Ian G. Baird

University of Wisconsin–Madison | UW · Department of Geography

Large-scale plantation land concessions are causing an array of serious social and environmental impacts in Southeast Asia as well as in other parts of the world. This paper, however , is focused on the many challenges and limitations that plantation developers face in southern Laos and northeastern Cambodia. These include price and market constrai...

Since the 1990s, many large hydropower dams have been built in the Mekong River Basin. There has been considerable concern about resettlement and compensation linked to reservoir flooding, as well as the impacts of dams on wild-capture fisheries, riparian livelihoods, and aquatic biodiversity and ecosystems. Anti-dam activists in the Mekong Basin h...

On 23 July 2018, up to five million cubic meters of water plummeted from the reservoir of the Xe Pian Xe Namnoy dam, causing the biggest catastrophic event ever to occur in Laos related to a hydropower dam. But even before the dam broke it was already causing considerable social and environmental impacts, ones that constitute slow violence. Catastr...

There has been much written about the negative social and environmental impacts of large hydropower dams, particularly the impacts on people and the environment caused by flooding linked to the creation of large reservoirs. There has also long been recognition of the importance of Indigenous and local knowledge for understanding ecological processe...

In the 1970s and 1980s, the borderlands between southern Laos, northeastern Thailand and northern Cambodia were a hotbed of militarized conflict and insurgent activity. Various armed groups, on the political left and right, operated in what was later referred to as the Emerald Triangle. This article considers how ethnic Kuy (Souay) Indigenous peopl...

In 1975, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) was established by the communist Pathet Lao, with strong support from Vietnam. A wave of both political and military resistance to the new government emerged, although little is known about the ideology behind this resistance. This article assesses the ideological landscape of the resistance,...

Confronting the reality of climate change requires accessible and effective resources to drive coordinated efforts against its detrimental impacts. Among potential solutions, public interest in tree planting emerges as a cost-effective and multifaceted strategy to combat climate change. This study specifically explores the integration of spiritual...

In 1942, Japanese Canadians living in coastal British Columbia, Canada were forced to relocate. Once World War II ended, they were not permitted to return to their homes on the coast. This paper relates to the correspondence between two Japanese Canadian women and a white Canadian woman who lived in Nanaimo, B.C. The first letters were written in 1...

The Lao American Archive Project (LAAP) collects, organizes, and archives Lao and other language materials (e.g., archival documents, photos, cassette and video tapes, periodicals) produced by Lao Americans since 1975. The project also records videos of oral histories with Lao Americans in the Lao language. LAAP was launched in October 2022, with t...

Education is typically critically important for political movements, One important Communist Party of Thailand (CPT) policy was to make education accessible to the poor and disadvantaged, including upland ethnic minorities such as the Hmong and the Lua. Apart from expanding education for young adults outside of Thailand, the CPT also organized educ...

During the Third Indochina War (1979-1991), the ideological alignments of involved parties differed from those during the Second Indochina War, also known as the Vietnam War. Whereas the Second Indochina War pitted communists squarely against non-communists and anti-communists, the Third Indochina War was more complicated and less ideological or po...

The third and final volume of The Cambridge History of the Vietnam War examines key domestic, regional, and international developments in the period before and after the war's end, including its legal, environmental, and memorial legacies. The latter stages of the Vietnam War witnessed its apex as a Cold War crucible. The Sino-Soviet dispute, Sino-...

The classification of a hydropower scheme as run-of-the-river (or run-of-river; ROR) evokes an image of a low-impact installation; however, examination of eight case studies worldwide shows that substantial negative societal and ecological impacts are tied to them, albeit in somewhat different ways. We conclude that ROR dams not only potentially di...

Thailand is a global pioneer in contract farming (CF). Many smallholder farmers have gained better access to markets and capital while achieving higher and more stable incomes. Nevertheless, farmers have also faced exploitative conditions in their contractual relationships with agribusiness companies. In response, the Thai Parliament in 2017 passed...

The Don Sahong Hydro Power Project (DSHPP), located in the Khone Falls area of Khong District, Champasak Province, southern Laos, near the border with Cambodia, has been amongst the most controversial hydropower dams in the Mekong River Basin. Despite considerable regional and international opposition, the dam was finally constructed, becoming comm...

Spirits are ubiquitous and important in the everyday lives of ethnic Lao people. Amongst the most feared of those are ravenous spirits (phi pop), which are believed to use human hosts to cause illness or even kill other humans and livestock by eating their internal organs. Because of the severe danger that ravenous spirits are believed to pose, tho...

This article compares rural credit systems in Thailand and Cambodia in order to advance studies on financialization and rural development in South East Asia. In Thailand, the state remains a large provider of credit to farmers. In Cambodia, most farmers access credit from a globalized, private microfinance industry. Based on qualitative research ca...

Approaches to environmental verification, broadly defined, including varieties of certification and testing, is always intended to change production processes, and cause structural changes. However, sometimes these approaches can differ substantially—based on values and objectives—and thus structure farming processes in varied ways. They can also a...

The Pak Mun Dam remains one of northeastern Thailand's most disputed infrastructure projects. Local livelihoods, particularly those of women, have been negatively impacted, leading many to participate in the resistance movement against the dam. While the fight continues, protests have waned in frequency and vigour. Many in the resistance movement h...

Indigenous Community Land Titles (ICLTs) in Cambodia promised to protect Indigenous land tenure and rotational swidden cultivation. However, the proliferation of microfinance institutions (MFIs) operating in Indigenous communities has threatened the process to establish ICLTs. Through a case study of an Indigenous Brao Tanap/Kreung community in Rat...

There is increasing interest in organic lowland rice cultivation in Thailand. Farmers are becoming more wary about the human health and environmental impacts of using herbicides and pesticides. In addition, consumers are increasingly demanding rice cultivated without the use of chemicals. There is also more interest in accessing international and l...

Although it is commonly thought that the war in Laos ended in 1975 when the communist Pathet Lao took over the country, in fact the takeover stirred up considerable military and political opposition, leading to civil war. For a variety of reasons, the conflict diminished in the 1990s and 2000s. The improved security situation allowed the government...

On the Mekong River, north of Stung Treng town in northeastern Cambodia, and below the border with Laos, lies an area of riverine seasonally flooded forest designated as an internationally significant Ramsar wetland site because of its exceptional biodiversity and importance to livelihoods. This article reports on the cumulative and cascading impac...

Lowland rice cultivation is changing in southern Laos. A formalised survey and informal interviews in the lowlands of Savannakhet Province indicate that while some farmers still raise water buffaloes, they now mainly use hand-held mechanised ploughs to till their fields. More chemical fertilisers are being used, and improved seed varieties have bec...

This paper contributes to new understandings of agrarian transition for smallholder rice farming in Southeast Asia through quantitative data analysis from Thailand's two main rice growing regions. Despite economic modernization models predicting a farm-size transition of smallholder agriculture to large-scale commercial farms with the onset of indu...

Qualitative research requires carefully considered and nuanced understandings and approaches, and attention to a wide variety of potential pitfalls. Over the last few decades, the literature in geography related to ethnography, and qualitative methods more generally, has expanded and deepened considerably, leading to heightened attention to researc...

Over the last few decades, considerable concern has been expressed about the threat of Mekong River Basin hydropower dams to a range of important freshwater riverine fisheries, particularly for fish that seasonally migrate long distances. However, much less attention has been given to the threat of hydropower dams to fish biodiversity in the high-d...

Public debates and controversies over monuments, memorials, and place names have become contentious focal points for struggles over historical memory and social identity. This special issue critically examines the spatial politics involved in the making, unmaking, and remaking of memoryscapes conceived as assemblages of memory-objects, practices, a...

In 1942, Japanese Canadians living in coastal British Columbia, Canada, were forcibly incarcerated in internment camps far from the Pacific coast and had their fishing boats and other property confiscated and auctioned off. At the end of World War II, they expected to return to the coast, but permission was not granted until 1949. Some were sent to...

Fishers’ Indigenous and local knowledge (ILK) has multidimensional contributions to improve fisheries and aquatic ecosystems science, ranging from algae to whales and including management, conservation, ecology, and impact assessment. The challenges are to sustain this knowledge, recognize its value, and to include ILK holders in resource managemen...

Over the last few decades, much has been written about the negative impacts of hydropower dams on wild-capture fisheries in the Mekong River Basin. Furthermore, some studies associated with the water-energy-food nexus have appropriately linked the impacts of hydropower dams to fisheries and human nutrition. Although some research related to food se...

Geographers have been challenging problematic spatial concepts for decades. Gillen et al. usefully add to this work by disrupting the urban–rural binary in human geography, suggesting that we take people in the Global South more seriously, especially those ‘whose perspectives on urbanization are entangled with ongoing rural dynamics’. They advocate...

Between 1967 and 1969, thousands of Hmong in northern Thailand became aligned with the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT) and resided in mountainous strongholds near the border with Laos in Chiang Rai, Phayao, Nan, Phetchabun, and Phitsanulok provinces, and in Tak province near the border with Burma. They stayed in these strongholds until the early...

Over the last two decades, significant changes in lowland rice cultivation practices have occurred in mainland Southeast Asia. Here, we compare lowland rice farming in six provinces in northeastern Thailand and four districts in Savannakhet Province in southern Laos and consider the ways that agrarian change, including the deepening of capitalist r...

This article is a response to an inaccurate and distorted article by Eduard Wojczynski of the International Hydropower Association which purported to highlight the Nam Theun 2 Hydropower Project in the Lao PDR as a positive example of benefit-sharing for Indigenous communities. In refuting Wojczynski, we draw upon our own extensive research on Nam...

Beginning in the early 1960s-and especially by the end of the decade-a large number of the ethnic Hmong people in Thailand aligned themselves with the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT). By the 1970s, most of the CPT's "liberated areas" were located in remote, mountainous areas populated by Hmong people. In this paper, I situate Hmong involvement in...

Palm-leaf manuscripts are important objects in Southeast Asia. Their value often goes beyond the meanings of the written texts. They also have historical, religious, literary, symbolic and ritual importance. This paper investigates textual materiality as it applies to a story about palm-leaf manuscripts owned by the ethnic Heuny (Nha Heun) group in...

Lowland rice cultivation is changing in southern Laos. A formalised survey and informal interviews in the lowlands of Savannakhet Province indicate that while some farmers still raise water buffaloes, farmers now mainly use hand-held mechanised ploughs to till their fields. More chemical fertilisers are being used, and improved seed varieties have...

Despite their economic and ecological importance, migratory fishes of the Lower Mekong Basin (LMB) remain understudied, which hampers effective management to sustain valuable fisheries and address serious threats such as habitat degradation, development and overharvest. From a list of potential knowledge needs, a group of fisheries professionals mo...

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-021-01440-7

Major General Phasouk S. Rajphakd and Brigadier General Soutchay Vongsavanh were important right-wing military officers in the Royal Lao Army in southern Laos before 1975. However, elite family relations in Laos-especially between prominent families from the north and the south-greatly affected how they acted and interacted over the years. This art...

The Mekong River, well known for its aquatic biodiversity, is important to the social, physical, and economic health of millions living in China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. This paper explores the social and environmental impacts of several Mekong basin hydropower dams and groupings of dams and the geographies of their impacts....

In South East Asia, the relationship between ethnicity and class has been long, complex and at times contradictory. Throughout much of the twentieth century and especially from the 1940s to the 1980s, militant communist revolutionary movements sought to include upland ethnic minorities, citing vicitimization as racialized minorities, poor economic...

The ethnic Hmong people in Laos and Thailand are frequently-and often unfairly-stereotyped as destructive hunters of wildlife, and as the destroyers of forests through "pioneer" forms of swidden cultivation. They are also commonly labeled as users and traders of illegal drugs, and as not being respectful of state power. This article looks at how a...

Using evidence from four ethnographically rich case studies of people who conduct shifting agriculture and swidden cultivation in the borderlands of South, East, and Southeast Asia, this introduction to the Special Forum argues that state territorialization of peripheral societies in Asia produces similar effects in spite of varying political, nati...

The aim of this paper is to study a Hmong social movement that has its roots in the Cold War and is focused on their requesting the return of land concerning Ban Khee Thao. The community in question is located in the border area of three provinces of Phitsanulok, Phetchabun, and Loei in Thailand.In this study, Ban Khee Thao - a community that was p...

Hmong and Lao veterans of the Secret War in Laos in the United States have become less active in anti-communist activities, especially since the Hmong former general, Vang Pao, was charged in 2007 with attempting to overthrow the Lao government. Although the charges were eventually dropped, interest in veterans’ groups and “US National Defense” gro...

Most people take it for granted that it is relatively easy to determine who is Indigenous and who is not. Indeed, in the Americas and Oceania, where a lot of settler colonialism occurred, Indigenous peoples are generally considered to be the descendants of those who inhabited these spaces prior to the arrival of white settlers. In Southeast Asia, h...

Since 2000, the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has been facilitating climate change financing in support of large hydropower dam development. Although the CDM was designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote sustainable development, it has financed hydropower dams that have caused serious environmental and social impa...

The Pak Mun Dam on the Mun River in Ubon Ratchathani Province in northeastern Thailand has long been one of the most controversial hydropower projects in Southeast Asia. The environmental and social impacts associated with blocking important fish migrations between the mainstream Mekong River and the Mun River Basin are particularly well known. Fis...

The Pak Mun dam is among the most controversial hydropower projects in Thailand. However, the dam's impacts on upriver tributaries have been neglected. We engaged fishers living in three villages along the Sebok River-a major tributary of the Mun River, upstream of the Pak Mun dam-to collect fish catch data for 24 months between 2014 and 2016. Usin...

Various terms are used to characterize fishers' knowledge. Here we use situated fishers' knowledge to refer to knowledge about long-distance fish migrations held by ethnic Lao fishers living in the Mekong River Basin in northeastern Thailand, southern Laos, and northeastern Cambodia. We consider the mobility of knowledge, humans, and fish, and adop...

Nanaimo, British Columbia, on the east coast of Canada's Vancouver Island, was one of the places where Japanese Canadians settled during the twentieth century. In 2018, I published an article in the Canadian Geographer titled, "An anti-racism methodology: The Native Sons and Daughters and racism against Asians in Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada",...

Hundreds of low-budget Hmong language films — comedies, action films, horror films, historical fiction movies, documentaries and others — have been produced for Hmong American audiences since the 1990s. Most of them have been produced by 1.5-generation Hmong American men in Thailand, in collaboration with Hmong Thais who work for Hmong American pro...

Only a few decades ago, there was not a country in Asia that recognised the existence of specifically and legally defined ‘Indigenous Peoples’. In recent years, however, that has changed, albeit unevenly. The concept of indigeneity is being increasingly accepted, both by governments and the public, although it remains highly controversial, even in...

This article presents a chronology of the growth of the concept of Indigeneity in Thailand, analysing the particular ways in which the global Indigenous movement has taken root in the country. In Thailand, transnational support networks and the opening of political associational space played key roles in facilitating the growth of, first, a regiona...

Since the early 2000s the Lao government has dramatically increased the number of large-scale land concessions issued for agribusinesses. While studies have documented the social and environmental impacts of land dispossession, the role of Vietnamese labour on these Vietnamese-owned rubber plantations has not previously been investigated. Taking a...

Few people who have not visited Laos know where "Champassak" is located. Even fewer are aware of the Champassak Royal House. This is not surprising, as Champassak is not included as one of Southeast Asia's nation states, and thus is not prominently identified on any world maps. Nor is the Champassak Royal House legally recognized anywhere in the wo...

Key Messages It is important to develop methodologies to counter white supremacy and racism against Asians. The Native Sons and Daughters of British Columbia were leading organizations engaged in Asian racism during the 20 th century. The production of knowledge associated with better understanding past racism against Asians can be useful for count...

Is there any kind of community heritage that links individuals and homes within the context of increasing mobility? In this study, the unique Bangbei system of the Bai ethnic group in Dianbei District of Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province, China is examined. In-depth interviews have been employed to assess the evolution of Bangbei and...

This study investigated the implications of large-scale land concessions in the Red River Delta, Vietnam, and Northeast Cambodia with regard to urban and agricultural frontiers, agrarian transitions, migration, and places from which the migrant workers originated. Field interviews conducted near large-scale land concessions for industrial estates i...

Increasing global demand for natural rubber began in the mid-2000s and led to large-scale expansion of plantations in Laos until rubber latex prices declined greatly beginning in 2011. The expansion of rubber did not, however, occur uniformly across the country. While the north and central Laos experienced mostly local and smallholder plantations,...

Since taking control of Laos in 1975, the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party and the government of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) have relied heavily on secrecy, denial and information management and control to govern. These tools have been used for presenting the Party and state as united in support of the country’s one-party communi...

What is the relationship between Buddha images and the legitimization of political power over space? What understandings exist amongst royals concerning regaining spatial power associated with Buddha images? This article considers these questions with a particular focus on the Champassak Royal House, a royal family that was originally spatially con...

Environmental and social impact assessment is now a widely accepted tool in the Mekong Region for assessing the impacts of hydropower dams and large-scale industrial tree plantations. However, the cross-sectoral and cumulative effects of such projects have not been sufficiently addressed. Where cumulative impacts have been considered, studies have...

Although biographical and life history approaches are potentially important tools for historical geographers, biographical methodologies have rarely been used to specifically investigate borderland dynamics. In this article, I argue that biography can be useful for understanding the ways in which borders have been recognised and negotiated historic...

On 22 May 2014, the Thai military conducted a coup d’état and discarded the previous constitution. In April 2015, a new draft constitution was prepared. Although eventually rejected by the military, it represented an exciting moment for activists, as it recognized the existence of ‘indigenous peoples’ (referred to as chon pheun muang in the draft)....

The Nam Theun 2 Hydropower Project (NT2) in Laos has – despite being considered a model project by its main international supporter, the World Bank – had major social and environmental impacts on downstream areas in the Xe Bang Fai (XBF) River Basin. In this article we argue that NT2 has been especially damaging to ethnic Brou Indigenous Peoples, a...