For the last two decades, since the Rio Conference on Environment and Development, land-use
planning (LUP) has been carrying the hopes of providing a concrete instrument to translate sustainable
development discourses into practice. In the Lao PDR, it is being seen as a way to provide alternatives to
swidden agriculture and more recently, as an instrument to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and forest
Degradation (REDD). However, when assessing the impact of past LUP, many observers have noted the
discrepancy between good intentions, as displayed in policy and project documents, and actual implementation
due to the limited capacity of local institutions (Lestrelin et al., 2011a). Overcoming such a problem requires an
objective analysis of its extent and its potential negative consequences. To avoid blind trust in delusive success
stories, evaluation methods assessing the quality of the LUP process (i.e. level of community participation and
understanding of LUP activities by local stakeholders) have been designed (Lestrelin et al., 2011b). From the
perspective of developing a country-wide monitoring system for participatory land use planning (PLUP), this
paper addresses two main research questions:
• How to assess the quality of a PLUP output, i.e. measuring the gap between principles and practice in
PLUP?
• What can be done to increase the credibility, and therefore the practicality and feasibility, of the
proposed land use plans?
By analysing land zoning outputs from past and recent PLUP this paper underlines the irrationality of village
LUP maps which often appear inconsistent with the principles of land use policies. In general the management of
rural landscapes in the uplands of Lao PDR is difficult to grasp due to a tacit agreement between villagers
willing to minimize land taxes and district authority lacking proper human and financial resources.
Acknowledging the gap between the declared agricultural land from household surveys and what can be
observed from satellite or village land use maps, the paper proposes a new approach to increase planning realism
while reinforcing local participation in the PLUP process. An innovative participatory platform involving local
communities in learning the complexities of LUP through a role-play was proposed by Bourgoin and Castella
(2011). The authors argued that a landscape simulation exercise can help disclose the landscape management and
livelihood strategies of different stakeholders at different scales.
Building on this knowledge, this paper describes a negotiation platform allowing villagers discuss land zoning
and management practices. Adaptive and accessible, the method is assisted by a participatory 3D model
combined with a village socio-economic and geographic information system providing feedback about
cost/benefit associated with each land use plan. Through successive iterations, villagers gradually refine their
plans by exploring land use change scenarios.
Beside its contribution to enhanced participation in landscape planning, the proposed method, which was
successfully tested in six study villages of Viengkham District, can support the introduction of innovative land
use systems in the northern uplands of Lao PDR. Furthermore, this instrument can be used to certify land use
plans and provide a standard procedure for PLUP implementation.