Consolidating Post Conflict Development: Unexploded Ordnance and the Legacy of the Conflict in Laos

Over thirty-four years since the 1960-1975 Second Indochina War, Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) continues to inhibit a multitude of development priorities in Laos. One of only three remaining Least Developed Countries in Southeast Asia, greater understanding of the socio-economic effects of UXO is crucial to the development of Laos. Drawing on three weeks of field work in June 2009, primarily composed of semi-structured interviews, non-participant observation and literature analysis, this thesis examines the effects of UXO alongside an analysis of how existing responses to UXO contamination in Laos may be improved. Furthermore, it is argued in this thesis that discrepancies over the perceived seriousness of UXO contamination exist between humanitarian operators and those who lived in contaminated districts. In examining the effects of UXO contamination on the consolidation of post-conflict development, the analysis offered highlights the need for greater understanding of this legacy of war within post-conflict human development theories

Economic progress brings new challenges in Laos

[Extract] It was a milestone year for Laos in 2021. The ruling Lao Peoples’ Revolutionary Party held its 11th Congress, finally realised its long-held aspiration to graduate from Least Developed Country status, and released a draft of the country’s ninth National Socio-Economic Development Plan. Laos also joined the newly ratified Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), commenced operations on the highly controversial Kunming to Vientiane high-speed railway, and the leadership duo of President Thongloun Sisoulith and Prime Minister Phankham Viphavanh undertook some much-needed action on political corruption

Laos in limbo heading into 2023

[Extract] Laos experienced compounding social and economic pressures in 2022. The headline news story of the year was the country’s dire external debt. 2022 was also significant as it marked the 10th anniversary of the enforced disappearance of Sombath Somphone — a community development worker who provided successful alternatives to the econocentric development agenda that underpins Laos’s debt crisis

BRI as cognitive empire: Epistemic Violence, ethnonationalism and alternative imaginaries in Zomian highlands

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has become the lodestar of Beijing’s efforts to increase its global political and economic influence. This article interrogates BRI discourse, arguing that the normative adoption of BRI narratives as a means for making sense of connectivity’s between China and other places risks producing new forms of epistemic violence against subaltern populations. The empirical focus of this paper is on China-Laos relations, and the epistemic positioning of highland ethnic minority groups in northern Laos. This context offers a valuable case study for examining BRI discourse due to: the profound effects of Chinese investment in Laos; the geostrategic importance of Laos as a BRI ‘gateway’ between China and Southeast Asia; the deep histories of ethnic minority engagements across China and Laos; and the limited extant research on both China-Laos relations and the more localized effects of Chinese actors within the highland border regions

Can the land of a million elephants survive the belt and road?

If current trajectories continue there will be no elephants left in Laos by the year 2030. In just 12 years, we could see the complete eradication of elephants from a country that once was known as “the land of a million elephants” (Lan Xang). So how did we reach this crisis point? What are the most daunting challenges for the future? And can Laos’ elephant population survive the advancement of the BRI

Corridors of Connectivity and Infrastructural Land Grabbing in Laos

In this chapter we argue that megaprojects are a critical feature and technology of global land grabbing within the current infrastructure boom. We contribute a land-oriented perspective to the turn towards infrastructure within the social sciences by studying the role of large infrastructure and SEZs in land grabbing. We suggest that the extant land grab literature can benefit from theoretical, methodological, and empirical attention to the effects of infrastructure on land, land governance, and dispossession. The chapter looks to the Laos-China Economic Corridor (LCEC) as a case to consider how the corridor model and related megaprojects of capital accumulation are designed to territorialize. By examining specific cases within the LCEC, we discuss and illustrate how megaprojects contribute to land grabbing and to what effect. We conclude with suggestions on how to expand this research agenda

The Routledge Handbook of Global Development

This Handbook provides a comprehensive analysis of some of the world’s most pressing global development challenges – including how they may be better understood and addressed through innovative practices and approaches to learning and teaching. Featuring 61 contributions from leading and emerging academics and practitioners, this multidisciplinary volume is organized into five thematic parts exploring: changes in global development financing, ideologies, norms and partnerships; interrelationships between development, natural environments and inequality; shifts in critical development challenges, and; new possibilities for positive change. Collectively, the handbook demonstrates that global development challenges are becoming increasingly complex and multi-faceted and are to be found in the Global ‘North’ as much as the ‘South’. It draws attention to structural inequality and disadvantage alongside possibilities for positive change. The Handbook will serve as a valuable resource for students and scholars across multiple disciplines including Development Studies, Anthropology, Geography, Global Studies, Indigenous and Postcolonial Studies, Political Science, and Urban Studies

Introduction

This chapter provides the introduction to the Handbook. It provides a broad overview of global development. It notes that while progress has been made on some development challenges, this progress has been uneven, and has been accompanied by the emergence of new challenges. Following this, it makes a case for the shift from international to global development, and then outlines the key contributions made by this Handbook. The effort to provide pedagogical insights is stated

“We are not stray leaves blowing about in the wind”: exploring the impact of Family Wellbeing empowerment research, 1998–2021

Background: An Aboriginal-developed empowerment and social and emotional wellbeing program, known as Family Wellbeing (FWB), has been found to strengthen the protective factors that help Indigenous Australians to deal with the legacy of colonisation and intergenerational trauma. This article reviews the research that has accompanied the implementation of the program, over a 23 year period. The aim is to assess the long-term impact of FWB research and identify the key enablers of research impact and the limitations of the impact assessment exercise. This will inform more comprehensive monitoring of research impact into the future. Methods: To assess impact, the study took an implementation science approach, incorporating theory of change and service utilisation frameworks, to create a logic model underpinned by Indigenous research principles. A research impact narrative was developed based on mixed methods analysis of publicly available data on: 1) FWB program participation; 2) research program funding; 3) program outcome evaluation (nine studies); and 4) accounts of research utilisation (seven studies). Results: Starting from a need for research on empowerment identified by research users, an investment of $2.3 million in research activities over 23 years produced a range of research outputs that evidenced social and emotional wellbeing benefits arising from participation in the FWB program. Accounts of research utilisation confirmed the role of research outputs in educating participants about the program, and thus, facilitating more demand (and funding acquisition) for FWB. Overall research contributed to 5,405 recorded participants accessing the intervention. The key enablers of research impact were; 1) the research was user- and community-driven; 2) a long-term mutually beneficial partnership between research users and researchers; 3) the creation of a body of knowledge that demonstrated the impact of the FWB intervention via different research methods; 4) the universality of the FWB approach which led to widespread application. Conclusions: The FWB research impact exercise reinforced the view that assessing research impact is best approached as a “wicked problem” for which there are no easy fixes. It requires flexible, open-ended, collaborative learning-by-doing approaches to build the evidence base over time. Steps and approaches that research groups might take to build the research impact knowledge base within their disciplines are discussed

Shifting boundaries of development and activism: the case of Sombath Somphone

In December 2012, Sombath Somphone was abducted at a police checkpoint in Vientiane, Laos. The cause for Sombath’s enforced disappearance may never be confirmed, but many believe it lies in his co-convening of the 2012 Asia–Europe Meeting People’s Forum (AEPF). During this event, citizens shared stories with the international community of forced displacement and loss of livelihoods resulting from large-scale land concessions to foreign investors. As co-convenor of the Forum, Sombath may have been considered as orchestrating an event that was deemed to have brought embarrassment to Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP) and threatened elite capture. Enforced disappearances – when a person is abducted by or with the acquiescence of a state and there is a refusal to acknowledge the person’s whereabouts – are not uncommon in Southeast Asia. What makes Sombath’s disappearance particularly significant, however, is that he had always sought to work with, rather than in opposition to, the state. As a community development worker that had many close colleagues within the Government of Laos (GoL), his disappearance raises important questions about authoritarian states and where the boundaries lie between community development work and activism. Focusing on development work that “thinks and works politically”, this chapter considers such boundaries in the context of Laos. In addition, it explores how political–economic shifts or particular events can see individuals and organisations who are working with authoritarian governments quickly “recategorised” as oppositional activists. Finally, it explores the precarious spaces that community development organisations (and workers) in Laos inhabit, and the “acceptable” and “unacceptable” actions that such organisations may undertake in the pursuit of more open and democratic societies