Anti-conservation Discourse as a Strategy of Government in Laos
Sarinda Singh, Australian National University
In contemporary Laos, local discourses surrounding conservation are remarkable in their consistently negative overtones. Conservation is anti-logging, anti-hydropower, anti-mining – that is, anti all the activities that represent the key to Laos’ development. There is an implicit assertion that conservationists want to Laos to stay a least-developed country and keep its people poor. Contemporary conservation initiatives have at times served to disenfranchise people in Laos – seen in the initial policy framework surrounding the establishment of the national protected area system in 1993. Yet the more recent focus of conservation – in policy and funding priorities – is on sustainable use and rural livelihoods. In contrast, the Lao state’s practice in the forestry sector has been anything but dedicated to poverty alleviation. It seems that the critical depiction of conservation only tells part of the story. When the view is broadened and attention also paid to the discourses that characterise local discussions of forest resources, then consistency is lost. Local perspectives assert the continued abundance of forests as well as expressing serious concerns about forest declines, the latter in a manner rather reminiscent of conservationists. In order to understand this paradox it is important to understand local worldviews. A historically embedded interpretation of forests as the inverse of civility and affluence makes it possible for declines in forest resources to be represented as a sign of improvement and development. This paper argues that the symbolic meanings associated with forests can legitimise the authority of the state and allow the state to assert that it represents its people even when it does not.
