Community-based Natural Resource Management and Watershed Resource Conflicts: a Case Study from Nam Ngum, Lao PDR 1998

There are several dimensions of resource competition and actual or potential resource conflict in the NamNgum Watershed. Most immediately for manycommunities, competition between neighbouring villages from different ethnic groups arises due both to different traditional production systems and to the closer proximity of communities resulting from a high rate of population movement within the watershed, in part attributable to the aftermath of wartime devastation. As in any watershed, upstream downstream conflicts arise, both directly from extraction of water for upstream agriculture, and less directly as upstream forest clearance affects down stream agriculturalists.