Concessions and Leases in the Lao PDR

area data and cover 1.1 million hectares (see Figure 1).
It also includes one section on mining exploration projects,
which total roughly an additional million hectares. For
the mining exploration subsector, the inventory data was
checked and completed with the latest available data provided
by the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM 2010).
For the spatial analysis of the context of existing land deals in
the Lao PDR (presented in chapter 3), only the deals for which
geographic location was encoded in the inventory could be
used. Of the 2,642 deals in the inventory, spatially referenced
data was available for only 1,258 projects (48%
of all projects) covering 587,564 hectares. Consequently,
the results of chapter 3 only include 53% of the entire area
documented in the inventory, a fact which must be considered
when interpreting the results of this chapter. In case the
spatial reference of a concession or land lease was only represented
by a GPS point (and not as a whole digitized polygon
of the granted area), the respective GPS point was buffered
to produce a circular area which corresponds to the total
area granted as indicated in the inventory.
The following data was used in chapter 3 in conjunction with
the above mentioned spatially referenced shares of inventory
data to provide some insight into the contexts of land deals:
1) For the socioeconomic data, the Population and Housing
Census of 2005 (MPI/DoS, 2005), available at www.decide.la,
as well as the Lao Expenditure and Consumption Survey
(LECS) III (MPI/DoS, 2003) for poverty estimates based on the
study done by Epprecht et al. (2008) were used. Though these
poverty estimates are years old, they remain the most current
figures measuring national trends at the village scale.
2) Accessibility is expressed in terms of travel time to district
capitals, and estimations were elaborated using a cost distance
model based on Messerli et al. (2008). Travel time was estimated
assuming access to the best means of available transport (i.e.
a car on a main road, on foot where there are only footpaths
or no track at all), and taking into account road type and
quality, waterways and bodies of water, slope, and land cover.
3) Forest (management) categories are based on Department
of Forestry specifications (MAF/DoF 2011).
4) The land cover data is based on the National Forest Cover
Inventory done by the DoF’s Forest Inventory and Planning
Division (MAF/FIPD, 2002). While this dataset currently contains
several weaknesses and inconsistencies in quality, it is the
only official data available on land cover.
The spatial intersection of land deals and socioeconomic data
was done using the village polygons geometry developed by
Messerli et al. (2008). Village polygons are an approximation
of village territories based on accessibility. The borders between
villages are delineated at the point where the modeled travel
time to the neighbouring to each village is equal. The socioeconomic
attributes of areas under investment were estimated
by combining the socioeconomic data associated with all
villages whose polygons overlap with investment polygons.
As a result, the inclusion of a village in the analysis does not
imply that the village settlement itself or the entire village
polygon is within the area under investment, but rather that
the village polygon at least intersects the investment polygon.
Figure 1 provides an overview on which data is used for what
chapter and type of analysis.
Figure 1: Availability of Area and Spatially Referenced Data
Area Data
Available
Unavailable
Spatially Referenced Data
Available
Unavailable
A
1,258 Deals
587,564 ha
C
1,092 Deals
511,970 ha
B
N/A
D
292 Deals
Chapter 2 Analysis: All Data Included
Chapter 3 Analysis: A
Maps: A
Data Average Area Calculations: A and C
All Data
2,642 Deals
1,099,534 ha
INTRODUCTION
17