The demand for water is rising rapidly, particularly in agricultural and environmental sectors. This has led to more competition to access limited and scarce water resources. Therefore, choosing an appropriate approach to manage water resources, distribution and allocation, to attain sustainable agriculture is critical for every country worldwide. The most well-known method to preserve or store water and adaptation strategy to climate change is irrigation. This paper wished to understand the impact of irrigation on farmers’ income in Laos, especially from rice, which is the main crop of rural people. The difference in differences (DID) method was employed to estimate the regression results. The DID was estimated by the pooled OLS of the effect on the log of households’ rice farm income and log of households’ total income with household head’s age, education, gender, household size, ethnicity and harvest areas variables pointing out the coefficients of the outcome variables of interest (after treatment) were 0.037 and 0.076 with positive sign but statistically insignificant. The result implies irrigation has no impact on rice products. In other words, irrigation does not increase households’ income. The finding indicates the type of irrigation, the location of the operation headquarters and the management system or governance are crucial factors for explaining the impact of irrigation on the rice products in Laos.

Human activities have been limited by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), and the normal conditions of our lifestyles have changed, particularly in terms of electricity usage. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of COVID-19 on the power sector in the Lao PDR in 2020, as well as the challenge of using solar energy to supply power to the network using an optimal approach. The returns on investment of network extension and the purchase of solar energy were also evaluated. Furthermore, load conditions caused by the country’s lockdown policy were analyzed. We analyzed the optimal sizing and location of solar energy using a particle swarm optimization method based on the main objective functions, with the system’s power loss decreasing and its reliability improved. The results demonstrated that the suddenly reduced load from industry and commercial business did not have a large impact on its operations; however, revenue was reduced. The optimal method for connecting solar energy to a network can reduce power loss and improve system reliability. In addition, we discovered that the location and capacity of solar generation can reduce the investment costs of extensions for new lines, with the surplus power being exported.

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The Community-Driven Development (CDD) approach has been applied to more than 5,000 subprojects in 2,000 villages in the Lao PDR. CDD has the potential to make poverty reduction efforts more responsive to the need, more inclusive, more sustainable, and more cost-effective than traditional, centrally led programs. Many CDD projects could not survive due to financial support since many CDD projects could not sustain costs. The overall objective of this research is to assess the sustainability of CDD projects in Lao PDR with the specific objectives to investigate whether the degree of community contribution does matter for the current existence of CDD projects and to assess whether the community’s contribution could enhance the current performance of CDD projects. Logit regression is the main model to analyze the impact of the community’s contribution to the sustainability of CDD projects in Lao PDR. The result suggests that community participation in labor and finance are key factors for the sustainability of CDD projects.

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