There was a time when I spent a great deal of energy wandering around upland areas of mainland Southeast Asia dealing with agricultural topics. I haven’t done it for years. Nonetheless some of my fondest memories coalesce around the endlessly fascinating interactions between people and the land found in this region.
Going through a collection of old photos I stumbled upon this one from 2005. It shows a hillside ablaze in Burma’s Shan State. The fire was set deliberately, all part of the annual cycle of shifting cultivation, also known as swidden cultivation.
In the months ahead fires like this one will be a common sight in upland areas across the region. Readers wanting to know more about this agricultural practice may find this a good place to start.
Wonder if preventing swidden cultivation will be part of REDD payments.
Ps. NM needs a simple graphic light mobile version.
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Arguably the worst pollution in SE Asia caused by poor people struggling to survive. It doesn’t fit too well in the romantic “narrative” of the innocent poor living in harmony with nature does it? As an embarrassing fact, it almost ranks with the hunter-gatherers’ destruction of the megafauna of all continents except Africa.
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R. N. England
During the bone dry season b/t November to May:
1) The slash and burning are done for next season planting especially in the hills of Myanmar and Thailand.
2) Raging natural forest fire 2º to thunder storm unlike the west both country have little mean to control.
3) Wood Charcoal makers will burn down a forest for the purpose of gathering the product that they rely on to survive.
except for #2, the traditions endure and relatively supported by the unique Myanmar ecosystem, that westerner frown.
This ongoing traditions for centuries is dwarf by large scale development/deforestation by Dictators self serving approved Chinese, Thai and Korean projects.
Projects that take very little concerns for anything but profits.
Project that are 2º to present useless careless action by the west.
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Hi Colum:
It’s hard not to see how the REDD program (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) would not involve a curtailment of swidden agricultural practices.
In my understanding at least, any REDD or Clean Development Mechanism forest payments for would necessarily involve verified CO2 uptakes from improved forest protection or forest management standards, as quantified in the form of standing biomass. In swidden cultivation zones, that would very likely entail at least a reduction in the annual area of swidden agriculture, as compared to the previous baseline scenario, if not complete elimination.
This would be the likely outcome of a REDD project even though swidden cultivation is quite likely ‘carbon neutral’ in many if not most cases (see Fox et al., 2011;
http://ccafs.cgiar.org/sites/default/files/assets/docs/ccafs-wp-09-swidden-rubber-and-carbon.pdf
Thai-Hua Rubber Company’s ‘Clean Development Mechanism’ Afforestation/ Reforestation rubber and carbon project in Laos is one interesting case in point.
See:
http://cdm.unfccc.int/Projects/Validation/DB/PSO49NLKSHN2OGARN9FNR6NE6ZCBFQ/view.html.
“Mitigation of GHG: Rubber based agro-forestry system for sustainable development and poverty reduction in Pakkading, Bolikhamsay Province, Lao PDR”
The developers, Lao-Thai Hua Rubber Company, a major Thai-based firm with a market cap of over US$300 million, forwards that their proposed project, 1,076 hectares of rubber trees, has a greater carbon uptake and storage capacity than the existing land use, which is swidden-managed upland rice and vegetable production by local farmers.
Under the company’s proposal, participating farmers who hold secure tenure documents issued by the Lao Government would agree to lease their degraded forest-land (i.e. swidden agricultural fields) to the company, for at least 30 years, in exchange for a rental fee of US $8/hectare/year. The farmers would also be eligible to apply to work on the plantation sites. The Government of Laos would receive a land royalty fee of US $5.30/hectare/year.
The first things to note that the market lease rate for quality plantation forest-land in Pakading district, with good soils and high annual rainfall and close access to Route 13, is probably more likely in the range of $30-$50/hectare/year. Let’s say $30 to be conservative.
So the company is already securing a rent of about $16/hectare/year.
Over 1,000 hectares for 30 years, this resource rent secured by the company on land rental fees alone already comes to about US$480,000. That’s not even considering how land in this Mekong-side district will become far more expensive in the next 30 years].
If I am reading this correctly, the developer also propose that the project would sequester a net of 1.2 million tonnes of CO2 over the next 30 years (“net anthropogenic GHG removals by sinks” in the project area). That’s about 40 tonnes C02 per hectare per year.
In a letter included in the CDM project documentation (see link above), Lao-Thai Hua estimates that over the lease period of the project these Certified Emission Reductions (CER)’s might be worth about US $15 million. The company claims that “Without this revenue the company can not justify the project.”
These days, if I am reading this right, CDM Certified Emission Reductions are trading in Europe carbon markets at about Euro 5/tonne ($6.50 US), so that would be about a US$7.9 million carbon subsidy to the company if those prices held through the 30 year lease period.
However, if certified carbon emission prices track steadily upwards (whether sold by the company under CDM or another framework), up to say, US$100/tonne by 2040, then that accumulation of 1.2 million in credits over 30 years might be worth more like… if I calculate this right, about US $75 million?
That’s in addition to their minimum secured land rent of about $0.5 million over 30 years.
Not bad for 1,000 hectares of land.
The Lao-Thai Hua Rubber proposal is currently at the validation stage.
The Laos Land Issues Working Group (LIWG) has submitted a rebuttal to the company’s application (in a document included in the link above). Under the CDM, developers need to demonstrate the principle of “additionality” (i.e. that their carbon project would not have occurred without CDM financial subsidies). The LIWG argues that since there are many rubber plantation projects being developed in Laos without the benefit of these CDM carbon subsidies (about 400,000 hectares in fact to date),the company’s proposal is not “additional” to the baseline situation.
Lastly, it really beggars belief to compare swidden agriculture with industrial rubber plantation management from a carbon emissions perspective.
Present day swidden cultivation in places like Pakkading District Laos is performed in a rotational system on hectare-sized upland plots of forest-land by household labour groups, producing rice, fruits, and vegetables for direct household consumption, using no significant petroleum-based inputs.
Commercial cash crop production such as rubber on the other hand, involves total vegetation removal (including stumps) by heavy equipment, mechanical cultivation, clean weeding, significant fertilizer and pesticide inputs, and mechanical harvesting. Then, a full rubber latex industrial commodity chain (say for motor tires), including processing, marketing, transportation, consumption and disposal of the end products is initiated, all of which is based upon petroleum inputs. When overmature, the rubber trees are processed into wooden furniture and shipped by ocean freight to global markets, and this also involves extensive petroleum inputs and carbon emissions.
It seems quite absurd to compare carbon neutral swidden rice production by peasant farmers on rotational forest fallows, with industrialized rubber plantation development and latex rubber /wood product commodity chains managed through multi-national firms, and then to provide a huge climate subsidy to the latter.
If anyone would like to modify my back-of-the-envelope calculations, please do so!
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One thing that struck me about the burning season in northern Thailand was the way that Thai farmers, standing a couple of feet away from a smoldering rice field or a pile of burning rubbish at the side of the road would always say, when I asked them why the air was so polluted, that the smoke came from hill-tribe people or from people in Burma.
Unfortunately this common narrative (that it is hill-tribe people who burn and destroy forests) gives government authorities and big firms with good connections an excuse to carry out schemes that are far more destructive, in terms of destroying the natural environment, clearing/burning land etc… than anything that a small group of farmers might do.
Since Thai society already has a convenient, and relatively powerless scapegoat, the activities of these larger, more powerful groups usually goes unquestioned.
Also as post no 4 points out, when there are restrictions on what these groups can do, they just export their businesses to places like Laos, where rent’s cheaper (large companies negotiating long term agreements getting knock down rental rates which don’t factor in rising land prices etc…), where its much harder for the local population to fight for the rights to farm their their land in the traditional way (OK, this still involves burning but burning a few acres every xxx no of years is, as post 4 points out, more sustainable and less destructive than clearing land for a large forest plantation….) and where there’s less concern about the real effects (especially since it seems to be marketed as a ‘sustainable development and poverty reduction’ forestry project) of their activities.
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There need to be a balance between “poverty eradication” and “carbon footprint” The whole concept of carbon credit trading is a sham. Until I see a baseline “carbon footprint” allowable per person (equal for every single person in the world) I will continue to see it as a sham and a very devious way “developed” world is trying to control the balance of economic power.
Please note that the carbon footprint per capita of Oz is many many times that of Thailand / Burma or Laos.
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Remember some years ago when people were blaming swidden cultivation in Indonesia for unusually heavy smoke in Singapore? Later, it was determined that most of the smoke was actually coming from big companies in Indonesia who were burning large areas for plantation development. But everyone assumed it was those dreaded swidden cultivators initially. The anti-swidden cultivation narrative is indeed enduring, despite works by Harold Conklin in 1957, Michael Dove in 1983, and many others. Now climate change has created yet another reason to justify controling the swidden cultivators, as if it is largely their fault that we are facing a problem with climate change in the first place.
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Recently we had a discussion on the issue of swidden farming as a means of entrenching poverty as well as land and public health degradation and asked why hasn’t it been done away with? :
http://ourchiangmai.com/2011/10/09/up-in-smoke-a-challenge-to-save-the-world/
please contribute.
While smoke is in the air what has happened to the Cross Border Haze Agreement between the ASEAN states? Seems it has made as much progress as the UN Climate Convention.
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Ricky (8) and others. There may be a Trojan virus in the link you quoted.
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Thanks R.N. Apologies about the performance of this link. OurChiangMai.com webmaster has checked the site for malware and assures me it is safe but the alarming messages continue.
http://ourchiangmai.com/2011/10/09/up-in-smoke-a-challenge-to-save-the-world/
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Ricky… I can’t access the link you post from here but it would be interesting to know just how much of the smoke pollution and fires you see around this time of year in Thailand are from swidden farmers in upland areas.
2 years ago in Nan many lowland rice farmers used to burn their fields about now. People also used to set the grass by the roadside of the main roads (including the Phrae-Nan highway) on fire.
Sure, there were some forest fires, but no where near as much slashing and burning of upland areas as typical environmental narratives would have us believe.
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