CONCLUSION: "A developing country like Lao PDR is struggling to gain recognition from other countries in the world. This requires that the country applies a human rights perspective to governance of land. In this case the land rights are the rights of the ethnic groups in the uplands that practice customary communal tenure. These groups would like the government to accept and register their communal land use legally. The first step towards this is in the development of the National Land Use Policy which is still in draft. This study provides evidence-based arguments for the inclusion of a respect for customary communal tenure in the land policy. The field study on communal tenure in Houaphan can serve the government in terms of integration of local land governance aspects into its development planning process. The research has brought an increased understanding on biological characteristics of the common resources and how communities use and manage such resources in a way that everyone including how the poor share benefits and responsibilities to keep the resource sustainable and thus contribute to the national land management process. The research analyzed how local ethnic group farmers in Houaphan view the resources that they have traditionally used as the property of their community. They have communally organized institutions that provide sufficient incentives to ensure equity in access to land and for the farmers to invest in enhancing the productivity of the resource system through internal rules that assign rights to individual households, while protecting the outer boundaries. These rules are oral internal rules. They are collectively created, used and developed by generations of villagers. The internal rules include characteristics of natural and social aspects and they support the improvement of local life in terms of protection of the resources for future use. The research has found that the communal tenure system in Houaphan is slowly affected by legal land and forest management activities of the government, particularly where the government does not integrate local practice of use and management of local resources of local ethnic people. Currently, many international and local business investors are looking at natural resources in Houaphan province as business destination. Evidence-based research result shows that it is necessary to protect the land of the ethnic groups to safeguard against land loss to business activities which may be planned without considering existing communal tenure. Many local communities will lose their customary rights to their common property resources and the country will at the later stage have to address more complicated political issues if local communities see that they are losing land to outsiders. The evidence-based findings of this research suggest an option that communal tenure rights of local communities in Houaphan should be legally recognised along with provision of clear set of management rules and the formation of the village as a legal entity to fully exercise the management of the resources through an issuance of communal titles to the land parcels that make up the common property of the village. The communal tenure should include the fallows of the shifting cultivation uplands and all the customary communal tenure of upland and lower land communities. The cultural and social dimension of communal land use is a critical aspect to consider in order to work out strategies for the future development of rural life in the province. This will lay a foundation for local people to improve their social-economic condition and ensure their participation in the country?s development process. The study has applied selectively the theory of Thomas Højrup to form a macro view of the country?s development process in the remote areas. As part of the interpellation conditions highlighted by Højrup, the country is experiencing a profound process of transformation. The Government of Laos organizes local societies and re-arranges land and forests in order to transform a traditional subsistence economy to a market economy. In practice, interpellation does not always turns out successfully because many economic development activities destroy a local practice that is worth preserving in terms of livelihood and human rights of the communities. This happens in particular where traditional common property systems are found and the systems that have existed long before Lao PDR came into being. The transformation means change and this change is a question that needs to be clearly answered before communities agree to participate in the development process. Where such change is proposed by outsiders, local people need to know that it brings to them better results in comparison to what they already have. Otherwise they are reluctant to participate in the country?s transformation process as they value their own customary ways. This reveals that not only the country?s worldview, but also the view of local people towards how communal resources should be managed is important for the transformation. So far the local perceptions and practices of communal tenure is not widely understood by government officers and the more studies that are carried out to feed into the finalization of the land policy and new land law the better."