Carbon pools and poverty peaks in Lao PDR

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation and enhancing forest carbon stocks in developing countries (REDD+) is heavily promoted in Laos. REDD+ is often perceived as an opportunity to jointly address climate change and poverty and, therefore, could come timely for Laos to combine its prominent national target of poverty eradication with global climate mitigation efforts. Countrywide planning of the right approaches to REDD+ combined with poverty alleviation requires knowledge of the spatial combination of poverty and carbon stocks at the national level. This study combined spatial information on carbon stored in vegetation and on poverty and created carbon-poverty typologies for the whole country at the village level. We found that 11% of the villages of Laos have high to very high average village-level carbon stock densities and a predominantly poor population. These villages cover 20% of the territory and are characterized by low population density. Shifting cultivation areas in the northwestern parts of the country have a higher carbon mitigation potential than areas in the central and eastern highlands due to a more favorable climate. Finally, we found that in Laos the majority (58%) of poor people live in areas with low carbon stock densities without major potential to store carbon. Accordingly, REDD+ cannot be considered a core instrument for poverty alleviation. The carbon-poverty typologies presented here provide answers to basic questions related to planning and managing of REDD+. They could serve as a starting point for the design of systems to monitor both socioeconomic and environmental development at the national level.

A different perspective on poverty in Lao PDR: Multidimensional poverty in Lao PDR for the years 2002/2003 and 2007/2008

This paper presents an indicator for measuring multidimensional poverty in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic applying the Alkire–Foster methodology to the Lao Expenditure and Consumption Survey 2002/2003 and 2007/2008. We calculated a multidimensional poverty index (MPI) that includes three dimensions: education, health, and standard of living. Making use of the MPI’s decomposability, we analyse how much each of the different dimensions and its respective indicators contribute to the overall MPI. We find a marked reduction in the multidimensional poverty headcount ratio over the study period, regardless of how the indicators are weighted or how the deprivation and poverty cut-offs are set. This reduction is based on improvements regarding all indicators except cooking fuel and nutrition. We observe no significant reduction in the intensity of poverty, however; there are wide disparities between the country’s regions and between urban and rural areas. The proportion of poor people in rural areas is more than twice as high as that in urban areas. By complementing the traditional income-based poverty measure, we hope to provide useful information that can support knowledge-based decision-making for poverty alleviation.

Strategy and Action Plan for Sustainable Land Management in the High Pamir and Pamir-Alai Mountains

This Strategy and Action Plan was written within the framework of the project on Sustainable Land Management in the High Pamir and Pamir-Alai Mountains (PALM). PALM is an integrated transboundary initiative of the governments of the Kyrgyz Republic and the Republic of Tajikistan. It aims to address the interlinked problems of land degradation and poverty within a region that is one of Central Asia’s crucial sources of freshwater and a location of biodiversity hotspots. The project is executed by the Committee on Environment Protection in Tajikistan and the National Center for Mountain Regions Development in Kyrgyzstan, with fi nancial support from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and other donors. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is the GEF Implementing Agency for the project, and the United Nations University (UNU) is the International Executing Agency. This Strategy and Action Plan integrates the work of three main teams of experts, namely the Pamir-Alai Transboundary Strategy and Action Plan (PATSAP) team, the Legal Task Forces, and a team of Natural Disaster Risk specialists. The PATSAP team was coordinated by the Centre for Development and Environment (CDE), University of Bern, Switzerland. The Legal Task Force was led by the Australian Centre for Agriculture and Law of the University of New England (UNE), and responsibility for the Natural Disaster Risk assessment was with the Central- Asian Institute of Applied Geosciences (CAIAG) in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. The development of the strategy took place from June 2009 to October 2010. The activities included fi eld study tours for updating the information base with fi rst-hand information from the local level, coordination meetings with actors from the region, and two multi-level stakeholder forums conducted in Khorog and Osh to identify priorities and to collect ideas for concrete action plans. The baseline information collected for the Strategy and Action Plan has been compiled by the experts and made available as reports1. A joint multi-level stakeholder forum was conducted in Jirgitol, Tajikistan, for in-depth discussion of the transboundary aspects. In August 2010, the draft Strategy and Action Plan was distributed among local, national, and international actors for consultation, and their comments were discussed at feedback forums in Khorog and Bishkek. This Strategy and Action Plan is intended as a recommendation. Nevertheless, it proposes concrete mechanisms for implementing the proposed sustainable land management (SLM) activities: The Regional Natural Resources Governance Framework provides the legal and policy concepts, principles, and regulatory requirements needed to create an enabling environment for SLM in the High Pamir and Pamir-Alai region at the transboundary, national, and local levels. The priority directions outlined provide a framework for the elaboration of rayon-level strategies and for strategies on specifi c topics (forestry, livestock, etc.), as well as for further development of government programmes and international projects. The action plans may serve as a pool of concrete ideas, which can be taken up by diff erent institutions and in smaller or larger projects. Finally, this document provides a basis for the elaboration and signing of targeted cooperation agreements on land use and management between the leaders of Osh oblast (Kyrgyz Republic), Gorno Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast, and Jirgitol rayon (Republic of Tajikistan).

Multi-grade teaching practices in Austrian and Finnish primary schools

This article describes the teaching strategies used in multi-grade classes in five small rural primary schools in Austria and Finland on the basis of the content analysis of transcribed teacher interviews. Two main types of strategies were identified: practices that (1) aim to reduce or (2) capitalize on students’ heterogeneity. The results illustrate how differently multi-grade teaching can be realized and how it can effectively support individual student learning. The findings are discussed with regard to teacher education with the intention of increasing the awareness of the professional skills required in high-quality teaching practices in multi-grade teaching.