Mr. Saengkham Inthiratvongsy

Mr. Saengkham Inthiratvongsy worked as a lecturer at the Faculty of Forestry of the National University of Laos (NUoL) from 1991 to 2010. After that, he worked as a freelancer in natural resource management and became interested in coffee. Thanks to a UN scholarship, he studied coffee farming in Thailand. In 2015, he and his […]

Planting and Seeding Rattan

Calamus viminalis is a climbing rattan palm with slender stems up to 35 m long and 0.5–1.5 cm in diameter. It has pale green sheaths with spines, long leaves (1–1.5 m), and produces small fruits about 0.8 cm in size. The young shoots are eaten as a vegetable in Laos, while the stems are widely […]

Smooth Ball Mushrooms

Sustainable Harvest and Management of Wild Foods and Aquatic Species: Smooth Ball Mushrooms

Chanthavone Phomphakdy

Chanthavone Phomphakdy is a PhD researcher at the Centre for Development and Environment (CDE), University of Bern, where he pursues a doctorate in Geography and sustainable development. Through his work with the Land for Life in Laos (LFL) project, he supports sustainable land governance by producing scientific evidence that can strengthen real-world decision-making. At the […]

Association to Support the Development of Peasant Societies (ASDSP)

The Association to Support the Development of Peasant Societies (ASDSP) was founded in 1988 with the mission of promoting smart and sustainable agricultural practices among rural farmers. Its focus is on encouraging local innovation, improving productivity, and supporting bio-composting using locally available resources. After a period of suspension due to limited market access, ASDSP was […]

Sahai Coffee

Sahai Lao Coffee Roastery is a community driven initiative that empowers local farmers across Northern Laos. Sahai promotes sustainable practices by training growers in selective hand-picking and responsible processing methods. They help partner communities to master each production step while protecting their ancestral lands. In 2012, Alex Chitdara, one of the two co-founders of Sahai […]

Prof. Soulivanh Lanorsavanh

Associate Professor Soulivanh Lanorsavanh is a lecturer and the Deputy Head of the Department of Biology at the Faculty of Natural Sciences, National University of Laos (NUoL). He has dedicated his academic career to the study of plant morphology and the vascular flora of Lao PDR. His work is driven by a deep passion for […]

Annotated checklist of the terrestrial molluscs from Laos (Mollusca, Gastropoda)

The land area of Laos is composed of a large variety of undisturbed habitats, such as high mountainous areas, huge limestone karsts and the lower Mekong Basin. Therefore, Laos is expected to have a high species diversity, especially for the land snails. However, with respect to research on malacology, Laos is probably the least well-researched […]

Cash crops in the uplands: the cardamom experienc

Farmers are often blamed for destroying tropical forests, especially in the Lao PDR. Converting shifting cultivation into cash crop-based agriculture is recurrently presented as the solution merging forest protection and poverty alleviation. However, many attempts in the recent past have ended in failure. The Rural Development Project of Phongsaly District (PDDP) has tried to introduce […]