Lao People's Democratic Republic

Overcoming Challenges

Hydropower has been a major export in recent years, mostly to Thailand and Viet Nam.

The Lao PDR, like no other country in Southeast Asia, is landlocked. It shares borders with the PRC to the north, Viet Nam to the east, Cambodia to the south, Thailand to the west, and Myanmar to the northwest. The country serves as a "land bridge" for the subregion. The land is so rugged and mountainous that only 4% is arable. Most of the country's 236,800 km2 is rugged upland, except for the narrow floors of the river valleys. The Mekong is the most important of the rivers; about 35% of its flows originate from watersheds in the Lao PDR. It flows into the Lao PDR from Yunnan Province in the north, runs through much of the border with Thailand, and crosses the border with Cambodia in the south.

The economy of the Lao PDR is largely resource-based and its growth depends heavily on a sustainable environment. Agriculture, the largest sector, has accounted for more than half of the GDP since 1996 and employs about 85% of the labor force. Rice, maize, sugarcane, tobacco, peanut, and cotton have been leading contributors to economic growth in the past 5 years.

The country's modest economic growth has created pressure on its biological resources. Forest cover has declined over the past 50 years from 70% of the land area in 1940 to 47% in 1989. Its quality and quantity have also declined as a result of population growth, slash-and-burn cultivation, foreign demand for wild animals and products for food and traditional medicines, uncontrolled logging, excessive timber harvesting, forest fires, upland encroachment, and the effects of wartime bombing and chemical defoliation. Deforestation in turn has caused erosion and silted reservoirs, navigation channels, and irrigation systems downstream, keeping water levels low.

Deforestation is also undermining the country's rich biological diversity, which derives from the wide variations in climate, soils, and ecological inches created by the highly mountainous terrain. The World Conservation Union (IUCN) estimated that there are 1,140 species in the country, of which 319 are of national or global conservation significance. The Government has, therefore, stepped up reforestation to increase the forest cover, and is establishing 20 national biodiversity conservation areas and two corridors covering 14% of the land area. In four protected areas in the conservation areas, the Government has adopted an integrated conservation and development approach to arrest and reverse the decline in biodiversity.

Facts and Figures

Source: Greater Mekong Subregion Atlas of the Environment