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Income options for the poorest of the poor: the case of cardamom in northern Laos

This study examines the potential of cardamom for poverty alleviation and sustainable rural development under conditions of increased resource scarcity in the uplands of northern Laos. Drawing on both qualitative and quantitative fieldwork in Luang Namtha province, the supply chain of cardamom is identified and the socio-economic opportunities for collectors and growers are examined. Rising demand in neighbouring countries, particularly China, provide sound income opportunities for all actors in the cardamom supply chain. Growing improved varieties has become a boon for farmers endowed with relatively large land areas with suitable agro-ecological conditions. However, land-poor and landless collectors of wild cardamom are facing increasing difficulties due to overharvesting, lower prices offered by middlemen, and the rapid conversion of remaining forests into monoculture plantations, especially rubber, which has reduced the natural habitat of cardamom and other non-timber forest products. The major policy implication is that protecting the remaining natural and secondary forests—for instance through making use of evolving international support mechanisms for community-based forest protection, including REDD-plus—will not only be of benefit for biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation, but would also enhance the livelihoods of the poorest groups in the uplands of northern Laos.

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စာတမ်းအမျိုးအစား Reports, journal articles, and research papers (including theses and dissertations)
စာရွက်စာတမ်း၏ ဘာသာစကား
  • အင်္ဂလိပ်ဘာသာစကား
ခေါင်းစဉ်များ
  • Forests and forestry
  • Non-timber forest products
ပထဝီဧရိယာ (spatial range)
  • လာအိုပြည်သူ့ဒီမိုကရက်တစ်သမ္မတနိုင်ငံ
မူပိုင်ခွင့် Yes
ပြင်ဆင်ချက် 1
ခွင့်ပြုချက် Creative Commons Attribution
ပူးတွဲရေးသားသူ (တစ်ဦးချင်းစီ) Choocharoen, Chalathon, Antonia Schneider, Andreas Neef, and Pavlos Georgiadis.
ထုတ်ဝေသူ Small-scale Forestry
ထုတ်ဝေသည့်ရက်စွဲ 2013
စာမျက်နှာခွဲ 22
အထွေထွေ မှတ်ချက်

Small-scale Forestry DOI 10.1007/s11842-012-9207-1

တင်ခဲ့သည့်ရက်စွဲ စက်တင်ဘာ 30, 2018, 02:51 (UTC)
ပြန်လည်ပြင်ဆင်သည့်ရက်စွဲ ဒီဇင်ဘာ 17, 2019, 09:28 (UTC)