Local resource stewardship in tropical forest frontiers

Many of Laos’s highest-value biodiversity areas have, over the past two decades, been designated as National Protected Areas. These cover vast tracts of primary forest. Additionally, a system of Provincial Protected Areas covers secondary forests and other valuable ecosystems, which, however, have received little attention and support in practice. These areas are inhabited by local subsistence farming communities who rely heavily on hunting and gathering wild products. At the same time, the demand for land, timber, and non-timber forest products – plants and animals – has sharply increased over the past decades, primarily from neighboring countries. Increasing pressure on these resources, mainly from external actors, combined with limited capacities for law enforcement by Lao authorities, has caused a rapid decline in biodiversity. While the protected area status brings about various restrictions for local subsistence farmers, it also offers opportunities for stewardship roles if the necessary basic conditions can be realized.

Our goal

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To identify innovative approaches and initiatives to counter exploitative resource extraction activities and land use change through strengthened local stewardship roles.

Co-design of solutions and stewardship

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Given continued travel restrictions, the focus in 2022 was on enhancing the systemic understanding of the forest frontier regions in Laos, and a first project was launched in a bordering province in Thailand. Through a collaboration with the Elephant Conservation Center in Sayaboury province and the Lao office of CDE, a number of meetings and workshops were conducted with key stakeholders in these landscapes in preparation of the co-design and visioning process to identify and launch specific projects in Laos in 2023.

Projects underway

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Tree4All pilot in Nan Province, Thailand

Similar to landscapes in Sayaboury province in central Laos, shares of Nan province in Thailand are characterized by smallholder monoculture maize cultivation in the vicinity of forested protected areas. The aim of this project in partnership with RECOFTC is to develop and test innovative finance mobilization approaches and business partnerships to enhance ecosystem-based climate resilience of smallholders in Nan province. The project facilitates planting of multipurpose trees in the monoculture maize landscape, thereby also reducing pressure on remaining forested landscapes. By the end of 2022, smallholders had planted over five thousand largely native trees with the help of the various financing mechanisms developed. Additionally, we established a community-led nursery for tree seedlings and created a prototype of a spatially explicit tree monitoring system.