Laos: Crisis and Resource Contestation

Laos in 2009 must be understood in terms of the broader context of ongoing crises that affected not only Laos, but also the region and indeed the globe. These include, primarily, the global financial crisis, the environmental crisis, and the food crisis, as well as Typhoon Ketsana and international outcry over the treatment of Hmong asylum seekers. While many of these critical situations have been developing for some time now, their cascading coalescence in 2009 gave this year a particular poignancy. They highlighted through stress and pressure not only Laos's deep engagements in regional and global dependencies, but also fractures and weaknesses in the Lao political, economic, and social setting. In particular, they highlighted the potentials but also dangers associated with resource exploitation. While resource exploitation is now Laos's main strategy for achieving development goals, the process is marked by unusually public conflict over associated rights and responsibilities. While this is unlikely to significantly undermine existing political arrangements, it is demonstrating the contradictions of political authority in contemporary Laos.

Resourcification

In recent years there has been a discursive shift towards describing Laos in terms of "resources". In contemporary development reports and investment brochures, Laos is described as "resource rich". The vision for development here is that abundant resources, in the form of mountains, waterways, and forested areas, will attract foreign direct investment, primarily in mining, agri-business, and hydroelectricity.¹ There are, of course, attendant concerns, such as that Laos may fall victim to the "resource curse", resources will be over-exploited, or the exploitation of one resource will compromise another. Nevertheless, these concerns, like the strategies that they critique, are framed within the language of resources. This language is not particularly new: interest in Laos as a source of raw materials was an aspect of the colonial endeavour, and recent radiocarbon dates suggest that copper-smelting and long-distance trade took place in Laos at least 2000 years ago (ongoing archaeological work may well push this back further into the Bronze Age). While the concept may not be radically new, it is ascendant in the current era and is particularly defining of contemporary understandings of Laos, both in terms of Laos's potentials and her vulnerabilities. The language of an enticing store of resource wealth is all the more striking in a context where, not so long ago, it was more common to read descriptions of Laos as problematically inaccessible, "isolated", and a backwater characterized by inhospitable mountain wildernesses. Now, however, those self same tracts of land are being revalued as they fall under the hungry gaze produced by resourcification.

In contemporary "resourcified" understandings of Laos, mining plays a particularly prominent role. At present there are 132 mining companies operating in the nation. Mineral surveys suggest that Laos holds large reserves of ores, including gold, silver, copper, lead-zinc, tin, aluminium, and iron. Of course, it is not uncommon for the earth's crust to contain minerals. What varies across contexts is not merely the combination and concentration of minerals but crucially also the combination and concentration of socially produced conditions. Regulatory frameworks, the cost of the "social license" to operate (including costs of resettlement of local inhabitants, environmental mitigation, and hearts-and-minds winning corporate social responsibility activities) as well as transport and energy infrastructure have a significant impact on the profitability and probability of mining. Thus, the rush to locate and extract minerals in Laos must be understood not only in terms of a wealth secreted under the Lao soil but also in terms of these manmade conditions. The Lao Government has made significant moves towards attracting foreign direct investment, including simplifying paperwork and attempting to install clear regulations (it should be noted that many foreign investors still find these steps less than satisfactory, but progress has been made). Some observers have been concerned, however, about how the social license to operate mines is obtained in authoritarian Laos, where public debate is severely curtailed.

Another key plank of the national Lao development strategy is hydro-power. The Lao government has signed a staggering seventy memoranda of understanding on proposed hydropower projects.² Fifteen of...