Laos in Transit from Landlocked to Land-linked

BANGKOK, Jul 19 - Regional development plans in the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) are grounded in the building of an extensive infrastructural structure that integrates all its countries into an unique ”growth area”. A network of transnational roads and, to a lesser extent, rail routes that links transport systems, power grids and markets across and beyond the sub-region is meant to facilitate fuller participation of GMS countries in the regional and global economy by enhancing their competitiveness as an economic bloc.

So-called ‘economic corridors’ functioning as ‘nodes of economic activity’ are expected to reduce transportation costs and stimulate cross-border trade and investments among GMS countries, while expanding their access to the larger markets of China, India and other South-east Asian countries. Currently, three economic corridors (North-South, East-West, and Southern Economic Corridors) and a number of alternative routes linking major cities and ports across the sub-region are being built.

At the hub of this emerging web of roadways lies Laos, one of the poorest countries in the GMS, which hopes to exploit its central location in the sub-region to foster much needed trade and investments. Strongly committed to integration in the regional and global trade system, the Lao government has its eye on turning Laos "from a landlocked to a land-linked country" through the corridors crossing its territory.

A key component in this transformative vision is the upgrading of Asian Highways (AH) 3 as part of the North-South Economic Corridor (NSEC). The 1,200-km road -- a caravan trail in the 19th century that has fallen to disuse in more recent times -- will make of Laos, via Luang Namtha and Chiang Khong, a transit route between Kunming in the southern part of China, and Chiang Rai in northern Thailand. Besides providing GMS countries with access to a huge intra-regional market by connecting China to South-east Asia, AH3 is expected to contribute to Laos' growth. As stated in official project documents, AH3 will link two remote provinces of Laos to fast- growing economies in the sub-region and "help reduce poverty by providing access to markets, extension services, income and employment opportunities, thus enhancing development potential".

PROMISED GAINS, FEARED COSTS

The promised gains may, however, prove elusive to Laos and some of its people.

Recent headlines on the signing of a regional agreement to build the AH3's bridge on the Lao-Thai border over the Mekong River overemphasised the China-Thailand connection ("Bangkok to be linked by road to China soon.") -- as if Laos was not in between: an unintended reminder, perhaps, that pre-existing structural asymmetries may result in inequitable distribution of benefits and costs among the concerned countries. The largest portion of trade profits from AH3 may in the end accrue to the stronger economies of China and Thailand, and Laos, as a transit country, may not only gain less, but become disproportionately burdened with the social and environmental impacts. This, in spite of compensation mechanisms in the form of transit fee collection and concessional loans set up as safeguard measures.

Not only countries, but also groups, may be affected differently by road development.

AH3 in Laos traverses a mountainous, predominantly ethnic, area characterised by severe poverty. Still, there are significant gaps between the extremely poor ‘highland’ minorities and the better-off ‘lowland’ communities, the degree of their poverty correlating with degree of benefit from improved transportation. It is the poorest communities -- mainly non-Tai villages far from the towns of Namtha and Houayxay – that encounter the greatest challenges, being precluded from new market opportunities by socio-cultural and financial constraints. In the competitive, commercial environment unleashed by the highways, they are posed to lose out to better-equipped newcomers and more privileged local groups, while experiencing a loss of habitat and livelihoods that threaten their very existence.

One of the most direct impacts of road construction is the resettlement of communities to make way for it. For AH3, an Asian Development Bank report estimated in 2002 that some 2,500 people or 502 households may have to lose houses, rice granaries, small shops and land. Resettlement plans have been carefully drafted, but past experiences warn that they may not be sufficient to ensure adequate compensation as agreed-upon standards are rarely applied, regulation on land tenure and titling is unclear, and malpractice in disbursements is rampant.

Affected households too often become worse off in the process, with assigned locations lacking services and being smaller in size and with land for less fertile than in the original places. Displacement also occurs with land grabbing – a growing phenomena resulting from speculation for growing value land adjacent to the road. Once resettled or displaced, communities will have to undergo dramatic changes, having to adjust to new surroundings, occupations, lifestyles, social norms and economic systems, under the prospect of an uncertain future.

TRANSFORMED LIFESTYLES

More generally, road and other infrastructure projects revolutionise the lives of upland ethnic communities, enticing them to move down and abandon subsistence agriculture for market-based activities. This trend has been well documented in the Sing and Long districts of the same Luang Namtha province crossed by AH3 as a compounded effect of the construction of Route 17B and national development policies. The study, led by Rattanavong and Lyttleton, explains how the creation of "focal zones" for highland communities in lower locations and prohibitions to grow opium have significantly altered the lifestyles of these ethnic groups. Logging, expansion of commercial cultivations, and restrictions imposed on swidden agriculture further limit the resources on which they depend, compelling them to look for alternatives along the road or in locations made less distant by the road, notwithstanding the many risks awaiting them.

With the progression of AH3, this trend is expected to accelerate. The road requires slope cutting and will likely facilitate mechanical logging and expansion of plantations. In turn, the habitat of highland communities will be further encroached upon and destruction of watersheds will continue, reducing the viability of cultivation and livestock rearing. Deprived of traditional sources of livelihoods and disenfranchised from their cultural heritage, more and more upland people may relocate along the road, severing their exchange and kinship ties, and undergoing what Rattanavong and Lyttleton define as a "process of 'deterritorialisation' that not only requires leaving a territory but the transformation of a whole way of life".

An indication of these changes is the growing relevance of non-farming activities for ethnic communities affected by the AH3. Former cultivators now seek work in mining companies, construction projects or in other low-skilled jobs across the Mekong in Thailand. With low literacy levels, no relevant work experience and lacking bargaining power, now landless, wage-dependent, ethnic people become an under-strata in the multi-layered hierarchy of labour that is evolving around the highways, finding exploitation rather than welfare in the promised world of 'development' and 'modernity' regulated by market forces.

Besides those moving from the upper slopes, many come to the new road from outside the province and even the country, making extremely pluralist societies of relatively homogenous communities. The flows are many and diverse: retailers and traders settle in prime locations to exploit the road potential; construction companies, when from China or Thailand, often bring their own workers and establish large settlements near the road; and tourists, officials, and traders from various nationalities and ethnic groups venture in opened-up territories.

These permanent and temporary in-migration and transit flows are putting a strain on the villages in the area, taxing their carrying capacity, and requiring reallocation of resources and more complex governance systems, in a process that is often rife with economic and cultural conflicts. Increased interaction of multiple mobile and non-mobile groups and the forming of new social arrangements among them may also contribute to the spread of communicable diseases within and across borders. Of particular concern for AH3, as for other transnational roads in Laos, is the higher exposure of once isolated communities to HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases during road construction and thereafter, and their vulnerability to unsafe sexual relations, of both a casual and commercial nature, with newcomers brought by the road project.

As the upgrading of AH3 continues, the mixed blessings of development will acquire more defined contours, allowing for a better assessment of the impacts of the road. Whether the promised benefits of poverty reduction and better access to basic social services, electricity and water, information and communication for local populations will compensate for their eventual losses remains an open question. For now, the little we know seems to indicate that greater inter-interaction and access to market opportunities stemming from the road project, while of aggregate value for the sub-region, will inevitably have distressing consequences for those countries and groups already in a disadvantaged position. Justified fears that ethnic communities will lose their cultural identity and social cohesion, without even being able to gain financial security in return, make one wonder: Will Laos' weakest populations bear the costs of its becoming a land-linked country? Will AH3 become a conduit of vulnerability rather than prosperity for those most in need?

(This column is adapted from the author's contribution to an article commissioned by the Blue Moon Foundation and co-written with Charles Mehl and Anthony Zola (2007).)

Any views or opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the organisations she is or has been associated with.

*Rosalia Sciortino, better known as Lia, is a cultural anthropologist and development sociologist by training who is currently Associate Professor at the Institute for Population and Social Research, Mahidol University, Thailand. Before that, she was regional director of the Rockefeller Foundation in Thailand, overseeing grant-making activities in South-east Asia with a special focus on regional integration in the Greater Mekong Sub-region. She has also worked with the Ford Foundation in Indonesia and the Philippines, and has published widely on development issues. A native of Italy, she has lived in Asia for nearly two decades.