Hiphi Fifth National Report - Lao People's Democratic Republic (English) PDF (EN)

Lao People’s Democratic Republic PEACE INDEPENDENCE DEMOCRACY UNITY PROSPERITY FIFTH NATIONAL REPORT TO THE UNITED NATIONS CONVENTION ON BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY MINISTRY OF NATURAL RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT

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2016-MoNRE-IUCN -Fifth national report to the united nations convention on biological diversity – DFRM-MoNRE and Technical support: IUCN - Vientiane, Lao PDR Technical Support from International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Lao PDR Country Programme, the Global Environment Facility and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). i CITATION

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E XECUTIVE S UMMARY The Lao PDR is one of the most biodiversity countries in Southeast Asia, with on-going discoveries of new and large species. For example, 28 new species were discovered in 2014. The great range of biodiversity exists thanks to the Lao PDR’s abundance of forest and water resources, which cover the entire length of the country. National Protected Areas (NPAs) now cover 14.2 per cent of the country’s area, while this coverage of protected areas increases to around 20.2 per cent of the land area with the addition of Provincial Protected Areas and District Protected Areas.

Although the Lao PDR is still rich in natural resources, its biodiversity has been negatively impacted by developments, particularly resulting from private sector investment, including agricultural expansion, forest extraction, mining, as well as infrastructure and hydro dam construction. This report presents that, behind these direct drivers of biodiversity loss, there are a number of indirect drivers that interact in complex ways to cause human-induced changes in biodiversity which involve demographic, economic, socio-political, as well as cultural and religious factors. Of significance importance on the loss of biodiversity is deforestation.

Forests in the Lao PDR have seen a decrease from 17 million hectares (or 71.8% of the total land area) in 1940, to 9.55 million hectares (or 40.33% of the total land area) in 2010. Efforts to address deforestation and environmental degradation have focussed on protecting forests for sustainable ecosystem services, smallholder forestry projects, and participatory sustainable forest management. Community livelihoods are closely linked to forests and the participation of forest-dependent communities is consequently crucial for successful forest management. The government has been quick to realize the need to protect the country’s biodiversity, including its iconic wildlife species.

It has established a comprehensive national protected area system and enacted laws, decrees, directives, and regulations on the management of forest, aquatic, and wildlife resources across the country. The next challenge is to improve the enforcement of these laws, decrees, directives, and regulations. The Lao PDR’s First National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP) laid out an action plan to 2010 and strategy to 2020, which consisted of seven programmes; (1) Scientific Data and Biodiversity Knowledge Development; (2) Biodiversity Management; (3) Human Resource iii

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Development Institutional; (4) Public Awareness and Involvement; (5) Institutional and Legal Frameworks; (6) NBSAP Implementation and (7) International Cooperation. Under those 7 programs, 27 objectives are to be achieved by 2020 and 203 actions were also identified which were to be undertaken by 2010. In 2011, the IUCN published an assessment of the 1st NBSAP which summarizes the implementation status per objective and per action under each of the seven programmes.

The main conclusion is that significant progress has been made across a range of areas, including biodiversity research, the recording of local knowledge, the expansion of NPAs, the implementation of management plans in a few key NPAs, the drafting of a Biosafety Law, the expansion of ecotourism activities, improved land use planning and land allocation, Ramsar accession, and stricter EIA/ESIA regulation; major achievement has been reached on international cooperation, particularly on the participation of the Lao PDR to multilateral environment agreements.

However, additional gaps are to be addressed related to improving human resource capacity and biodiversity management, including efforts to ensure that social and economic benefits from the use of natural products originating from the Lao PDR accrue to the nation. The mainstreaming of biodiversity has been partially executed in recent years. This report provides details of biodiversity mainstreaming at three levels:

(1) at the Ministerial level, by the creation of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MoNRE); (2) at the sectorial level, by the establishment of the Natural Resource Management and Environment Sector Working Group (SWG) in 2012, and (3) at the Policy level, through the Five-Year National Socio Economic Development Plans (NSEDP). In spite of these achievements, additional efforts are to be made to mainstream biodiversity into the different sectors; by ensuring that biodiversity actions are included in sectorial respective strategies, plans, and programmes.

At the global level, on the progress towards the 2020 Aichi biodiversity targets, there has been strong efforts towards outreach activities which have raised awareness of environmental issues and the values of biodiversity, promoted through representation of environmental education activities during special events and festivals, improved environmental curriculum in schools, media training, and capacity development and training of government staff. Improvements have been made to the legal framework to include biodiversity values into sector strategies, policy, and legislation, while positive steps have been made towards improving the EIA process.

In terms of urban planning and improved land use planning, there have been positive efforts made towards developing criteria for sustainable urban areas and a National Master Land Use Plan, while in Agro-biodiversity there iv

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