"More Chinese-owned Banana Plantations to Close in Laos", 12 April 2017

Lao government orders closing down environmentally destructive Chinese banana farms, first reported in...Bokeo province, are now in force in six other provinces...

The ban, which will shutter the commercial operations when their contracts expire and forbid new contracts from being signed, was conveyed by provincial authorities in Phongsaly, Luang Prabang, Xayaboury, Bokeo, Luang Namtha, Oudomsay, and Vientiane...

Provincial authorities are now considering how to rehabilitate land contaminated by the heavily polluting plantations, an official of Phongsaly province’s natural resources and environment department told RFA.

“Authorities will not renew the investors’ contracts when those contracts expire, but will provide villagers with other occupations, because the banana plantations are damaging the environment and people’s lives,” the official said. 

Illnesses and deaths have long been reported among Lao workers exposed to chemicals on the Chinese-owned farms, with many suffering open sores, headaches, and dizzy spells...

Sixty-three percent of plantation workers in the country’s north reported falling ill over a six-month period, with 35 percent reporting illness during the same period in the country’s central and southern areas, according to a study last year by Laos’s National Agriculture and Forestry Institute.