Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
13.8
Conclusion: Placing Donor-Led Smallholder Forestry
in Political Context
This chapter has analyzed the outcomes of a multi-million dollar ADB small-
holder pulpwood plantation project in Laos. The above sections have made three
key points in relation to smallholder forestry programs: how the ITPP project fit
into the broader ideology of forestry and agrarian development policies in Laos;
how farmers' conceptions of risk were not incorporated into the ITPP project and
the proposals for a Phase 2 project; and how the implementation and effects of the
ITPP project was transformed through Lao institutions and village realities. It is
also argued that it can be useful to move beyond narrows interpretations of the
'failure' of the ADB's efforts around smallholder tree plantations in Laos, espe-
cially given that project implementation failures are rather common in Laos. It
may be more useful, following Hart (1989) and White (1999) to place rural devel-
opment with state patronage and the structural power relations which characterize
rural society in Asia. From Ferguson (1994), we can ask what this project worked
to
accomplish
even though the fact that most of the trees planted were complete
silvicultural and financial losses. Building on Mosse (2005), we can also question
how 'success' and 'failure' are interpreted and socially produced through project
evaluation, analysis and documentation, and with what implications for new reit-
erations of development.
I will make a couple of remarks for what this analysis implies for understanding
smallholders and tree planting adoption in Asia more broadly. First, in locations of
severe livelihood vulnerability and at times food insecurity which are targeted for
smallholder agro-forestry, local issues and conceptions of livelihood risks could
benefit from further understanding and elaboration. This will be particularly impor-
tant as state and donor policies in Laos moves vulnerable rural communities
towards a fuller integration with global market forces, in significant part through
tree planting development and land rezoning.
Secondly, the ITPP project's broad failure to produce an economically viable
production base of smallholder livelihood plantations, speaks perhaps less to an
incipient process of the 'proletarianisation' of Lao peasant farmers through out-
grower or contract plantation schemes (e.g. Little and Watts 1994), as much to
the politics of aid program (dis)implementation in authoritarian, post-socialist
Laos. In Ban Naa Pang Yai, farmers have few options to directly contest the
problems they have encountered with the ADB program, although they do
attempt to avoid the APB's demands for interest repayments. Up to 2006, APB
had not applied more forceful pressure upon non-performing loan households in
Salavane province, although the ADB has recommended such an approach. It
remains unclear for how long peasant farmers in Laos will remain patient in their
responses to state-donor development interventions which directly undermine
their livelihoods.
Third, this study implicitly suggests that analysis of smallholder tree planting
programs in Southeast Asia can to be understood through more than technically-
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