Links between justice and wellbeing in protected area management in Laos. Neil Dawson , International Development, University of East Anglia. This presentation was given at the Expert Workshop on Equity, Justice and Well-being in Ecosystem Governance, held at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in London, March, 2015.

1. Links between justice and
wellbeing in protected area
management in Laos
Neil Dawson

2. Ecosystem Services, Wellbeing & Justice: Developing Tools for
Research and Development Practice
(ESPA-funded, PI Thomas Sikor)
• Study takes an empirical approach to justice, focused on perceptions of individuals living
adjacent to forests in northern Lao PDR.
• Use a broad definition of wellbeing to look at wider values and motivations underpinning
behaviours and claims regarding justice/ injustice (material + subjective + relational WB)
• Aim: to provide social understanding relevant for development and conservation, which
can support/promote negotiation of trade-offs in ecosystem services

3. Insights for definitions of justice and how to study it
– 3 dimensions not easily reduced to consistent indicators (fair/
unfair, included/excluded, recognised/ unrecognised). Claims
about justice/injustice embedded in complex contextual factors
– 3 dimensions highly interrelated. Many claims do not relate
separately to issues of recognition, to influence over decision
making or distribution of benefits and costs, but a combination
of the three
– Ideas about what is equitable or inequitable differ between and
even for the same individual, depending on the situation +
forum in which they are voiced (who expressed to, who with)
– Claims may also change over time, being indirectly influenced
through social/economic change

4. Nam Et Phou Louey NPA, northeast Lao PDR
• Established 1993
• c.100 villages, 30,000 people border
forest area of 6,000 km2
• Shifting rice cultivation dominant
livelihood
• Boundaries formally established only c.
2008 (controlled use and total protection
zones), through consultation/ village
meeting
• Formal land use planning also run in
villages to determine zones and rules.

5. What do 3 dimensions consist of?
In study site, land tenure and use also organised around complex, informal procedures
among local people and with local institutions (not only formal decisions and meetings).
Last year I wrote to the NPA to let me grow rice or maize near the road and they said they
don’t allow anyone to do that. They said it belonged to them and we couldn’t use it. But
when someone else went and cut the trees down and planted it up they did nothing!
The NPA fined some others and we’re afraid to claim land now because we don’t have
enough money to pay fines of that amount. But those who already have big lands can
become rich, the wealthy can risk to go out and claim land as theirs and the rest of us are
stuck without.
Land within NPA even described as ‘booked’ by more powerful villagers.

6. Interrelation between 3 dimensions
EXAMPLE SUGGESTS DISTRIBUTION AND PROCEDURE DIFFICULT TO SEPARATE
And recognition? Power and wealth are also related to people’s origins and ethnic groupings:
Some people, especially Lao Loum, are richer than Khmu, because they have a lot of paddy
land and the ‘treasure’ of their parents.
 Claims people make regarding justice are commonly linked to all three dimensions
Does the example only apply to places where rules and governance are confusing?
Perhaps not: elite capture and power relations play a role in many contexts, affecting how the
benefits and costs (whether material or in terms of risk and uncertainty) are distributed.
Power relations and associated, ongoing social processes are part of decision making
procedures and play a role in determining inequities in distribution.
Were 3 dimensions intended to include such complexity?
Fraser (1998): “I propose an approach that can accommodate the complex relations between
interest and identity, economy and culture, class and status in contemporary globalizing
capitalist society.”
Fraser, Nancy (1998) : Social justice in the age of identity politics: redistribution, recognition, participation, Discussion paper // Wissenschaftszentrum
Berlin für Sozialforschung, Forschungsschwerpunkt Arbeitsmarkt und Beschäftigung, Abteilung Organisation und Beschäftigung, No. FS I 98-108

7. Indirect influences on justice
• Program of resettlement to current villages in 1980/90s. People appear to have been
overwhelmingly in favour
• NPA supported partially because it came with promises of new opportunities through
seeds/ marketing support, little of which actually materialised
• Shifting cultivation major occupation, but increasing aspirations for change. Rapid
rural change - infrastructure, cash-cropping and off-farm income increasing
• People’s claims now directed to flat productive land, often where old village situated
(within NPA, now more accessible)  Claims dynamic, influenced indirectly by social,
economic, technological, political and environmental change
• Claims to NPA land only voiced in certain situations, not in public meetings or to NPA
staff  methods of study important

8. Implications
• Perceptions of equity/justice based on more than formal decisions.
Informal procedure including social processes important
 calls for attention to social complexity
• 3 dimensions highly interrelated. Many claims have a distribution,
procedure and recognition element
• WB and justice analyses can contribute understanding towards negotiation
of NR trade-offs: What claims? why have they arisen? What
needs/aspirations/values are they related to? whose claims? what options
or alternatives might there be to address them?
• Attention to dynamics influencing claims may aid adaptive management.
 conservation does not operate in isolation to rapid rural changes
• Methodological implications - how to research equity or justice:
– Like debates in poverty + impact assessment research, equity research limited
if reduced to a set of consistent indicators.
 Mixed methods (open to the relational, political factors) should be preferred
option
– Wellbeing analyses can elicit values/ needs/ goals underpinning claims

9. Forthcoming international workshop
at UEA, Norwich, 12-13th October 2015
Ecosystem management and environmental
justice: Mapping the linkages
Call for abstracts by 31 May 2015
Keynote speakers: Neil Burgess, Tim Forsyth, Sharad Lele,
Jouni Paavola, Terre Satterfield, Bhaskar Vira
We encourage short presentations for interdisciplinary dialogue and collective
brainstorming, and explicitly invite work in progress and out-of-the box thinking.

10. Wellbeing
Agency CultureSocial
relations
Economic Human
Natural Cultural
Social
Subjective goals, wants, satisfaction
Basic needs
Values
Wellbeing
outcomes
Resources
“What they have, what they can do and what they think and feel about what they have
and can do,” (McGregor et al. 2007)