Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
involved career-building loan tranches, concession-based plantation production
involving large companies, and the creation of a modernized, globally competitive
pulp and paper sector in Laos. The tension between these two forms of plantation
promotion, concession versus smallholder, was arguably never resolved.
13.7
Smallholder Forestry, Development Failures,
and State Power in Laos
This chapter makes a case that smallholder forestry programs need to be considered
in terms of how the development objectives become transformed through state
practices and village realities during implementation. In the case of the Industrial
Tree Plantation project in Laos, a full understanding of the rationales of the Lao
institutional actors involved is difficult to gain. As a project which was evaluated as
a failure (even though a series of mid term reports deemed it 'satisfactory', see
Mosse 2005, for a discussion of the social production of 'success' and 'failure' in
contemporary development), some of the associated actors were not interested in
discussing its progress and outcomes. Indications of additional objectives which
became attached to the project by state actors in Laos can however be gleaned from
project documents. Drawing from Ferguson (1994), next I consider less whether the
project was a success or failure, but what nevertheless were its 'functional effects'
in terms of state power. That is, what do such development programs accomplish,
even through their ostensible failure.
From the financial perspective of the ADB, the success or failure of their
projects does not affect the fact that the terms of the agreement are being upheld
and they receive monthly payments from client governments on their loans. The
continued failure of their projects could eventually make state governments more
reticent to accept the loans, and indeed this may have been part of the reason why
agreement for the Phase 2 project was not reached. The ADB consultants, similarly,
have received their salaries, although for them also, continued involvement in failed
projects may eventually undermine their legitimacy as technical development
experts. The Agriculture Promotion Bank is now in serious financial constraints as
a result of the project, although officials with the bank who directed loans through
personal networks or to ghost borrowers would have captured their share of the
project largesse. For APB and NAFES, the project certainly helped to extend their
presence into many new districts in Laos. As Ferguson (ibid.) suggests, it is this
element of extending and intensifying state power through even failed donor
projects, which may represent an ultimate 'rationale' for development.
The process whereby the project expanded from eight into 32 districts between
2000-2001 is also highly suggestive concerning the interests of central level state
actors in Laos. It is notable that this was also the 20 month period when there were
no ADB missions were sent to monitor the project's progress, and the Lao Project
Coordination Unit (PCU), comprised of high ranking officials from the relevant Lao
Search WWH ::
Custom Search