From blurred to sharp: Setting the standards for more pragmatic land use planning at the local level in Lao PDR

For the last two decades, since the Rio Conference on Environment and Development, land-use planning (LUP) has been carrying the hopes of providing a concrete instrument to translate sustainable development discourses into practice. In the Lao PDR, it is being seen as a way to provide alternatives to swidden agriculture and more recently, as an instrument to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD). However, when assessing the impact of past LUP, many observers have noted the discrepancy between good intentions, as displayed in policy and project documents, and actual implementation due to the limited capacity of local institutions (Lestrelin et al., 2011a). Overcoming such a problem requires an objective analysis of its extent and its potential negative consequences. To avoid blind trust in delusive success stories, evaluation methods assessing the quality of the LUP process (i.e. level of community participation and understanding of LUP activities by local stakeholders) have been designed (Lestrelin et al., 2011b). From the perspective of developing a country-wide monitoring system for participatory land use planning (PLUP), this paper addresses two main research questions: • How to assess the quality of a PLUP output, i.e. measuring the gap between principles and practice in PLUP? • What can be done to increase the credibility, and therefore the practicality and feasibility, of the proposed land use plans? By analysing land zoning outputs from past and recent PLUP this paper underlines the irrationality of village LUP maps which often appear inconsistent with the principles of land use policies. In general the management of rural landscapes in the uplands of Lao PDR is difficult to grasp due to a tacit agreement between villagers willing to minimize land taxes and district authority lacking proper human and financial resources. Acknowledging the gap between the declared agricultural land from household surveys and what can be observed from satellite or village land use maps, the paper proposes a new approach to increase planning realism while reinforcing local participation in the PLUP process. An innovative participatory platform involving local communities in learning the complexities of LUP through a role-play was proposed by Bourgoin and Castella (2011). The authors argued that a landscape simulation exercise can help disclose the landscape management and livelihood strategies of different stakeholders at different scales. Building on this knowledge, this paper describes a negotiation platform allowing villagers discuss land zoning and management practices. Adaptive and accessible, the method is assisted by a participatory 3D model combined with a village socio-economic and geographic information system providing feedback about cost/benefit associated with each land use plan. Through successive iterations, villagers gradually refine their plans by exploring land use change scenarios. Beside its contribution to enhanced participation in landscape planning, the proposed method, which was successfully tested in six study villages of Viengkham District, can support the introduction of innovative land use systems in the northern uplands of Lao PDR. Furthermore, this instrument can be used to certify land use plans and provide a standard procedure for PLUP implementation.