Lao PDR is known as a rich country in term of natural resources but poor in term of its development indicators. The process of market integration and, more widely, of globalization is providing new opportunities for development but is also threatening its natural resource base. Furthermore, global initiatives on climate change mitigation or biodiversity conservation tend to impose new environmental regulations to resource rich countries in the absence of coordination mechanisms between global agenda and local realities. Adaptive, policy relevant research is needed to accompany the necessary institutional changes towards sustainable development pathways adapted to the diversity of local situations.
In this paper, we present a transdisciplinary research framework to stimulate a policy dialogue on sustainable upland development in the Northern provinces of Lao PDR. On the one hand, we aim at understanding how policy implementation processes and the outcome of decision-making by different stakeholders shape contexts of resources valuation and management. On the other hand, we aim at bringing evidence into decision-making processes by capitalizing knowledge from a large number of case studies into a context-sensitive policy framework. Existing knowledge networks at meso-scale are harnessed to allow for decision-making that is generalized but yet spatially differentiated, informed but yet timely, inclusive of different actors’ interest but yet coordinated.