles over governance and rights to forest resources that are occurring at different socio-political and spatial scales, the place-based intersections between formal regulations and informal practices that facilitate resulting processes of accumulation and dispossession, and the shifting representations and meanings of forest livelihoods and landscapes, identity and social justice that underlie these struggles.

Date: Friday, March 17th, 2016
Time: 12:30 pm
Location: Peterson Hall, 3460 McTavish Street, Room 116
Refreshments will be serv