Lao People's Democratic Republic

In order to gain further experience on rights-based approaches (RBAs) to conservation, the project focused on undertaking a situation analysis in the Xe Champhone Ramsar Site in Lao PDR. It examined the under-researched issue of customary law governing natural resources, including its relationship with statutory law. This publication summarizes and analyses the findings of the field work.

This paper examines how interventions intended to improve functionality and productivity of forested landscapes to improve livelihoods of the poorest populations, might actually yield co-benefits in terms of biodiversity conservation. It argues in favour of a ‘landscape’ approach to achieve these co-benefits.

Our knowledge of species diversity within the inland waters of Indo-Burma is poorly documented and the region remains relatively under-surveyed. In this volume we aim to address this knowledge gap and present the most up-to-date information on the distribution and extinction risk of freshwater species in all inland water ecosystems across the Indo-Burma hotspot, and where appropriate, the reasons behind their declining status.

The Xe Champhone wetlands in Savannakhet Province is one of two wetlands designated as Ramsar sites upon Lao PDR’s accession to the Convention on Wetlands (Ramsar Convention) in 2010. Initial steps have been taken to set up a Ramsar committee tasked with managing the site. However, to date, the only conservation activities that have occurred at the site to date have been a very small selection of international donor funded projects.

The Beung Kiat Ngong Wetlands complex in Champassak Province is one of two wetlands designated as Ramsar sites upon Lao PDR’s accession to the Convention on Wetlands (Ramsar Convention) in 2010. Initial steps have already been taken to set up the instructional structure for site governance. However, much more work will be required to implement conservation activities on the ground and to put into place a long term conservation plan for the site.

The Water and Nature Initiate’s (WANI) activities in the Mekong followed a strategy of mobilizing grass-roots engagement of local stakeholders in decision making, while facilitating high-level dialogues. This helped to build networked, multi-stakeholder processes which could begin to bridge local to national and regional decision making in the basin to support improved transboundary basin management.

This report provides an overview of existing data about the wetlands, including its ecology, biodiversity, socio-economic values, management and threats.