Concessions and Leases in the Lao PDR

3.5 - Land Cover Classes
The distribution of land deals across land cover classes is
central to debates over the implications of land investments
for land use planning, ecosystem services provision and the
wider balance between land productivity and sustainable
development in the Lao PDR. Due to the limited availability of
land cover classification data, however, this remains a particularly
challenging area for analysis on the national level. Not
only is capacity for data collection limited, but a special set
of challenges are faced specific to the Lao PDR and wider
monsoon Southeast Asia, where climatic conditions, complex
land use patterns and topographic effects present an obstacle
to obtaining accurate satellite imagery – a pivotal tool for
generating reliable land cover information.
This section seeks to provide insight into the land cover classes
of areas under investment in the Lao PDR. This analysis is
based on the only official land cover dataset available for the
Lao PDR from 2002 (MAF/FIPD, 2002). It must be acknowledged
that this dataset has several limitations in terms of accuracy,
especially related to forest classes and particularly with the
politicized land cover class, “unstocked forest and ray”, which
to a large extent represents areas of bush and forest fallows
within shifting cultivation agricultural systems. The full set of
land cover classes, established by the GoL in 2002, includes
22 land cover classes in total which were combined into eight
land cover classes for the purposes of this analysis.
The largest share of one land cover class across all land
granted is in unstocked forest and ray, consisting of upland
or small scale agriculture at the time of the land cover
inventory (see Table 24 and Figure 27). A total of 260,372 ha,
or 45% of all areas under investment, is within this class. The
unstocked forest and ray land cover class is derived from
approximations of where forest fallows lie, which remain
difficult to detect and to distinguish from other land cover
classes. Hence while the evidence shows that the largest
share of investments are in this land cover class, one cannot
necessarily conclude a “preference” among investors for this
land cover class, as it also covers almost 45% of the territory
of the Lao PDR.
The second largest land cover class where land deals have
been granted is in forest (37% of the total area under
investment). This is, even when keeping in mind the limited
accuracy of the national land cover dataset, a rather large
share of total land under investment. In both the unstocked
forest & ray and forest categories, the average size of an
investment is rather large (341 ha and 433 ha respectively).
Table 24: Land Cover Classes Nationally and in Areas under Investment
Land Cover Classes
Lao PDR National Land 40
Area under Investment
Total area (ha)
% of Total
# Deals
Total Area (ha)
% of all Area
under Investment
Agriculture
1,200,000
5%
426
44,444
8%
Bamboo
539,000
2%
49
27,714
5%
Built-up
135,300
1%
57
756
0%
Forest
9,824,700
42%
494
213,650
37%
Grassland
673,700
3%
73
16,412
3%
Scrubland
192,100
1%
39
2,961
0%
Swamp
51,000
0%
16
2,880
0%
Unstocked Forest & Ray
10,613,200
45%
764
260,372
45%
Other
451,000
2%
278
11,493
2%
TOTAL
23,680,000
100%
1,258 41 580,683 42
100%
40 Total area nationally is based on MAF/FIPD 2002.
41 The total number of deals is not the sum of deals per land cover class as a number of deals contain multiple land cover classes.
42 As some areas under investment lack land cover class data, there exists a slight difference between the total area cited here and that for all spatially referenced data.
70 Concessions and Leases in the Lao PDR: Taking Stock of Land Investments