Power, progress and impoverishment: Plantations, hydropower, ecological change and community transformation in Hinboun District, Lao PDR

This report documents the contemporary ecological, social and economic transformations occurring in one village in Lao PDR’s central Khammouane province under multiple sources of development-induced displacement. Rural development policy in Laos is focused on promoting rapid rural modernisation, to be achieved through foreign direct investments in two key resource sectors: hydropower and plantations. Laos’ land reformprogram is also a key component of the changes underway in the countryside, as swidden (or shifting) upland cultivation is targeted for stabilisation and elimination.