Governing Communal Land in the Lao PDR

• Ethnic minorities and indigenous people

Communally used land and resources comprise a critically important dimension of rural livelihoods in the Lao Peoples Democratic Republic (Lao PDR). Communal lands provide many benefits to villages, such as ecosystem services, subsistence food and resources, forest and agricultural products that can be sold for income, and spaces for the performance of religious rites. Communal land includes many different types of land, such as agricultural lands, forest areas, agroforestry spaces, grazing lands, sacred forests, and burial grounds. Rural people use lands communally to conduct a wide range of important activities, such as to plant rice and vegetables in swidden agricultural systems, collect edible and medicinal non-timber forest products (NTFPs), hunt and fish, collect firewood, cut timber for house construction, and conduct religious ceremonies.

Creative Commons Attribution

Resources

PDF

Governing Communal Land in the Lao PDR

Download

Document type	Reports, journal articles, and research papers (including theses and dissertations)
Publication date	2017.0
Publisher	Department of Agricultural Land Management, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry
Copyright	Yes
License	Creative Commons Attribution
Author (individual)	Miles Kenney-Lazar
Language	English
Date modified	6 Dec 2019