Land use planning in Laos is an arena of power struggles between different groups. The national land use plan allocates 70% of land to forests, 4.5 million hectares to agriculture, and the rest to infrastructure. However, these allocations overlap and do not consider villages located in forest areas. The land titling program aims to give land titles to all by 2025 but it is unclear if forest-dwelling farmers will receive titles. A case study of one village's rotation schedule shows unequal access to land resources, with original settlers having more access and recent settlers having to rent land. In conclusion, land use planning is shaped by political interests and power dynamics rather than being a neutral technical process, and more indicators are

1. Land Use Planning As An
Arena of Power Struggle in
Laos
Diana Suhardiman, Oulavanh Keovilignavong, Miles Kenney-Lazar
Diana Suhardiman
Senior Researcher
International Water Management Institute
2nd Land Forum, Bangkok 28-30 May 2018

2. Land policies in Laos
• Internal Resettlement
• Land Use Planning and Land Allocation
• Turning Land into Capital

3. Land use planning processes
• National Land Master Plan
• TABI FALUPAM

4. Approaches to land use planning
• as something neutral, a-political and strictly technical
• as a function of power and contested arena of power struggles
• as processes rooted in existing power structures and
relationships

5. Draft National Land Master Plan
• 70% of forest land
• 4.5 million ha of agricultural land
• Remaining land for large infrastructure development

6. Sectoral development targets
• There is a need to unpack these targets
• Overlapping boundaries between forest and agriculture land
• Villages within the 3 forest categories

7. Overlapping agriculture and forest lands
• The government targets rapid land titling to be completed in
2025
• Can people living in the protected forest also be given land title?
• Land titling program could increase farmers’ land tenure security,
it could also reduce others’

8. Map of land use plan in Houaykong

9. Rotation schedule in Houaykong village
Zone Year Upland areas (in ha)
1 2017 188
2 2018 182
3 2019 161
4 2020 184
5 2021 249
6 2022 187
7 2023 213
Source: The Agro Biodiversity Initiative (TABI, 2018)

10. Unequal access to land 1 of 2
• Prevailing power of original settlers group
• Their perceptions of the defined land use plan

11. • Lost of additional benefits and income from informal land rental
agreement
• Khmu original settlers have access to multiple land areas
• Khmu recent settlers lack access to agricultural land and have to
rent land
Unequal access to land 2 of 2

12. Key findings 1 of 3
• Land use planning has been presented as a technical approach to
solve a political problem pertaining to land use allocation across
scales
• Actors and institutions shape the plan in relation to their
interests, strategies and access to resources

13. • Land use planning as a tool to bridge policy and institutional
divides in land management
• Direct participation in land use planning processes does not
guarantee the plan’s actual significance
Key findings 2 of 3

14. • The need to unpack key assumptions behind the defined
development targets
• The need to develop key indicators for land tenure security and
food security beyond area-based agriculture development
Key findings 3 of 3

15. Thank you
D.Suhardiman@cgiar.org
All photos by Oulavanh Keovilignavong
Background maps by Nikolai Sindorf