The Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) framework, a programme for regional development by the Asian Development Bank, has brought about fast paced economic growth. However, poor people's livelihoods, culture and environment have been seriously compromised:
- many of the region's ethnic minorities have suffered loss of control over their livelihoods, disempowerment and relegation to the bottom of an increasingly stratifying social pyramid - in fact, ethnicity is the single greatest determinant of vulnerability in the GMS;
- where there used to be widespread, localised control over natural resources (most importantly rivers and forests), there is now competition between local users and external commercial interests. This has shrunk the real economic base of rural livelihoods - the ability of natural resources to support poor people’s livelihoods in the GMS is at a crisis point;
- for many ethnic minority groups, especially shifting cultivators, the loss of traditional agriculture is a loss of culture - this is primary to the experience of poverty in the GMS.
There is therefore urgent need for:
- legal and administrative protection of the diverse forms of resource tenure used by ethnic minorities and subsistence agriculturalists;
- more nuanced thinking about the effects of infrastructure, markets and growth on poverty;
- a serious consideration of the value and role of culture in human wellbeing.
