Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
this chapter looks at the Asian Development Bank funded Industrial Tree Plantation
Project (ITPP), implemented in Laos between 1994 to 2003. The chapter will pro-
ceed in three sections. First, I introduce the policy context and ideology of small-
holder tree planting programs in Laos, as situated in a broader framework of
state-donor forestry and agrarian policy reforms. Next, is a description of the ADB
ITPP project and its outcomes, through an analysis of project documents, participant
interviews, and ethnographic, local-level field work from an ITPP smallholder tree
planting community site in Salavane province, southern Laos.
The chapter then turns to how diverging objectives and ideologies of tree plant-
ing held by different project actors combined to contribute to a broad-based failure
of the ITPP smallholder tree planting effort. A key point of this chapter is how an
analysis of local farmer skills, capabilities, and vulnerabilities was underempha-
sized through the first ITPP project phase, in the ITPP project evaluations, as well
as in the ADB project documentation in support of a proposed second phase (for
which eventual agreement between the Government of Laos and the ADB could not
be reached). It is argued that the active imputing of significant risks of plantation
failure onto impoverished smallholder farmers in Laos leads not only to questions
of the structural constraints farmers faced in undertaking tree growing activities, but
arguably raises questions concerning irresponsible lending practices by the donor
agency.
The fact that the smallholder-entrepreneurial vision of the ADB ITPP project
resulted in failed plantations, and increased rural debt and poverty, does not simply
mean that this particular project was unduly characterized by 'poor design and
management' or that it was 'ridden with corruption.' While these may be important
conclusions to draw, many other donor-financed tree planting projects, in Laos and
indeed the region, have met with similarly outcomes.
1
In fact, the regular 'failure'
of donor-based smallholder tree plantation projects in Southeast Asia does not
appear to be significantly hindering their continual reiteration. Vietnam for exam-
ple, has recently attracted US$60 million in funding through an Asian Development
Bank (ADB)-Trust Fund for Forests project (Vietnam News 2007). This comes in
addition to a major World Bank project investment into Vietnam's forest sector,
which includes a significant smallholder component, of nearly US$50 million
(World Bank 2004).
This paper argues that our understanding of the 'functional utility' of donor-
based plantation promotion projects can be situated within broader practices of aid
policy and development (Ferguson 1994; Mosse 2005). Smallholder tree planting
projects can be usefully seen as complex and unstable arenas for the exercise of
power, in which the linkages established between enlisted farmers, project trees,
state institutions and donor networks, are reflective of broader political configurations.
1
See for example, the Japan International Cooperation Agency's FORCAP smallholder acacia
planting project in Vientiane province Laos, or the ADB's Compensatory Tree Plantation project
in peninsular Malaysia.
Search WWH ::
Custom Search