Population and migration

Increasing pressure on the environment

Population increases, caused by high birth rates and in-migration (spontaneous and planned) lead to increasing pressures on limited resources to meet basic needs, especially land for agricultural production.

The in-migration (the internal movement of people within a region) of other ethnic groups into biologically sensitive areas of the Greater Mekong area brings with it different and often unsustainable ways of life.

Immigrants increase the demand for water, energy, land (for housing and agriculture), and products (from agriculture and industry), all of which have implications for natural forest management and protection in the region.

For example, the total population in the buffer zone of Cat Tien National Park in Vietnam, grew from 140,987 people in 1992 to 188,479 in 2002. This is an increase of 34%, or 3.4% annually compared to the national average of 1.3% in 2001.

Why do people migrate?

Gold mining encourages in-migration that alters economic and social relationships, usually to the detriment of sustainable customary resource management systems.

Agriculture is often linked to the construction of infrastructure projects like roads, bridges, and dams and it leads to significant secondary impacts such as migration. Migrants from other parts of the Greater Mekong often clear large areas of forest to make way for cash-crops such as coffee. The more sustainable subsistence farming methods of local ethnic groups then lose the natural resources on which they survived.