Western Alternative Development and Chinese Development

Abstract

This chapter, Western alternative development and Chinese development, presents two strategic planning proposals that are generated from frictions between rural development as construed by western aid agencies and forms of Chinese aid, especially regarding the speed of development and their cache of neoliberal ideologies. These programs dominated northern Laos in the 1990s and 2000s and have resulted in a patchwork landscape of development assistance and foreign investment. One featured strategic planning proposal references these earlier programs in Laos’s Muang Sing valley to help guide a strategy for basin-scale agricultural pollution remediation and increased water security, while the other proposal traces the legacies of opium’s replacement, primarily via Chinese investment, with rubber in northern Laos and the how the resultant patchwork of rubber, subsistence and cash crops, and ethnic diversity might deal with increasing rural–urban migration and significant associated strain on the rural agricultural labor force. These proposals exhibit the difficult balancing act between participating in the language and valuation metrics of development but with design concepts and approaches that actively resist easy constitution or reduction. The emphasis of alternative development on livelihood security, environmental sustainability and social development may be commendable, but the building of social capital takes time.

1 Introduction

Drawing from discourse on the “sustainable development paradigm” and “frontier resourcification” examined in Chap. 4, this chapter presents two strategic planning proposals that are generated from frictions between rural development as construed by western aid agencies and forms of Chinese aid and development, especially regarding the speed of development and their cache of neoliberal ideologies. This is not about Chinese versus Western but recognizing the legacy and patchwork of development assistance, forces dominating northern Laos in the 1990s and 2000s, in these landscapes to guide intervention today.

The UN General Assembly (1998) defined alternative development as the prevention and elimination of narcotics through rural development “in the context of sustained national growth and sustainable development … recognizing the particular sociocultural characteristics of the target communities and groups.” Alternative development project components frequently include sustainable natural resource management, livelihood diversification (with a focus on food security and expanding market access), road and water infrastructure provision, health and education facilities and programs. These projects also hold some emancipatory ideals of the sustainable development paradigm, including capacity-building for village governance, explicitly targeting (and defining) vulnerable subpopulations, and recognizing opium cultivation as a symptom of poverty (rather than a cause) stemming from a reduction in land available for shifting cultivation (Cohen, 2009).

In Muang Sing, alternative development projects from the mid-1990s through 2010 were largely adapted from the German Technical Cooperation Agency (GTZ) and Norwegian Church Aid’s (NCA) successful highland development programs in northern Thailand from the 1980s and 1990s. However, when paired with the higher speeds of implementation deemed necessary for opium eradication and substantially less advanced infrastructure in Laos, these programs were far less successful. Although GTZ had highlighted the necessity of a “cautious promotion” of para rubber, promoting rubber agroforestry to reduce soil erosion and preserve some biodiversity, they also recommended monitoring by local government and master contracts to protect villages interests from foreign investors, on top of clear demarcation of village boundaries, land titling, and agricultural diversification (Cohen, 2009, p. 428). This long list of regulatory and land tenure-related issues underscores the substantial economic forces and weakness of Laos’s development context. Today these landscapes are dominated not only be rubber but cash crop expansion (Figs. 1 and 2), which has led to a cumulative reduction in available ground and surface water resources necessitating the construction of new irrigation and water supply infrastructure (Figs. 3 and 4).

The two strategic planning proposals included in this chapter are: Low-labor landscapes: An Agricultural response to short-term construction employment on the China-Laos Railway; and Water risk and responsibility: A Political-chemical land genealogy for the Muang Sing Valley, Laos. While these two proposals are not dealing with alternative development by its definition, the proposal “Water Risk and Sustainability” assembles the legacies of alternative development programs in the Muang Sing valley to help guide a strategy for basin-scale agricultural pollution remediation and increased water security. “Low-labor landscapes” traces the legacies of opium’s replacement, primarily via Chinese investment, with rubber in northern Laos and the how the resultant patchwork of rubber, subsistence and cash crops, and ethnic diversity might deal with increasing rural–urban migration and significant associated strain on the rural agricultural labor force. As geographer Barney (2009) surmised in his writing on northern Laos, which we reviewed in Chap. 4, such legacies and mosaics create a “patchwork” (p. 147) landscape or frontier of resource enclosures—“fragmented and overlapping mosaics” that result in migrations and new economies (p. 152). These two proposals proactively reconstruct this patchwork or mosaic as both narrative and site of strategy development and preliminary testing, i.e., scenario-building.

Cohen contrasts Western-style “alternative development” with Chinese “opium replacement” programs in northwestern Laos’s Muang Sing valley. These Chinese programs were effectively foreign investment, largely in rubber (Figs. 5 and 6), carrying different moral forces of “scientific rationality, technical competence and entrepreneurial spirit” characteristic of 1950s Western modernization theory (Cohen, 2009, p. 429) that were later rejected in the Alternative Technology Movement and post-development theory. Rubber had been promoted by provincial authorities to households in Yunnan since the mid-1980s. Large-scale rubber cultivation spread in northern Laos with the emergence of China as the world’s largest rubber market, declining domestic rubber yields, and China’s own restrictions on rubber cultivation across the border in Xishuangbanna due to environmental degradation from rubber monocultures, which resulted in reduced biodiversity, reduced food security, and large-scale hydrological and erosion impacts (Shi, 2008).

Farmers in northern Laos aspired for “Chinese modernity,” while the Akha ethnic group used familial and patronage connections with clans in Yunnan for capital, technical assistance, saplings and market access (Diana, 2007 as cited in Cohen, 2009). The proposal “Low labor landscapes” recognizes these cross-border clan connections, in addition to the specific spiritual and seasonal calendars of different ethnic groups in the study region. Cohen further describes how socioeconomic inequalities were aggravated and reproduced in household investment startups and access to productive land, in addition to Laos’s limited credit, weak regulation and poor enforcement mechanisms. Both strategic planning proposals in this chapter not only recognize diverse publics but actively construct them. In “Water risk and sustainability,” this construction is not only demographic but land-based, constructing a land genealogy from satellite imagery, with speculation on a diversity landholder socio-economic conditions and potentials of localized pollution accumulation in the landscape from herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers.

In his review of the World Bank and the emergence of the environmental state, Goldman emphasizes the creation of a hegemonic discourse of “authoritative green knowledge” rooted in neoliberal market ideologies—a knowledge regime of land valuation and classification that replaces cultural relations and ecological complexity with biodiversity conservation, sustainable forestry and watershed management development programs (Goldman, 2001, p. 194, 2005). The two proposals featured next exhibit the difficult balancing act between participating in the language and valuation metrics of development but with design concepts and approaches that actively resist easy constitution or reduction. The emphasis of alternative development on livelihood security, environmental sustainability and social development may be commendable, but the building of social capital takes time. Critical, landscape-oriented planning is necessary, especially as road and dam-building, resettlement programs, and large-scale agroindustry continue apace (Figs. 7 and 8).

Fig. 1

The boom in cash crops is increasing social disparities and environmental degradation in northern Laos. This photograph was taken at an experimental banana plantation, leased to a Chinese operator from a Lao landowner, testing new commercial species after a virus invaded banana crops in the Muang Sing Valley 2 years earlier. Photo by Brian Cheang (March, 2019)

Fig. 2

Amid controversy over chemicals reported to be causing deaths and illnesses among plantation workers, the government of Laos enforced a ban on the granting of new concessions for banana plantations in 2016. This photograph shows an experimental banana plantation and its surrounding rice fields in the Muang Sing Valley in the Golden Triangle. Photo by Xiaoxuan Lu (March, 2019)

Fig. 3

A worker constructs a Vietnamese-funded irrigation dam within Nam Ha National Protected Area. Photo by Brian Cheang (March, 2019)

Fig. 4

Cash crop farms producing watermelon, bananas, and other export produce in the Muang Sing Valley will lease water to pay off the dam’s investment. While the dam is a top-down investment in water security for the valley, water equity remains missing for many small-to-medium land holders focused on rice cultivate in the valley, as water-hungry crops deplete the water table. Photo by Xiaoxuan Lu (March, 2019)

Fig. 5

The rubber boom in northern Laos is the co-production of increased demand for latex in China and the Laos government’s land-use policy related to the stabilization and ultimate eradication of shifting cultivation. Acting as “water pumps,” rubber plantations are frequently placed on lands that are important for biodiversity conservation and ecological functions, inducing adverse effects on the regional landscape. This photograph shows rubber tapping at Nam Deang Tay Village along Route 3. Photo by Ashley Scott Kelly (March, 2019)

Fig. 6

Nam Deang Tay Village, located within a half-hour drive of Boten Special Economic Zone along a planned “super-highway” to Thailand, contains several minority groups resettled here during the Laos government’s land reallocation campaigns over the last three decades. Photo by Xiaoxuan Lu (March, 2019)

Fig. 7

Nam Tha River, a major tributary of the Mekong River, approximately two months before completion of a Chinese-funded hydropower dam 55 km downstream. This photograph shows: (1) an existing village (left) that will be inundated; (2) a newly constructed resettlement village (top-right) atop a ridge; and (3) a road (center) newly cut into the hillside, constructed above the soon-to-be reservoir draw-down zone. Photo by Jane Li Aijing (March, 2018)

Fig. 8

Nam Tha River hydropower dam, 97% complete, which will export the majority of its generated electricity to Thailand. Photo by Ashley Scott Kelly (March, 2018)

2 Low-Labor Landscapes: An Agricultural Response to Short-Term Construction Employment on the China-Laos Railway

Landscapes surrounding the Boten Special Economic Zone (SEZ) on the Laos-China border are undergoing transformation. Immediately south of Boten SEZ, a “smart” logistics hub is proposed by Thailand-headquartered Amata corporation. Amata signed concessions in 2018 for lands totaling 7,000 hectares near Nateuy village (Radio Free Asia, 2019b) at the intersection of Route 13, Laos’s primary north–south highway, and Route 3, which is planned for upgrading into a four-lane highway to Thailand (Dwyer, 2020). While these developments have not removed large numbers of people from their lands, agricultural systems already unseated by two decades of large-scale rubber plantations and cash crops via Chinese contract farming need increased resiliency (Fig. 9). Dependency on the rubber market, which has weakened considerably in recent years, has led to shrinking subsistence rice production and food security problems (Baird, 2011). Construction jobs for the China-Laos railway, as well as illicit industries tied to Boten’s development, are changing agricultural labor availability.¹ While these new developments create short-term job opportunities for the surrounding local population, further labor diversification away from the agricultural sector will likely lead to permanent loss of cultivated land and the indigenous knowledge embedded in it (Fig. 10). This project speculates how labor diversification and an ensuing agricultural labor shortage, especially one with variable annual and seasonal labor availability, may affect communities along the China-Laos Railway.

Timelines are constructed showing how the four dominant major agricultural practices are affected by construction of the railway and future related industrial developments (Fig. 11). These agricultural systems, including paddy rice, upland rice, rubber plantations, and non-timber forest products (NTFP), react differently, both ecologically and temporally, to labor shortages, which are themselves annually and seasonally variable. For instance, while fallow periods in upload rice are a normal part of the agricultural cycle, recently neglected fallow paddy rice can lead to uncontrolled weed invasion. Unmanaged rubber plantations still produce yield, although a slightly diminished one. These limited impacts can be mitigated if lasting only a short duration. However, owing to industrial developments in and around the planned Nateuy logistics hub, a sustained labor deficit would require substantial labor to reestablishment agricultural production, likely beyond what villages can provide or sustain. Additionally, households would need to contend with Laos’s fallow land law, which stipulates that land can be resumed by the state if left fallow for more than 3 years (Lund, 2011).

This project develops scenarios and strategies for labor shortages, depopulation, decreasing subsistence, and cash crop market fluctuations together with demographics and traditional agricultural knowledge in villages surrounding Nateuy. Strategies are proposed to increase agricultural and livelihood resilience under changes in village labor availability, including suggesting crops that require less labor compared to existing produce and crops requiring preparation and harvesting but with minimal management (Figs. 12, 13 and 14). When expecting an agricultural labor deficit, high-return cardamom should be established in upland areas, as it requires one-third the labor of upland rice, takes 3 years to mature, and can be harvested will relatively low manpower. Excess labor can then focus on alternative low-labor crops such as maize. Maize fields can return to paddy rice as village labor becomes available and stabilizes. For those villages with high market-dependence from their rubber plantations but insufficient subsistence production, they may temporarily plant cash crops such as sugarcane in their paddy fields or leave these fields fallow with the intent to practice clean or organic farming in the future. For villages with high market-dependence and sufficient food production, they may adapt to a labor deficit by converting rice fields into alternative diversified cash crops such as orchards requiring three-years intensive preparation, followed by low maintenance with lasting yields for 20 years or longer and lower risk to market fluctuations than rubber.

These strategies are then modified based on cultural practices. The surrounding population consists predominantly of Hmong, Khmuic, and Mien ethnic groups (Fig. 15) (Epprecht et al., 2018). The Hmong maintain a strong clan system that enables high economic security and resource and knowledge access. This may facilitate greater market access and resilience in testing of new species or agricultural techniques. The Khmuic have strong traditional rituals tied to the agricultural calendars and ecological cycles of upland rice farming. The Mien tend a wide range of species in their home gardens, which range from food production to indigenous cultural and medicinal usage (Fig. 16). Recognizing that changes in agricultural practices at any scale are difficult to encourage, these agricultural strategies should be read as an approach to development; on-the-ground research is necessary to assess actual viability.

The design proposal “Low-labor landscapes: An Agricultural response to short-term construction employment on the China-Laos Railway” and accompanying illustrations were developed by Brian Cheang during the course Studio Laos: Strategic Landscape Planning for the Greater Mekong.

Fig. 9

Dominant village agricultural land uses, paddy and upland rice and rubber plantations, superimposed with recent speculative industrial development and potential labor flows from surrounding villages

Fig. 10

Food security, as an outcome of production and available arable lands, and market dependency trajectories for villages in the study region

Fig. 11

Ecological consequences of labor deficits of various durations for the study region’s dominant agricultural systems, including paddy and upland rice, rubber plantations, and non-timber forest products

Fig. 12

Path dependencies for choosing alternative crops as a response to agricultural labor deficits

Fig. 13

Three general scenarios and strategies for resiliency against labor shortages, depopulation, decreasing subsistence, and cash crop market fluctuations

Fig. 14

Parallel trajectories of development at three sites highlighting key principles of diversification, food security, and alternative value systems

Fig. 15

Unique opportunities in Hmong, Mien, and Khmuic ethnic groups’ agricultural practices

Fig. 16

Typological distribution of land uses and communities as a function of food security, market dependence, ethnic identity and practices, and potential alternative development strategies

3 Water Risk and Responsibility: A Political-Chemical Land Genealogy for the Muang Sing Valley, Laos

An irrigation dam was recently constructed in northwestern Laos’s Nam Ha National Protected Area along Route 17, which connects Luang Namtha’s provincial capital with Muang Sing in the Golden Triangle region. During our field visit in March 2019, local civil society groups speculated that the dam was funded by a Vietnamese loan, which would be paid back through selling its water to cash crop producers in the Muang Sing valley that, given the proliferation of rubber and other cash crops since the early 2000s (Liu et al., 2016), has experienced a significant decrease in surface water flow and groundwater levels (Fig. 17). Due to its sedimentary composition, groundwater storage in the Muang Sing valley may be relatively low at 1,200 mm (Viossanges et al., 2018). Decades of cash crop expansion required more water, adding additional stress especially in the dry season. Many cash crop plantations are joint-ventures or operate under various forms of foreign-invested contract farming, predominantly with Chinese companies. Once paid off, this new supply of irrigation water has the prospect of becoming a public good to support small- and medium-scale rice farmers in the region, many of whom were resettled from the uploads during bans on shifting cultivation and opium eradication in the 1990s and 2000s (Fig. 18). Since resettlement, communities have experienced intensified water use, increased competition for land and resources, increase economic division, and decreased trust among landholders. Regardless of how much veracity that narrative holds, we consider it a useful trigger to think about environmental sustainability, water equity, and food security in the Muang Sing valley.

In January 2017, 2 years before our visit, a national ban on new banana plantations was issued in Laos due the pervasive ongoing chemical use and subsequent health impacts on workers and nearby communities (Radio Free Asia, 2019a). Years of using these chemicals, some illegal even under Laos’s relatively nascent environmental regulations, have left them accumulated in the soil and spread throughout the hydrological system. Heavy metals from fertilizers resist degradation and are persistent in the soil. Panama disease can survive up to 30 years in the soil (Stover, 1990). Production of the commercially viable Cavendish banana, accounting for around half of the global market, often requires high inputs of fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides (Goh & Marshall, 2017).

Soon after the ban was implemented, the fungal epidemic Panama disease began spreading in February 2017 through Cavendish banana plantations in Luang Namtha Province (Chittarath et al., 2018). Our visit to an experimental banana plantation, owned by a Lao landholder but contracted out to a Chinese company testing the viability of commercially alternative species, sets the context for this strategic proposal—Water risk and responsibility: A political-chemical land genealogy for the Muang Sing Valley, Laos—that organizes a series of remediation strategies to improve water quality and quantity, mainly due to high inputs of herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers, and promote water equity in access, distribution and management.

Without detailed surveys of the valley’s hydrological regime, we speculated on the local hydrology using free globally available elevation models and satellite imagery to model natural rivers, streams, and non-perennial washes and artificial irrigation canals (Fig. 19) and the proximate effects of a series of typical plantations within the valley as sources of nonpoint-source pollution (Figs. 20 and 21). Similarly, without a household or landowner survey, we assumed a range of possible ownership configurations (e.g., large- and smallholders, independent vs. contract farming) and land genealogies (i.e., crop history and pollution accumulation) based on land patterns deduced from remotely sensed imagery (Fig. 22). These yielded an array of potential producer-production typologies that were further categorized considering biophysical aspects, stakeholders’ capabilities and their capacity for risk tolerance and management. The Asian Development Bank’s (ADB, 2019) projects for establishing community watershed management in north-central Laos were used as reference. Water users’ risks are described in 13 categories across economic, political, natural, agricultural and social considerations drawn from ADB’s irrigation subsector guidance notes and criteria from the Lao Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry guidelines (Fig. 23; ADB, 2017; UNDP Lao PDR, 2012).

Four common producer-production typologies were selected to develop our strategic planning proposal, taking into account stakeholder risks and capabilities and considering their spatial proximity to other plantations, costs, capacities, and social choice (Figs. 24, 25 and 26). Proposed remediation techniques included physical, chemical and biological applications to be deployed in-situ to ensure land remains at least partly productive during implementation. These four typologies are:

Typology A: Where the plantation is foreign investment in rubber, the emphasis is on preventing chemical run-off and mitigating high water consumption. Such foreign investors generally have higher risk tolerance, more financial resources, and a larger capacity for change. They require the least technical assistance yet likely greater regulation and incentive. We propose that an independently monitored management plan should be required for agricultural pollution mitigation and remediation. Technologically, this could involve installing permeable reactive subsurface barriers between plantations and water courses to stop contaminant plumes (Typology A components of Figs. 27, 28, 29 and 30).

Typology B: Smallholders who independently grow bananas have the lowest risk tolerance and least capability for change, requiring the most technical assistance in both financial terms and technology transfer. Crop diversification, including fast-growing beans and cassava, is promoted to make livelihoods more resilient to uncertainties. These households may provide labor in return for communal irrigation water access rights. Technologically, soil chemical immobilization is recommended to limit contamination in the short term (Typology B components of Figs. 27, 28, 29 and 30).

Typology C: Smallholders alternating wet rice cultivation with contract farming have both low risk tolerance and low resilience to change. Poor irrigation water quality, nutrient loss from their paddy production systems, and contamination from contract farming have resulted in lower rice yields year-on-year. We recommend that foreign investment provide access to technologies, such as fertilizers, while smallholders provide the manpower for operation and maintenance of the remediation strategy. Between harvesting and planting cycles, chelate- and microbe-assisted phytoremediation, which translocate metals from the roots to the foliage, are effective for efficient remediation of low- to moderately contaminated soils. Wide adoption of these strategies across the valley can lead to overall increased soil productivity and reduce nonpoint source pollution (Typology C components of Figs. 27, 28, 29 and 30).

Typology D: Large-holder banana plantations implemented through contract farming have high risk tolerance and larger capabilities. High concentrations of pollutants in these contaminated soils require longer, more intensive remediation. Chemical oxidation offers efficiency although this makes the first stage of implementation costly. Such remediation should be mandated, otherwise incentives are needed to encourage alterative cash crops and diversification, with domestic market access prioritized. Technologically, these large-holders should install permeable reactive subsurface barriers between plantations and water courses to stop contaminant plumes (Typology D components of Figs. 27, 28, 29 and 30).

Remediation is both a costly and complex process to optimize across the Muang Sing valley. While this proposal makes several assumptions about the agro-economics of land and water use, it does so to draw attention to the great diversity of economic situations and site-specific risks to agricultural pollution and disease. Landholder and investor participation will likely require incentives. While foreign investors are likely least willing to participate, more independent smallholders would likely need both subsidies and technical knowledge transfer by local experts. Those engaged in contract farming may be less inclined to act given the slow but steady accumulation of contaminants in the soil. This proposal offers a detailed framework for coordinating and mitigating these complexities and for the establish sustainable long-term cooperation of diverse interests.

The design proposal “Water risk and responsibility: A political-chemical land genealogy for the Muang Sing Valley, Laos” and accompanying illustrations were developed by Vanessa Wong Nok Yiu and Sally Song Ziqi during the course Studio Laos: Strategic Landscape Planning for the Greater Mekong.

Fig. 17

Various land reallocation policies in Muang Sing in the 1990s and 2000s, many part of foreign aid-supported opium substitution programs, resettled large numbers of villages from upland areas, where they had practiced shifting agriculture, to the valley with paddy rice production. Since the early 2000s, largely Chinese foreign investment has proliferated cash crops and tree plantations throughout the valley, stressing water resources necessitating the construction of a large irrigation dam in the adjacent Nam Ha National Protected Area

Fig. 18

Timeline comparing key events in village resettlement programs, expansion of plantations, and agricultural water supply

Fig. 19

Key agricultural irrigation infrastructure components and irrigated crop species within the Muang Sing Valley

Fig. 20

Agricultural land use change, accumulation of contaminants from agricultural production, large- and smallholder land patterns, and identified producer-production typologies

Fig. 21

Main sources, types and relative significance of high water consumption and agricultural pollution transmission and accumulation between banana plantations, rubber plantations, and paddy rice

Fig. 22

Agricultural water provision and consumption across key producer-production types

Fig. 23

Large- and smallholder water users’ capabilities across the dominant cash crops grown in the Muang Sing Valley and their associated risks, as described by 13 categories of political, economic, natural, cultivation and social risks

Fig. 24

Major agro-economic policies and projects and the different land genealogies of key producer-production types

Fig. 25

Cash crop planting cycles, comparing relative investment cost, effectiveness, immediacy, and compensability for: (A) Foreign-operated rubber plantations; and (B) Smallholder banana plantations

Fig. 26

Cash crop planting cycles, comparing relative investment cost, effectiveness, immediacy, and compensability for: (C) Smallholder paddy rice alternating with cash crop contract farming; and (D) Large landowner cultivating bananas via contract farming

Fig. 27

Spatial synthesis of key factors in water usage and agricultural productivity for: (A) Foreign-operated rubber plantations; and (B) Smallholder banana plantations

Fig. 28

Spatial synthesis of key factors in water usage and agricultural productivity for: (C) Smallholder paddy rice alternating with cash crop contract farming; and (D) Large landowner cultivating bananas via contract farming

Fig. 29

Land remediation techniques and phasing strategy for: (A) Foreign-operated rubber plantations; and (B) Smallholder banana plantations

Fig. 30

Land remediation techniques and phasing strategy for: (C) Smallholder paddy rice alternating with cash crop contract farming; and (D) Large landowner cultivating bananas via contract farming