Sustainable Wildlife Management Programme expands in Asia-Pacific - New regional project starting in Lao PDR will help boost zoonotic disease prevention

Bangkok/Vientiane – The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) today launched a new Asia-Pacific project in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR) as part of the global Sustainable Wildlife Management (SWM) Programme.

The two-year EUR 2 million SWM Asia-Pacific project, which is funded by the European Union, aims to support the prevention and detection of zoonotic risks in the region, where frequent human-wildlife interactions present high risks of zoonotic disease emergence and transmission.

Starting in Lao PDR, the project will work in the region to reduce the risk of zoonotic diseases through community-driven sustainable wildlife management and the application of the One Health approach.

“The launch of the SWM Asia-Pacific Project in Lao PDR marks a pivotal step towards enhancing food security and protecting biodiversity,” said Kyung Kim, FAO Representative to Lao PDR. “By integrating sustainable wildlife management with One Health principles, we aim to ensure healthier communities and ecosystems for generations to come”.

Action in Lao PDR

Wild meat harvesting is common in and around forested areas of Lao PDR, both as a source of food and income for rural communities, in part driven by increasing urban demand.

While this activity is often essential for rural food security and livelihoods, unsustainable hunting is contributing to biodiversity loss and raising concerns about zoonotic disease risks.

FAO will work with the Lao PDR's Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and SWM Programme partners – the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD) and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) – to assess the role wild meat plays in rural food security and livelihoods, as well as potential risks of zoonotic disease transmission within wild meat value chains and formulate recommendations for future interventions.

The project will also design and pilot community-based surveillance networks, linking them with provincial and national disease alert systems to strengthen detection and response to potential zoonotic disease spillover events.

In addition, project partners will work with the Lao PDR government to strengthen legal and institutional frameworks for the implementation of sustainable wildlife management and the One Health approach.

Part of a global initiative

Lao PDR joins 15 countries implementing sustainable management models through the SWM Programme in Africa, the Caribbean and Asia-Pacific.

A partnership between FAO, the Centre for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry, WCS and CIRAD, the SWM Programme has been working with partner countries to balance wildlife conservation with the needs of communities that rely on wildlife for food and livelihoods since its inception in 2017.

The Programme was developed under the Organization of African, Caribbean, and Pacific States (OACPS) and is primarily funded by the European Union (EU), with co-funding from the French Development Agency (AFD) and the French Global Environment Facility (FFEM).

In 2023, with renewed commitments from the EU, the SWM Programme partners announced a second phase, focusing on consolidating lessons learned and upscaling the interventions to ensure the long -term sustainability and impact of the Programme.

As part of this new phase, the SWM AP Project was designed to further expand the work of the SWM Programme in the Asia and Pacific region.

The SWM Programme is already working in the region in Papua New Guinea, where it has been establishing community-led wildlife management initiatives in the Bismarck Forest Corridor.