Feeding the demand

With reports that a very sustainable ecotourism is being developed in northern Laos, we decided that was something we really wanted to support. As is often the case on our travels, nothing is ever quite what it seems on paper. However, by the end of a two day trek (staying overnight in a small minority village within a national park), I felt we got a real glimpse of the issues in the area....although I don't think this was the intention of the trek organizers. With promises of hiking through primary forest in the national park, we found ourselves climbing through a young forest with small trees and not much canopy overhead. At any opening where we had a view over the hills in the distance, we saw an endless patchwork of thick forest and cleared plots. Arriving at the village, we discovered it perched like an island in a sea of rubber trees that spilled out in every direction from the small cluster of huts. My first reaction was frustration that we were not getting the experience we signed on for, but in retrospect it was a real glimpse of the state of this 'preserved area'. The national park is facing illegal slash and burn farming by the minority groups living within its boundaries, the demands for timber from China and elsewhere, and China's hunger for rubber. We teased details of the demands on the forest from our young guide, who gave us naively honest answers. New roads are crisscrossing northern Laos easing the transportation of resources out of this underdeveloped country.
It was all so alarming in Laos because many of the cleared areas, rubber plantations, and road construction projects are so new. In the neighboring countries, when you pass through well established platations, traveling old roads...the destruction isn't always so glaring.