Picture of the Week 8.9.14 – The Corridor of Opportunity
By Tessa Bunney on 8 September 2014
Happy to say I have arrived back safely from Phongsaly and Houaphan provinces, more about that in the coming days but in the meantime here is this weeks picture from Phongsaly Province.
In families living away from the main roads and markets, food caught or collected from the wild, especially edible plants and small animals still make-up fifty percent of their diet. Nature’s bounty in providing for the Lao may be plentiful, but this does not mean that the task of growing and finding enough food for family subsistence and maintenance is easy. It is a major preoccupation of rural families and takes the bulk of time and energy of every man, woman and child.
With population growth and the recent rapid clearance of forests and diversion of water resources to make way for new development projects, the biodiversity of Laos on land and in water is under pressure. In the past, the bulk of products collected or caught from the wild were used to feed the family, but nowadays a substantial proportion of products are sold on the markets for cash.