The Asian Development Bank and the produ

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doi:10.1111/sjtg.12093

The Asian Development Bank and the
production of poverty: Neoliberalism,
technocratic modernization and land
dispossession in the Greater
Mekong Subregion
Kearrin Sims
The Institute for Culture and Society, The University of Western Sydney, Penrith, Australia
Correspondence: Kearrin Sims (email: k.sims@uws.edu.au)

In 1992 the Asian Development Bank coordinated a meeting between government representatives
from China, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam to discuss regional economic
integration. From that meeting the Greater Mekong Subregion was formed to promote peace and
prosperity within the Mekong countries. Yet, despite more than more than USD 14 billion being
spent on facilitating trade, development and infrastructural ties between these nations, poverty
remains widespread. This article provides a critical analysis of the Asian Development Bank and its
approach to development and poverty alleviation within the Greater Mekong Subregion. It suggests that the institution’s technocratic neoliberal development ideology provides a discursive
legitimation to processes of displacement and dispossession that has seen the production of new

forms of poverty. To make this argument, the article draws on an ethnographic study of the
local-scale implications of forced resettlement at the Luang Prabang Airport. It conducts an analysis
of how the Asian Development Bank defines and measures poverty, and critiques the institution’s
resettlement guidelines for the airport project.
Keywords: Asian Development Bank, development, displacement, Greater Mekong Subregion,
Laos, neoliberalism

Introduction
The Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) is an economic connectivity programme that
was formulated in 1992 following an Asian Development Bank (ADB) initiated meeting
of the now GMS member-states of Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and
Vietnam. It is a region that incorporates three of Southeast Asia’s least developed
countries and approximately 310 million people whose livelihoods are dependent on
subsistence or semi-subsistence agriculture (AusAID, 2007: 4). Initially beginning as a
programme targeting the development of transnational infrastructures, the GMS
framework has since been expanded to include 10 working sectors and 11 flagship
programmes that focus on agriculture, energy, the environment, human resource development, investment, telecommunications, tourism, trade and transportation (ADB,
2012a). Specific projects that have been implemented to facilitate regional flows include
new bridges across the Mekong River, transnational highways and ‘economic corridors’,
telecommunication networks, trade agreements and upgrades to multiple airports. In

addition, there are ongoing plans to develop a regional railway system (ADB, 2010;
2011; 2012a).
At the first GMS summit in 2002, the region’s member-states declared that the
principal objective of the GMS programme was to ‘lift people from poverty and
Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography •• (2015) ••–••
© 2015 Department of Geography, National University of Singapore and Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd

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promote sustainable development for all’ (ADB, 2007: 5). Since then, this statement
has been frequently reiterated in the policy documents of the ADB and many of the
region’s other bilateral aid donors. Yet despite more than USD 14 billion being spent
on two decades of regional integration programmes, poverty remains widespread
(ADB, 2011). According to the latest available figures, the annual GDP per capita
estimates of every GMS country are below USD 10 000, and life expectancy is less
than 74 years (Central Intelligence Agency, 2014a; 2014b; 2014c; 2014d; 2014e;
2014f). The region’s Human Development Index rankings are also amongst the lowest
in the world, with Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar all considered least developed countries (United Nations Development Programme, 2013). Although enhanced foreign

direct investment (FDI), the privatization of public services and upgrades to transnational infrastructures have seen new opportunities for economic growth, they have
also produced widespread environmental degradation, undermined the livelihoods
and well-being of GMS residents, and seen the emergence of new forms of poverty
and socio-economic inequality (Barney, 2009; Cohen, 2009; Kenney-Lazar, 2010;
Baird, 2010; 2011; Guttal, 2011; Howe & Sims, 2011; Andriesse, 2011; Southeast Asia
Globe Magazine, 2013).
This article seeks to contribute to the growing academic analysis around the
poverty-inducing effects of subregional integration within the GMS. By drawing on
critiques of the depoliticizing and technocratic nature of development discourse
(Ferguson, 1990; Mitchell, 2002; Goldman, 2005; Li, 2007), the article contends that
in many instances the ADB’s poverty alleviation objectives are undermined by its
neoliberal development ideology. In particular, the article makes use of Hall et al.’s
(2011: 196) suggestion that visions of development and modernity have the potential
to become a discursive legitimation for the acquisition of land in order to highlight
how ADB development discourse has encouraged ‘development-induced’ displacement and accumulation by dispossession (Harvey, 2005). By neoliberal ideology, I
refer to the favouring of an ‘economic growth first’ approach that presents economic
markets as naturally efficient and impartial, and promotes trade liberalization, deregulation and the privatization of public goods and natural resources (Goldman, 2005: 8).
By technocratic development, I refer to an approach that claims ‘the expertise of
modern engineering, technology, and social science’ will bring sustained socioeconomic progress through the construction of modern infrastructure and the
economization of natural environments (Mitchell, 2002: 15). This is a top-down

approach to development planning that depoliticizes and erases local particularity
(Ferguson, 2005: 378).
In order to move beyond ADB discourses of regional and national development
and begin to understand the local-scale implications of forced displacement on GMS
residents, it is essential to communicate with uprooted communities. This paper combines a discursive critique of key ADB documents with the findings of 10 months’
ethnographic research1 at the resettlement site of 424 households that were displaced
by the upgrading and expansion of Luang Prabang airport. Described by the ADB as
‘a key piece of regional infrastructure’, the airport is considered to be crucial for
economic growth in Laos and the wider GMS (ADB, 2008a: 21). It is a project that
received direct discursive support from the ADB through a technical assistance report
(TAR) that stated that the airport upgrade would provide new opportunities for
poverty alleviation (ADB, 2008a). However, as this article will show, the airport
upgrade represents a telling example of how the ADB provides discursive legitimation
to forced displacement and dispossession within the GMS.

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Asian Development Bank Development Discourse in the GMS

Regional connectivity within the GMS is instituted by a multiplicity of actors, institutions and inter-state agreements. Collaborative partnerships between sub-regional
tourism networks such as the Cambodia-Laos-Thailand ‘Emerald Triangle’ and the
China-Laos-Myanmar-Thailand ‘Golden Quadrangle’ have been developed, an Environment Operations Centre has been established to address transnational environmental concerns, and a GMS Business Forum has been initiated to facilitate regional trade
and investment (Oxfam Australia, 2008; ADB, 2009; 2012b). In addition to memberstate agreements, numerous other development partners have also contributed to
regional integration through aid contributions and technical assistance. Bilateral aid
funding has been wide-ranging, including contributions from Japan, Australia, Sweden,
France, New Zealand and South Korea, while multilateral partners include the International Labour Organization, the European Commission, the United Nations Development Programme, the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the World Bank (ADB,
2012a). By far the most preeminent supporter of GMS regionalism, however, is the
ADB.
The ADB is an international financial institution (IFI) that targets development and
poverty alleviation. As a development bank, ADB’s primary role is to provide loans and
other forms of financing to poverty-alleviating projects in developing countries (Oxfam
Australia, 2008). One of its foremost strategies for poverty alleviation is increased
economic regionalism. As ADB has repeatedly stated throughout its publications,
regional cooperation and integration are considered to be ‘critical for Asia’s march
towards prosperity’ (ADB, 2011: 6) and a process that ‘often help[s] the poor the most’
(ADB, 2009: 7). This assumed connection between poverty alleviation and economic
regionalism is nowhere more evident than in the ADB publications on the GMS.
The ADB states that it ‘initiated and built the GMS programme to achieve a wellintegrated and prosperous Mekong Subregion—free of poverty and committed to protecting the environment’ (ADB, 2008b: 5). A self-described catalyst, advisor and

financier of the GMS, the ADB has played an instrumental role in the region’s growing
interconnectivity. It has provided more than USD 5.4 billion in loans, grants and
technical assistance, facilitated subregional dialogue between member-states and acted
as a secretariat and coordinator for the programme (ADB, 2012a). In addition, the ADB
also serves as a powerful knowledge producer to encourage technocratic neoliberal
development within the GMS. As Glassman (2010: 62) has recognized, the ADB is the
most important source of discursive legitimation for GMS connectivity programmes,
‘naming and defining the GMS while producing a literature that legitimizes and rationalizes GMS projects’.
For the ADB, poverty within the GMS is foremost a product of weak economic
growth, adverse geographic conditions and insufficient transportation and communications infrastructures (ADB, 2005; 2012a). This discourse emphasizes the primacy of the
market and private sector in leading processes of development, and perceives the
integration of poor countries with international markets as crucial to their development
(Oehlers, 2006: 470; Zhai et al., 2009: 19). Despite admissions within ADB-sponsored
publications that the benefits and costs of increased regional infrastructure ‘is extremely
difficult to measure’ (Roland-Holst, 2009: 111–14), underdevelopment is primarily seen
as the result of ‘remoteness’ and ‘isolation’. Once impoverishment is represented in this
manner, poverty-alleviating strategies naturally become targeted towards infrastructural

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Kearrin Sims

investment that ‘gives poor people and underdeveloped areas better access to markets
and economic opportunities’ (ADB, 2009: 82).
In describing poverty as a product of isolation and remoteness, the ADB seeks to
de-politicize and ‘render technical’ processes of development so that it may provide
technocratic solutions for development (Li, 2007). Poor communities in GMS countries
are not characterized as such because of complex social, cultural and political relationships; rather their impoverishment stems from, according to the ADB, being in small,
landlocked countries such as Laos that are not ‘connected to economic centers and
wider regional and global markets’ (ADB, 2009: 23). Frequently lacking from such
descriptions is the acknowledgement of the poverty-inducing characteristics of economic regionalism and the persistent social and cultural determinants of poverty that
are unlikely to be ameliorated through technocratic modernization (Mitchell, 2002;
Goldman, 2005; Li, 2007). Sweeping claims by the ADB that ‘life in the border
communities has changed for the better’ (ADB, 2008b: 47), for example, contrast with
the findings of extensive ethnographic research by Sturgeon et al. (2013: 53) in the
‘Golden Triangle’ border regions of Thailand, China and Laos, which found that the
most minority communities are experiencing ‘increasing marginalization under deepening regional capitalism’. Likewise, ADB statements that it supports ‘world-class,
environmentally-friendly infrastructure networks’ (ADB, 2009: 36) are also contravened by the numerous instances where new infrastructures resulted in illegal logging,
polluting mining operations and environmentally destructive monoculture plantations
such as rubber. This technocratic neoliberal reading of development by the ADB is also

reflected in its expenditure.
Although the GMS programme has funded a wide range of development issues, it
has primarily been a programme for financing transportation, energy and telecommunications infrastructures to promote trade flows and investment opportunities (Oxfam
Australia, 2007). From 1990 to 2012, the ADB’s combined expenditures on transport
and electricity within the GMS accounted for 96.2 per cent of its total investment, while
in Laos the institution’s 2009 cumulative spending on health and social services
amounted to less than 7 per cent of what it spent on transport infrastructure and ICT
(information and communications technology) development (ADB, 2011; 2012a). As
ADB openly acknowledges, ‘the transport sector has been at the forefront of the GMS
program’ (ADB, 2008b: i).
Another way to assess the technocratic neoliberal model for development advocated
by the ADB is to examine how the institution defines and measures poverty. When the
ADB provides statistical ‘evidence’ to display the poverty-alleviating achievements of
hard and soft infrastructures, it draws on a ‘dollar a day’ poverty-line measure of
economic output that is based on minimum standards of living measurements and
calculated on the basis of economic expenditures. Using estimates from such calculations, it states that between 1990 and 2003 the percentage of people living on less than
a dollar a day fell in all GMS countries, decreasing from 52.7 per cent to 28.8 per cent
in Laos and to less than 1 per cent in Thailand (Oxfam Australia, 2008: 26). However,
as has been shown on numerous occasions, measuring improved standards of living or
quality of life depends on a far more complex analysis than just economic measures

(Sen, 1999; Tsing, 2005; Khan et al., 2009; Carroll, 2010). As the non-profit development organization Oxfam Australia (2008: 27) has stressed, many people in the GMS
have livelihoods that are dependent on non-monetary forms of subsistence such as
farming, fishing or forms of bartering exchange for which such measures cannot
account. When development is defined as a straightforward lack of technology,

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5

infrastructure and economic productivity, it not only overlooks complex socio-cultural
causes of poverty, but also becomes an indirect means to delegitimize the complaints of
those who have experienced new forms of impoverishment as a result of increased
regional connectivity. Of particular concern to this article, ADB discourses of development have also legitimized acts of displacement and dispossession as pro-poor strategies
for development.
Regionalism, dispossession and the creation of poverty in Laos
Laos is a small, ‘land-locked’ and ‘least developed’ country that has placed regional
integration at the core of its framework for national development. Located at the
geographic centre of the Mekong region, it shares borders with all other GMS states and
is of principal importance to regional infrastructure and connectivity programmes. Two
of the region’s primary ‘economic corridors’ pass through the country, and so too will

the planned China to Singapore railway system, if completed (ADB, 2010). Laos is an
important source of natural resources for other GMS states and is envisioned to become
a regional hub for hydropower electricity (Creak, 2011). However, while regionalism
has been a central component of both the Government of Laos (GoL) and ADB development strategies, many academic studies detail the socially, culturally and environmentally destructive ramifications of technocratic neoliberal regionalism. In particular,
greater regionalism in Laos has seen habitat loss, species eradication, pollution, soil
erosion, rising socio-economic inequality, loss of food sources and other natural
resources, undermining of local economies, increased rates of communicable diseases
such as HIV/AIDs, insufficient compensation payments for the displaced, and threats
to the cultural value systems of resettled ethnic minority communities (Rabé et al.,
2007; Barney, 2009; Glassman, 2010; Middleton, 2009; Rigg, 2009; Sofield, 2009;
Kenney-Lazar, 2010; Baird, 2011; Guttal, 2011; Kemp, 2011; Lund, 2011; Sturgeon
et al., 2013). It has also led to a proliferation of land acquisitions, ‘development-induced’
displacements and processes of accumulation by dispossession (Ngaosrivathana & Rock,
2007; Gunn, 2008; Cohen, 2009; Baird, 2010; Kenney-Lazar, 2010; Hall et al., 2011;
Lyttleton & Nyiri, 2011; Southeast Asia Globe Magazine, 2013).
As growing FDI continues to pour into Laos, access to land is becoming increasingly
competitive. By 2010 around 3500 000 ha, or more than 25 per cent of the country’s
total land area, had already been allocated to foreign investors in the form of land
concessions (Dwyer, 2011: 311). Hydropower projects, mining, legal and illegal logging,
agribusiness plantations, hotels, shopping centres, casinos and golf courses have all

increased alongside enhanced regionalism and have frequently involved both the
appropriation of communal land and the violent suppression of public opposition to
these processes of ‘development’. In many instances the impact of these new investments on both displaced communities and the natural environment has been substantial. Indeed, according to the National Land Management Authority of Laos, of more
than 2000 land concessions in the country, over 50 per cent have resulted in ‘detrimental effects’ to the environment and local residents (Vientiane Times, 2011).
While attempts to legitimize the forced displacement of landholders through discourses of ‘development’ in Laos predates the formation of the GMS, it is clear that the
past two decades of regional integration has bolstered such practices. As Barney (2009:
146) notes, the country’s integration with regional economic networks has been shaped
by a form of ‘frontier neoliberalism’ that is producing ‘new patterns of marginalization
and livelihood insecurity for a vulnerable rural population’. Described by Cohen (2009)

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as ‘frontier capitalism’ and by Andriesse (2011: 4) as a ‘state coordinated frontier
economy’, the ‘opening up’ of Laos has been driven by an economic model that
privileges elites’ and foreign investors’ ability to accumulate wealth ‘at the expense of
small firms, villagers, and the natural environment’. As Baird (2010: 3) succinctly states,
‘foreign investors have been acquiring land with rich soils for low state rents, often
without having to appropriately compensate local people, let alone ensure that they
significantly benefit from the investments.’
Yet while considerable attention has been given to the socio-economic impacts of
displacement and dispossession, far less attention has been given to the ADB’s role as a
powerful force of discursive legitimation to such practices. Rapid infrastructure development, privatization and the encouragement of economies of scale have been labelled
by the ADB as crucial to national economic growth, as a force for ‘unlocking’ the regions
‘untapped’ natural resources and as a tool for poverty alleviation on a local scale
(Barney, 2009; ADB, 2011; 2012a). While the ADB states in its resettlement guidelines
that involuntary resettlement should be avoided ‘wherever possible’ (ADB, 2012b: 2),
such displacement is an inherent feature of the broader technocratic neoliberal model
for development that it promotes within the GMS. This is a critical issue that has yet to
be adequately explored. In the following section I look at the how the displacement that
resulted from the upgrading and expansion of the Luang Prabang airport was legitimized through ADB discourses of development.
Legitimizing the Luang Prabang Airport upgrade
Luang Prabang is Laos’s key northern node for increased regional connectivity and one
of the country’s most popular tourist destinations. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site
and a city that is experiencing rapid investments in new hotels, restaurants, marketplaces and other visitor services. However, it is also a city that is more than a day’s road
journey from other GMS hubs (including other provincial capitals in Laos) and that is
consequently dependent on its airport for the majority of tourism and other financial
flows. With incoming passenger numbers to Laos rising at an average annual rate of 20
per cent over the past two decades (Tourism Development Department, 2012), the GoL
has deemed it necessary to upgrade and expand the existing airport facilities.
In technical terms, the objective of the airport upgrade is to improve the runway to
an ‘International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Code 4C Category I precision
approach instrument runway’ and to conduct other necessary infrastructure modifications to support the operation of B737 and A320 aircrafts (ADB, 2008a). The capability
to accommodate a larger aircraft will increase the airport’s accessibility to new destinations and provide the means to conduct direct flights to regional airport hubs such as
Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong and Beijing. It is expected that an increase of 125
per cent of new foreign visitors will arrive within the first three years of the project’s
completion, and that total passenger numbers will rise by almost 400 per cent over the
next 20 years (ADB, 2008a).
According to the ADB TAR that was conducted to facilitate the upgrade, 75.6 per
cent of the estimated project cost of USD 86.3 million will be loaned from the ChinaExim Bank, and the remaining 24.4 per cent of expenditures will be met by the GoL.
Although the ADB did not undertake the construction of the airport upgrade, the
institution provided a crucial discursive legitimation to the project through its TAR.
Designed to provide ‘the necessary justification, feasibility and framework for implementation of the upgrading works’, the TAR included advice on technical matters,

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7

economic and financial analyses of the outcome of the airport upgrade as well as an
environmental, social and poverty impact analysis to ‘recommend interventions that
could maximize poverty reduction’ (ADB, 2006: 14; 2008: 4). The ADB stated that the
upgrading of the airport is expected to ‘contribute to economic growth’, enhance
employment opportunities, promote trade, encourage ‘livelihood diversification’,
enable information exchange and stimulate tourism. It also suggested that the airport
will not only have a ‘spin-off effect’ for the local economy, but also stimulate economic
growth for nearby provinces and provide new economic opportunities across the GMS,
as Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese (amongst others) airlines and tourism operators will
benefit from more streamlined regional connections (ADB, 2008a: 9; 21). In addition,
the TAR stated that the airport upgrade would have ‘a major impact on incomes and the
households of poor and low income/marginal households in the project area’, providing
them ‘with a means to escape poverty’ (ADB, 2008a: 20; 21).
Praising the poverty-alleviating potential of the airport upgrade, the ADB also noted
in the TAR that the new airport site is more than twice as large as the former airport and
would require the relocation of 424 households. Brick factories, educational institutions, religious sites, private homes, businesses, agricultural plots and fruit bearing trees
were all to be destroyed in the relocation process, and estimated costs for resettlement
compensation and environmental mitigation were approximately USD 14.5 million
(ADB, 2008a). Recognizing that this displacement has the potential to undermine local
livelihoods, the ADB developed a comprehensive land acquisition and resettlement
action plan that provided detailed guidelines for the implementation of the resettlement. Poverty-alleviating measures listed in the resettlement plan included vocational
training for resettled women, provision of temporary housing until new homes had
been completed, compensation for moving costs and for the loss of fixed assets such as
fruit trees, public transportation and the provision of staple foods and basic medical
treatment (ADB, 2008a). Having outlined this plan, the ADB concluded that the
resettlement impact was ‘expected to be minor’, and that ‘Lao residents affected by the
project will be fully resettled and compensated’ (ADB, 2006: 9; 2008: 10).
It is important to note, however, that the ADB’s statement that the resettlement
impact would be minor, disregarded a few factors: the negotiated compensation funding
provided by China-Exim bank was more than USD 10 million less than the expected
resettlement costs; there ‘appears to be little knowledge and indeed interest’ by the GoL
in applying guidelines for resettlement; once the ADB’s involvement with the project
ended, standard public disclosure procedures will likely not be followed; and ‘the loss of
paddy lands, gardens and fruit/food bearing trees will be particularly difficult for relocated families as they will have to prepare the soils and replant trees lost, many taking
years to bear a reasonable harvest’ (ADB, 2008a: AF9; AF46; AF39; A8-5).
The resettlement process
In order to move beyond ADB and GMS government discourse and begin to understand
the lived impacts of forced displacement, it is necessary to communicate directly with
the dispossessed. The following analysis draws on 10 months of ethnographic research
and 26 interviews in the Luang Prabang airport resettlement site. The research was
conducted from May 2011 to March 2012, approximately one year after displaced
villagers had been relocated. Given the politically sensitive nature of urban land displacements in Laos (Baird & Shoemaker, 2007; Ngaosrivathana & Rock, 2007), the
research was conducted independently, without assistance from the GOL or nongov-

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ernmental organizations in the country. All interviews were conducted with a translator
that was familiar with the displaced community.
To conduct the resettlement of affected families, land was given out on a lotterybased system, whereby villagers would draw the plot number of their allocated land
from a plastic container. The majority of villagers were relocated before they had the
opportunity to build new homes, and in the initial months of the resettlement the
construction company undertaking the airport upgrade provided canvas tents for
the displaced to live in. Despite the ADB resettlement plan recognizing that displaced
families were only willing to relocate once road, water and electrical services were in
place, it was not until two months after the resettlement that these services were
supplied. Connection fees for water and electricity were at the villagers’ own expense,
and attempts by the displaced to resist resettlement until these services had been
provided were met with threats of imprisonment.
Most relocated residents were allocated a 10 × 18 m2 plot of land, irrespective of how
much property they owned in their previous village. For every informant that I communicated with, their new plots of land were substantially smaller than their former
landholdings, and their compensation payments were insufficient to rebuild their former
homes. To provide just one example, Mr Tshua2 and his family received 18 900 000 kip
(USD 23823) in compensation, but estimated that the total cost to complete his new (still
incomplete) home to the same standard as his former house would be around 70 million
kip (USD 8780), or more than three times the compensation. Inadequate compensation,
the loss of income that many people had experienced during the relocation process and
a flood that had occurred in the resettlement site while residents were still rebuilding new
homes had resulted in widespread food shortages. With so many families lacking
adequate land and compensation to build new homes, overcrowding of housing was
common, as families and friends combined resources to make up for the lack of
government provisions. Indeed, one year after the resettlement had commenced, 51
families were still living illegally on land that they had not been allocated while they
waited for suitable land for building and agriculture. Those who owned vacant land in the
former village site did not receive any compensation, be it monetary or land.
At the more vulnerable end of the resettlement process, I spoke with four families
(although there were more in the same situation) who were still living in tents and were
without access to piped water or electricity for more than a year after being relocated.
To provide property to those who had previously shared land with their family
members, former residents without land titles were also given their own plot of land.
However, the land allocated to these families was on steep, rocky terrain that was
unsuitable for construction, and consequently, the majority of these villagers were both
unable and unwilling to relocate to this land. As two informants stated when asked
when they would relocate to this land:
I do not want to move to this land. Nobody has moved there yet because it is not good land . . .
it is not good for farming because the soil is dry and hard. There is no water there and it will
be hard to carry water [to that place] (elderly woman, pers. comm., Ban Pou Lek, Luang
Prabang, 17 October 2011).
We will not move there until the government says we will kill you if you do not move
(33-year-old woman, pers. comm., Ban Pou Lek, Luang Prabang, 17 October 2011)!

Dark and showered in the dust of passing motor vehicles, the tents these families lived
in were only 5 m2. Living in such a small space had left these residents without room to
unpack much of their belongings, which sat in the corner of each tent in hessian bags.

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9

Lacking in basic public services, three of these families paid expensive fees to purchase
water from their neighbours while the fourth family, who could not afford to do this,
dug a small well on nearby vacant land. Aside from being highly visible to passers-by,
people frequently explained the discomfort of living in a tent for such a long period of
time:
Just this morning, it was raining and water was coming in so we could not sleep (35-year-old
father of three, pers. comm., Ban Pou Lek, Luang Prabang, 15 September 2011).
We live the same [way] as the chicken; when it is hot we are hot and when it is cold we are
cold. When it rains, we get wet (elderly woman, pers. comm., Ban Pou Lek, Luang Prabang, 17
October 2011).

Living in a tent also limited people’s ability to visit friends, travel for everyday reasons
such as shopping, or to seek medical treatment. As one informant explained:
I am angry because my wife and I cannot go anywhere. We have no door and we cannot lock
our tent. If I leave, my wife must stay here, and if she leaves, I must stay here. Otherwise
people can come and steal from us and I am worried people will take our rice (35-year-old
father of three, pers. comm., Ban Pou Lek, Luang Prabang, 24 September 2011).

The man’s limited mobility also affected his family income. He continued:
It is also a problem because we [he and his wife] used to work together and could earn
50 000 kip (USD 6.35) per day. Now only I can work. I do not own a motorbike so before if I
have a job far away my wife will come with me and we can stay at that place [the worksite]
for several days. Now I cannot do this so I have to travel a lot and it is expensive (35-year-old
father of three, pers. comm., Ban Pou Lek, Luang Prabang, 24 September 2011).

Furthermore, living in a tent also had important cultural implications. All the
residents I interviewed who were living in tents were from the Hmong ethnic minority
group, and their cultural values and belief systems had been threatened by the relocation process. Traditional Hmong households are built with both a front and a rear
entrance, with the latter being for spirits to enter and leave the home. When a spiritual
ceremony is undertaken, the rear entrance of the home must be opened. Of the four
Hmong families I interviewed that were living in tents, three stated that they were ‘very
worried’ about not being able to provide an entrance for spirits into their home. As one
informant explained:
One of my biggest worries now is if someone dies or gets sick. I cannot afford to take them to
the hospital, but I also cannot call the Shaman because I have no house to bring them to. The
tent has no windows and no back door (35-year-old father of three, pers. comm., Ban Pou Lek,
Luang Prabang, 8 October 2011).

Resettlement guidelines are not resettlement practices
As the above examples highlight, the airport resettlement programme has had a detrimental impact on the well-being of many local residents. Many of the resettlement
guidelines provided by the ADB were not met. Families were not provided compensation for fruit trees or other lost assets. ‘Temporary housing’ consisted of tents that were
still being used by a number of displaced families more than a year after being relocated
and that provided little comfort in Luang Prabang’s hot, wet climate. Land provisions
were smaller than the ‘basic precondition of 400 m2 per household’ outlined in the ADB
resettlement policy (ADB, 2008a: AF38). Every villager that I communicated with about

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Kearrin Sims

the resettlement felt that the compensation was not sufficient to rebuild their former
homes or to repurchase lost assets and belongings. The ADB recommendations that the
displaced community be provided with the means to lodge disputes about insufficient
compensation or other forms of unfair treatment during the relocation process were also
ignored by the GoL. Finally, recommended vocational training and food provisions were
not provided for the displaced, despite villagers sending a signed petition to the government requesting food aid.
Poor implementation of the resettlement process has limited people’s ability to work,
send their children to school, or conduct their everyday lives at a basic level of human
comfort. It has pushed people further into poverty and made it difficult for them to
better their own futures. Although the upgrading of Luang Prabang airport has placed
this community immediately beside expanding regional connectivity networks, many
people continue to face social, cultural and economic disadvantages that prevent them
from directly benefitting from the increased regional flows that the project will bring.
Pre-existing inequalities have informed the manner in which the resettlement was
conducted and have also been accompanied by new forms of marginalization and
disadvantage that have resulted in the emergence of new livelihood constraints.
Of course, the ADB cannot be held accountable for the implementation of a resettlement programme that was coordinated by the provincial government. Indeed, if the
ADB resettlement guidelines had been adhered to at Luang Prabang airport site, it is
likely that the poverty-inducing impact of the resettlement would have been much less.
However, it must be also be recognized that the ADB argued in favour of the project
irrespective of its own role in coordinating both airport construction and the resettlement of displaced residents. What the airport expansion makes clear is that even when
the ADB recognizes that its resettlement guidelines are unlikely to be adhered to, it
continues to provide an important discursive and ideological legitimation to displacement and dispossession by private actors and GMS states by suggesting that such
practices will lead to development and poverty alleviation.
This is not to suggest that the ADB resettlement guidelines are without merit, or that
they should be abandoned; however, it is certainly important to recognize that the ADB
resettlement guidelines have not had their intended impact. Indeed, given that the ADB
has long stressed the need for greater private sector investment in GMS infrastructures,
the airport represents a more successful achievement of the institution’s development
outlook than if it had provided the funding for the airport upgrade.
Conclusion
The promotion of infrastructure-led economic regionalism is a priority objective of the
ADB that has been legitimized through discourses of development. In its extensive
publication list on the GMS, the ADB has repeatedly asserted that enhanced regionalism, privatization and infrastructure development are essential to the prosperity
and well-being of the impoverished. This paper has countered that regionalism in
the GMS is in fact driven by a technocratic neoliberal development ideology that
prioritizes economic growth as its foremost objective. This model for development has
privileged the expansion of transnational infrastructures and trade networks that most
benefits wealthy elites, and has seen an alarming amount of forced resettlement and
displacement.
Over the past two decades the GMS countries have continued to open their borders
to trade and investment flows. Accompanied by this ‘breaking down’ of trade barriers,

The ADB, regionalism and displacement in the GMS

11

high rates of corruption and politically authoritarian governments, the growing demand
for land and other resources has seen a growth in practices of accumulation by dispossession. The global land grab has come to the region, and as numerous academic studies
have shown, has resulted in new forms of poverty, marginalization and disadvantage
(Vandergeest, 2003; McElwee, 2006; Kenney-Lazar, 2010; Dwyer, 2011; Shatkin, 2011;
Hall et al., 2011; Baird, 2011; 2014). The expansion of such practices has also raised
concerns amongst the international aid sector and led multilateral development institutions such as the ADB to develop comprehensive resettlement guidelines for the
management of forced displacement.
This paper suggests, however, that the ADB’s technocratic neoliberal development
model represents a powerful discursive legitimation for forced resettlement and accumulation by dispossession. As Goldman (2005: 8) and Harvey (2005: 19) both note, IFIs
such as the ADB are at the centre of the dissemination and implementation of a ‘free
market fundamentalism’ and ‘neoliberal orthodoxy’ that is driven into the developing
world in the form of ‘aggressive interventions’, often producing new forms of poverty
and disadvantage. Transnational infrastructure projects such as the Luang Prabang
airport do not have poverty alleviation as their principal objective. The project will not
enhance the mobility of the majority of GMS residents who lack the necessary financial
capital to engage with this tourism-oriented form of transport infrastructure, while the
‘trickle-down’ effect of economic growth that the ADB claimed its projects will promote
has been accompanied by forced displacement, insufficient financial compensation for
lost assets, rising living expenses and the loss of arable land to urban expansion. These
‘exclusory effects’ of capitalist development have often gone unacknowledged by the
ADB and other development experts of a ‘neo-liberal persuasion’ who have given
insufficient attention to the various ways in which ‘poverty is co-produced with wealth’
(Hall et al., 2011: 11).
This is not to suggest that the ADB is solely responsible for processes of accumulation
by dispossession and displacement within the GMS. As both the ethnographic data
provided in this article and numerous other academic inquiries have made clear, the
governments of the Mekong region do not always show an interest in upholding ADB
resettlement guidelines or providing adequate compensation for the displaced. State and
private sector activities have undoubtedly been the leading cause of forced resettlement
within the region. However, the resettlement for the Luang Prabang airport shows that
the ADB’s detailed site-specific resettlement plans are not always implemented and are
of little value to the displaced and dispossessed. Rather than serving to assist the
impoverished, the ADB’s resettlement guidelines have become a tool for providing
a discursive legitimation to processes of accumulation by dispossession. They have
become a means for Mekong governments and private operators to reframe land grabs
as processes of poverty alleviation. This is true not only for projects that the ADB
provides TARs for, but also for the numerous infrastructure projects and private-sector
investments that are legitimized through the ADB’s repeated push for technocratic
neoliberal regionalism.
Furthermore, it is important to recognize that the implications of the ADB’s technocratic approach to regionalism within the GMS is not limited to residents of the
subregion. Over the past two decades a growing number of subregional politicaleconomic partnerships have been formulated, including the Bay of Bengal Initiative for
Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation, the Brunei Darussalam-IndonesiaMalaysia-Philippines East ASEAN Growth Area, the South Asia Subregional Economic
Cooperation programme, the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation programme

12

Kearrin Sims

and the Indonesia-Malaysia-Thailand Growth Triangle. The ADB has stated on a
number of occasions that the GMS programme represents one of the most successful
models of subregionalism in Asia and should be used a template for subregional connectivity programmes across the region. Consequently, an understanding of the institution’s approach to regionalism within the GMS and the implications of this approach
on the livelihoods of GMS residents provide a useful analytical tool for scholars who are
concerned with emerging patterns of regionalism across East, South and Southeast Asia
(Sparke et al., 2004; Yahya, 2005; Batra, 2010; Dent & Richter, 2011).
This article suggests that the GMS is a highly problematic model for povertyalleviation that should not be applied as a template to be replicated elsewhere. As I have
previously argued (Howe & Sims, 2011), within the GMS there is a need for a more
holistic approach to development that better attends to the most vulnerable communities and provides a greater voice to the displaced and dispossessed. Without these
changes, it is unlikely that the ADB’s frequently stated goals of sustainable development
and poverty alleviation will ever be achieved.

Endnotes
1 Ethnographic fieldwork in Laos was conducted from May 2011 to March 2012.
2 To protect the anonymity of respondents all names provided are pseudonyms.
3 All conversions are based on a rate of 7935.53 kip to USD 1.

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