Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
THE ENVIRONMENT
A landlocked state in the heart of tropical Southeast Asia, Laos covers a land area of
nearly 237,000 square kilometres, a size comparable to that of England. Laos is dom-
inated by rugged highlands cut by narrow river valleys and shares in two of Southeast
Asia'smostprominentgeographicalfeatures:theAnnamiteMountainsandtheMekong
river, with the Mekong picking up more than half of its water flow during its nearly
2000km journey through Laos.
With a heat and humidity typical of a tropical region, Laos's climate nourishes a natural
wealth of wildlife that includes rare or endangered species. Early French explorers marvelled
at the sheer beauty of Laos's landscape, as they dodged tigers and collected samples of
strange and wonderful insects. Indeed, the country's former name, the Kingdom of a Million
Elephants, boasts of these tropical riches. In the recent past, Laos has surprised the scientific
world with a number of new species of plant or animal life discovered or rediscovered in
the country's forests and rivers. Sadly, Laos's natural wonders have been greatly diminished
since the late nineteenth century - there are at most a thousand or so elephants roaming the
country's frontiers today, and the forest continues to shrink each year. Despite the efforts of
a handful of concerned international groups, the Lao government's efforts at conservation
have been half-hearted and ineffectual. Lucrative logging and mining contracts have been
awarded to Chinese and Vietnamese firms, bringing riches to government and military offi-
cials but leaving the environment much poorer as a result. Likewise, the damming of Lao
rivers to generate hydroelectricity that can be sold to neighbouring countries is seen as a way
for Laos to generate capital, but the ill effects that dams and the reservoirs behind them have
on the environment are often ignored.
Agriculture
Agriculture plays a significant role in Laos's economy as the vast majority of people in Laos
live off the land. Rice, as the cornerstone of the Lao diet, accounts for eighty percent of agri-
cultural land. For the most part, farmers employ one of two cultivation systems when growing
rice. In the lowlands, farmers generally practise the wet-field paddy system, while swidden
cultivation (also known as shifting or slash-and-burn agriculture) is primarily employed in
the highlands. Large level areas along the Vientiane Plain, in Savannakhet and in Champasak
are perhaps the areas best suited for extensive paddy rice cultivation in the country, and these
places have not surprisingly emerged as the country's population centres. Other crops include
cardamom, coffee, corn, cotton, fruit, peanuts, soybeans, mung beans, sugarcane, sweet pota-
toes, tobacco and various vegetables.
Swidden cultivation techniques practised by the Lao Theung and Lao Soung date back
thousands of years and vary from group to group, with some peoples living in permanent
 
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