Wolves Within and at the Door

“We do not inherit the land from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.” - Crazy Horse

Remaining largely unspoiled through the ages owing to its remote, landlocked position, Laos is now in imminent danger. Early French efforts to create a trade artery of the Mekong River to exploit Laos' natural resources were thwarted by rapids and shifting shoals, which created insurmountable obstacles to navigation. The one and only railway ever built in the country, created to portage these obstacles, proved economically unviable. A country 85% mountainous discouraged the building of roads.

Laos: A Country of Mountains and Rivers

Wedged in between Thailand, Viet Nam and China, Laos is losing its most valuable resources. Its powerful neighbors, having largely exhausted their own forests – raped might be a more accurate term – are now concentrating on the rich resources of Laos, not without the collaboration of the powers that be within the country.

Recently, a conference was held between the Prime Ministers of Thailand and Viet Nam to create better trade relations between their respective countries. The publicly unspoken subtext to these talks was how these two countries will use Laos. To this end, roads connecting the two countries are rapidly being built and widened deeper into the interior of Laos. As the ingress of roads progress, the logs roll out at a commensurate rate.

"Governmental involvement is really the major problem with deforestation and logging in this region," said Witoon Permpongsacharoen, director of TERRA, a non-profit organization monitoring environmental issues in Southeast Asia. Although Laos stopped granting logging concessions in 1994, it allows logging in forest areas possibly destined to become hydro-electric reservoirs, of which there are some 100 proposed projects. But according to Witoon,"Out of these 100 projects, maybe 10 will actually be implemented, but extensive logging is already going on at 50 project sites."

Loyalty of government, military and police officials, and rich businessmen is typically insured by allowing them their schemes and scams; drugs, prostitution or logs, it's part of the fabric of the political system. And not just in underdeveloped countries. In Laos' case, the consequence is the devastation is the loss of one of the most biologically diverse forest tracts in Southeast Asia, and more poignantly, the disruption of one of the most harmonious societies on earth. The losers are the general population and future generations.

New Roads are the Key to Major Exploitation

In collusion with the above-mentioned cabal are the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. These institutions bankroll proposed dams, and despite their public stand to foster conservation, they in fact contribute to increased deforestation. The World Bank guideline on forestry states: "Bank involvement in the forestry sector aims to reduce deforestation, enhance the environmental contribution of forested areas, promote forestation, reduce poverty, and encourage economic development."

The highest priority park for conservation in Laos – on paper at least – is the proposed site of the World Bank funded Nam Theun 2 dam project. In the case of the Nam Theun 2 project, yet to meet final approval, a Lao military-run logging company has logged much of the proposed 470 square kilometre reservoir area and is at the same time logging forests outside of the area.

On the face of it there is nothing astonishing about this project: the World Bank, "institutionally corrupt and apparently incapable of reform", has been funding devastating dams for years. What is surprising is that two of the most active supporters of the dam are major conservation groups!

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) clearly recognize the destructive potential of Nam Theun 2 Dam, but they argue it is the only means by which sufficient funds will be realized to finance their plans for the remainder of the Nakai Plateau.

Funded by the World Bank, the Rich Bio-Diversity of the Nakai Plateau is Being Stripped

It is arguable that these groups are interested in the area only because indigenous people have looked after it so well. Experience worldwide suggests that a strengthening, rather than a reduction, of local people's land rights is the only sustainable means of managing an ecosystem: they are the ones with a long-term interest in the health of their environment. Villagers, who rely on the forest for their livelihood, should be its natural custodians. Instead they are being forcibly resettled; their culture and their knowledge of the forests are simply swept away.

Logging operations in proposed inundation zones precede hydropower projects with devastating social impact. Forced resettlement, often with little or no compensation threaten land and society. Local communities, forced to abandon their lands are destroyed. Social problems, poverty and prostitution of displaced women in particular, become endemic.

But neither human rights nor wider environmental impact seem to matter much to organisations like the Wildlife Conservation Society. From the August, 1997 bulletin of the World Rainforest Movement: “Alongside the equally prestigious Smithsonian Institute, the WCS also works with the Burmese regime. In recent years, the government has forcibly relocated 30,000 people from an area it wanted for a nature reserve. Two thousand of them were murdered.”

Single species forests provide habitat to only a limited number of other plant and animal life. When the plantation is harvested, any eco-system that has evolved during the forest's growth is destroyed almost overnight. The acidic quality of eucalyptus makes the soil untenable for most other plant species. A plantation is not a forest. It provides little in the way of benefits to rural folk accustomed to the forest supplying fuel, fodder, mushrooms, edible plants, medicines, edible insects, birds and game. The rural majority is the sector affected most severely by deforestation.

Entire Eco-Systems are Being Replaced with Eucalyptus Plantations

BGA Lao Ltd is planting 50,000 hectares of eucalyptus plantations in Khammouane and Bholikhamsay provinces. Vast tracts of dense natural forest are cleared before planting eucalyptus, which will be exported as wood chips to Japan via the Vietnamese port of Cua Lo, near Vinh. The Japanese government is funding the rebuilding of Route 8, linking Thailand's Nakorn Phanom and Cua Lo. Its rehabilitation is crucial for the exporting of logs and wood chips.

Chang Lin, a Taiwanese company, has built a huge timber-processing complex outside Laksao on Route 8 near the Vietnamese border, which is processing Fokienia trees for export to Australia and Japan as veneer. The World Bank Mission admits that Fokienia is quite rare and that the only sources near to the factory are inside the National Biodiversity Conservation Area. So much for conservation…

With the high demand for hardwood and pulp, Laos now is in a position to be stripped of the majority of its valuable trees within the next 10 years; And with them, the incredible ecological diversity these forests support. The near absolute deforestation in China, which took a couple of thousand years to accomplish, can happen here in the next 20 years, creating drought, erosion, starvation, social disharmony and the irreparable loss of many flora and fauna species.

Not just the trees, the birds, animals and insects, but the topsoil, which relies on strong root systems to keep it in place, is in danger. Even the water: Many cachement areas have been severely affected. All major rivers are reporting record low levels in the dry season. Rainfall, which would normally soak into the ground to replenish the aquifer, slides off the land carrying away the rich topsoil, which creates the further problem of severe siltation of the rivers. What little rain the soil absorbs is evaporated almost as soon as the sun hits it, leaving the land parched and cracked.

Mudslides are a Direct Result of Deforestation

In the monsoon season, horrendous mudslides bury entire villages in denuded areas. Most of those villages were contracted by logging companies to cut the surrounding forest – rather like paying a man to dig his own grave.

The end-users are ultimately no less guilty. The insatiable desire for teak and other precious hardwoods, coupled with a voracious demand for paper products worldwide (about half of it disposable) create the market conditions necessary to make the rape of the forest worthwhile.

There are still wonderful forests in Laos, but they are disappearing fast. What kind of legacy we leave for posterity depends on us all. The first step is to understand the overall true value of a forest; not just its market value, but to understand just how well tuned and delicate an eco-system is and the long-term effects of its disruption. The second step is to develop consciousness of the problem and to convey the message that a standing forest is worth more now and in the long run.

We try to do our share by increasing awareness of the wild and how inextricably it is interconnected with our lives. We would like to show you and help you understand and appreciate the fantastic rain forests and jungles of SE Asia with the hopes that you too will be conscious of just what it is we are destroying. We want to leave our children with something better than burned out, logged-off wastelands and dried up watersheds.

Deforested Area

If you would like to plan an eco-expedition that will leave you with not only wonderful memories, but also a more complete consciousness of how precious this earth really is, to all of us, please contact us. We welcome your comments and look forward to seeing you.