Land and Forest Tenure in Laos: Baseline Overview 2016 with Options for Community Participation in Forest Management

This analytical document seeks to provide a common basis for ongoing policy discussions in the land and forest sectors. Its goal is thus to find a middle ground between overly simplistic descriptions of tenure security, such as those based only on formal status, and the widely held but difficult-to-use acknowledgment that “it’s complicated.” This review describes seven sets of processes that influence this context, and therefore shape land and forest tenure in contemporary Laos. These include:

1. Macro-scale forest management,
2. Village-scale zoning and land-use planning,
3. Large-scale investment and infrastructure,
4. Individual land titling,
5. Smallholder cash cropping and contract farming,
6. Community-oriented forestry including but not limited to REDD+, and
7. Community-scale land titling and other forms of tenure recognition.