The forest cover in Sekong Province is threatened. Rapid expansion of industrial agriculture and plantation establishment has emerged as a notable additional pressure on the remaining intact forest. Industry plantation areas have expanded exponentially. Commercial timber extraction has been expanding rapidly over the past decade in the province. There is tremendous and growing pressure on Sekong to log its forests ? both from Vietnamese interests (where the wood furniture sector averaged 70% growth per year and from Lao companies (who face wood shortages because of dwindling stocks in lowland forests). The major threats to biodiversity are (i) habitat loss as a resulting of logging, (ii) overharvesting of animal protein and other non-timber forest products, and (iii) cross-border wildlife trade. Road network expansion, forestry, mining, and hydropower development represent important drivers for established pressures on biodiversity, variously easing access to remote areas, opening external markets, and accelerating forest conversion and clearing. Although detailed biodiversity loss data is lacking, sustained and intensifying pressures are resulting in a decline in biodiversity. An overall increase in threatened species was observed during the past, attributable to both losses of habitat (the dominant threat for 35% of threatened species) and harvesting pressure.
Sekong province is one of the poorest provinces in Lao PDR. Infrastructure is poorly developed, with few having access to clean water and sanitation, and the literacy rate is extremely low. Estimates of direct use values show the annual value of Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFP) to be between US$398 and $525 per household . NTFPs are an important source of non-cash income for Sekong households, particularly for the poorest. Their value can be correlated with knowledge of the forest and its resources. As households move out of poverty, so the relative contribution of NTFPs towards their livelihoods declines. Reduced access to land and forest resources puts a disproportionate burden on women, who often have to collect fuel wood and water. As the livelihood options of local communities become increasingly limited, they are pressured into a downward spiral of unsustainable practices. But with the right incentives communities can become key landscape stewards, turning harmful developments into positive drivers of change and securing, and even restoring, forested landscapes and their services.
There is a number of Lao CSOs, which are working in the target districts and province. However, due to lack of social capital, a lack of an active local civil society, general poverty and land tenure insecurity, remote ethnic groups are not yet fully capable and skilled of defending their basic human rights, in particular their right to adequate food and land, of which women are most disadvantaged. People's livelihoods derive mainly from the forest, including most of the food, building materials, water, and firewood. Swidden-based farming systems are predominant, though smallholders' permanent upland farming has been promoted successfully. Supported by the government's "turning land into capital" policy, and legalized by the foreign investment promotion law, concessions or contract farming schemes have encroached on the swidden-based landscapes and large parts are meanwhile transformed to monoculture plantations. Under permanent threat of relocation, remote ethnic groups tend to obey requests from outside and are too shy to report on mismanagement or destruction of community natural resources. Requests from companies looking for land or contract farmers are instinctively followed without making use of their right to Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC).
Community-based forest management (CBFM) has since become a key aspect of the nation's rural development strategy, with the belief that local people securing management and user rights over their local forests will facilitate long-term poverty reduction alongside environmental conservation. The National Socio-Economic Development Plan 2016-2020 mentions CBFM as a high priority in its operational framework. The National Forest Strategy to the Year 2020 goes further, highlighting the need to enhance ?village-based natural resource management for poverty eradication?. The CBFM framework must be consolidated and strengthened to ensure its long-term sustainability. The current Forest Law does not formally safeguard management rights, nor does it provide explicit incentives for local people to manage forests sustainably. In addition, organizational, enforcement, and monitoring capacity is still too weak to ensure coordination and expansion of the CBFM program. The process for disseminating information to stakeholders is quite slow, and it takes considerable time for local government officials and forest users to learn that relevant laws and regulations have been reformed or repealed. In addition, efforts to expand CBFM in Lao PDR are largely centralized in the hands of government officials and international NGOs.
SODA considers local mainstreaming of community forestry as its core means of getting more forest managed by more local people. Its approach will be to strategically build the capacity of key government and non-government actors to strengthen the policies, processes, institutions and programs that enable community forestry to flourish, through the elaboration and implementation of national community forestry programs. Strengthen information gathering and horizontal information and knowledge sharing between communities and local government, and vulnerability assessments and mapping (engaging local communities). The strength of Lao civil society to communicate the voice of local people in these discussions is still relatively weak. Their targets are villagers, including forest volunteers, and local government officials at district and provincial level. Major activities will be the development of community forest, training of village forest volunteers, sharing experiences, and conservation campaign as well as to promote livelihood and income generation activity for disadvantaged groups who are dependent in farming and non- farming activities.