Ecological care work in bamboo value chains: Feminist political ecology insights to care in forest-human relations

Over the last 20 years, bamboo has been promoted and marketed as an innovative and eco-friendly material, often evoking a sense of responsibility and care for nature. This article broadens understandings of care in forest-human relations, by examining the ecological care work done by peasants and emerging local civil society organizations in the Lao People's Democratic Republic (PDR). Drawing on feminist political ecology and qualitative research conducted in Houaphanh province, we take the Bamboo Program as a case at the intersection of sustainable forest management and development interventions in the Lao PDR. We critically question: 1) the allocation of care for nature to green consumption; 2) the narratives that still represent upland peasants as “unproductive”, “destructive”, and “indifferent” towards forests; and 3) the disregard of care work and reproductive labor in research on forest-based commodities and value chains. Our analysis demonstrates how ecological care work is embedded in everyday material and affective practices that peasants and civil society organizations carry out with(in) the bamboo forests, and how livelihoods and bamboo value chains are dependent on such work. We conclude that recognizing ecological care work is a matter of ecological justice, as it challenges dominant environmental narratives of caring for nature and highlights the everyday practices of maintaining bamboo forests and livelihoods in peri-capitalist spaces.