Data collection for the Village Baseline Study for the Ekxang Climate-Smart Village located
in Phonhong District, Vientiane Province, Lao PDR, took place on November 19th - 21st,
2014. Three days of focus group discussions were conducted separately for men and women.
Participatory methods were used to gather information on community resources,
organizational landscapes, information networks, and the community’s vision for the future.
Men and women in Ekxang village had different point of views on their community’s
resources. Women were focused more on the conservation and increased forest land as they
are responsible for collecting the Non-Timber Forest Product. Men were more interested in
the development of agro-forestry. Regarding agriculture, men were focused on rice paddies
while the women were more focused on the smaller household vegetable gardens. There were
several changes in community resources. Forest and pasture areas were significantly
degraded due to urban development, increasing people demands, and expansion of
agricultural lands since 1980s. Infrastructures for irrigation were improved 30 years ago to
expand the irrigated area but only few households in Ekxang could benefit from it. Villagers
experience that soil fertility has declined compared to 25 years ago. There were a number of
organizations operating at the village, half of them related to food security, food crisis and
natural resource management. However, linkages is not strong the organizations. Farmer-to-farmer, mobile phone and television are main sources of information that support farmers in
their decision making. There is a high potential to develop ICT-based technologies in order to
support climate-smart farming practices to farmers. From the farmers’ perspective, their
Climate-Smart Village should be an agroforestry landscape with smart groundwater use,
smart pest management and crop diversification, and smart information services
