Policies, Strategies, Processes and Frameworks for Scaling Up Sustainable Land Management in Lao PDR

Sustainable Land Management (SLM) is the use and management of land resources such as soil, water, animals and plants in order for stakeholders to produce goods to meet changing human needs, while at the same time ensuring the long-term productive potential of these resources and the maintenance of environmental functions. Land degradation is caused by inappropriate land management and consequently this leads to a loss of the land's productivity, hence resulting in a decline of landscape functions such as forest depletion, agricultural productivity, a loss of biodiversity, as well as impacting people's livelihoods. In Lao PDR, there are a number of policy instruments, such as strategies and planning processes, incentive frameworks as wel as finance mechanisms operating at the national, sub-national and local levels. All of these support SLM and include the Revised Land Law, the National Land Master Plan, the National Land Policy, the Agricultural Law, the Forest Law and the Environmental Protection Law. The design and coordination of effective land management policies and programs are needed in order to scale up and scale out SLM. It is necessary to establish a decision support framework that includes the knowledge, values, and opinions of those affected by the issues together with those of scientific experts and decision makers. In this way SLM becomes a pathway for transition to broad development which can de adopted by industries as well as smallholder farmers.

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