Project Title: Forest Carbon and Land Tenure Issues in the Mekong Region: A Scoping Study
Client: Mekong Region Land Governance
Students: Song Fu, Melissa Lo, Oluwole Soyinka, Sheng Huan Tang, Simran Kaur
Faculty Lead: Juliet Lu
Fieldwork Location: Laos
Year: 2023-24
Publications: Mongabay
About the Project: In recent years, land-based carbon management projects have become increasingly popular among countries in the Mekong region, where deforestation and forest degradation have greatly undermined the regional resilience against climate change. Nearly 17 million hectares of forest have been lost in Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar to make room for agribusinesses and other investments in the last 20 years. As these sustainable development initiatives introduce new models of land governance to the Mekong region, they are also facing challenges from existing issues of land tenure security. Our project aims to understand the relationship between the carbon projects in the Mekong region and local land tenure security, by examining whether these projects compromise or improve smallholder farmers’ access to the land and resources they depend on.