This doctoral dissertation research project will examine how the land access and rural livelihood impacts of multinational forestry plantation investments in the developing world are governed as a result of political relationships, struggles, and negotiations among government agencies, plantation companies, and peasant farming communities. The research project is situated within the theoretical framework of environmental governance, which conceptualizes the institutional, regulatory and the informal processes through which natural resources are used and managed. Recent, large-scale plantation forestry investments across the developing world have induced detrimental livelihood transformations, dispossessing peasants of their land and resources with minimal compensation while providing infrequent and low-wage employment. Some communities have been able to retain autonomy over village territory in the face of such investments, however, or they have successfully made demands for higher compensation and wage rates. This doctoral dissertation research project seeks to assess how and why some communities assert greater control over the governance of plantation investments than others. The doctoral student will conduct an analysis of these dynamics in Laos, a Southeast Asian socialist country with an increasingly market-oriented economy. Over the past decade, the Lao government has opened the economy to foreign plantation investors, who have acquired more than 20 percent of the country's agricultural land. The student will conduct fieldwork in southern Laos, examining plantation development practices of two firms in six villages. He will collect spatial data (aerial photographs, plantation maps, land use maps), collect archival documents (concession agreements, survey reports), and conduct semi-structured interviews with government officials, plantation managers, village chiefs, and village households.
This project will build on the environmental governance framework by examining how the land access and livelihood impacts of large-scale plantation investments are governed in socialist, post-socialist, authoritarian, and/or developing country contexts where the state plays a dominant role in land and resource management. The project will extend this theoretical approach by investigating how social resistance shapes resource investment governance in authoritarian contexts that do not have histories of outright social protest. The project will have beneficial impacts by enhancing understanding of the policies and projects that can be devised and implemented to improve the governance of large-scale plantation investments in Laos and throughout the developing world in ways that enable farming communities to gain maximum benefits by maintaining control over village territory. Project results will be useful for government offices, development agencies, and non-governmental organizations working on land issues in Laos and in other developing nations. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this project will provide support to enable a promising student to establish an independent research career.
