The omnipotence of the World Bank on a global scale means that it is often regarded as the most influential partner in bringing about transformations in developing countries. This article contributes to ongoing discussions of this issue by examining some effects of the Bank's participatory agenda in one of its flagship projects, the Nam Theun 2 (NT2) hydropower scheme in Laos. Critical accounts suggest that the Bank's promotion of participation in donor‐dependent countries like Laos is either a guise or an imposition. These propositions are considered in two settings where participation was debated around the time of the Bank's loan appraisal for NT2: first, an international stakeholders’ workshop held in Vientiane; and second, some international attempts to identify the concerns of villagers living near the NT2 dam site. In workshops and villages, participation is a negotiated performance whereby competing representations emerge through the interaction between village, state and international actors. More generally, this article shows that a grounded view of development can attend to the practices that constrain the hegemonic tendencies of the World Bank, even while maintaining awareness of the potency of its policies and interventions.

Background The consumption of dairy products is encouraged at all life stages as a nutrient-rich component of the diet. However, many milk and yogurt products, particularly flavored varieties, may contain large amounts of free sugar. Objectives The aim of this paper was to evaluate the availability and sugar content of flavored milks and yogurts in supermarkets across 3 countries: Australia, England, and South. Methods Nutrition information for flavored milks and yogurts was collected by trained researchers and supplemented by crowd-sourced data from a smartphone application. Data were extracted in April 2018 and 3724 milk and yogurt products were available for analysis. Mean sugar concentrations were compared across countries with the use of ANOVA followed by Tukey's post-hoc pairwise comparisons. Sugar concentrations were compared with the UK's “green” traffic-light classifications. Results Approximately 74% ( n = 2753) of all products were flavored. Flavored products contained nearly twice the average total sugar content of unflavored products, with substantial variability: mean total sugar was 9.1 g/100 mL (range: 4.3–15.0 g/100 mL) and 11.5 g/100 g (range: 0.1–22.6 g/100 g) for flavored milks and yogurts, respectively. Free sugars contributed an estimated 41% and 42% of total sugar in milks and yogurts, respectively. Flavored milks in England had ∼0.7 g/100 mL higher total sugar on average compared with Australia and South Africa ( P ≤ 0.04), whereas flavored yogurts in South Africa had the lowest average total sugar (∼2 g/100 g lower than England and Australia; P < 0.001). Less than 4% of flavored products would receive a “green” rating under the UK traffic-light labeling scheme. Conclusions In Australia, England, and South Africa, flavored milks and yogurts are highly prevalent in the food supply and contain significantly higher concentrations of total and added sugars than unflavored products.

This article examines the intricacy within stylized debates that surround conservation and the regulation of wildlife trade in Southeast Asia. Illegal and unregulated trade in wildlife has been characterized by conservation groups as a great risk for wildlife worldwide and the prime threat for remaining wildlife populations in Laos. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) is the centrepoint of the global discourse on wildlife trade. Popular representations of wildlife trade promoted by conservation organizations construct an image of regulation through CITES as a global necessity. The assumed morality of such interventions can provoke counter accusations about the immorality of impositions by Western conservationists. Yet both of these competing representations of wildlife trade regulation encourage externally-focused moralized debates that obscure the internal dynamics within global conservation, national policy formation and local practice.  Recognition of the simplifications that characterize these three domains cautions against any idealized contrast between global hegemony and local resistance in critical studies of conservation. Instead, the focus becomes the contestation that is often hidden within such dichotomies. Keywords: Conservation, wildlife, Lao PDR, CITES

Much productive scholarship across Asia has considered the links between religious resurgence and authoritarian governance. However, limitations persist in conceptualizations of state authority, which I examine in the literature on Southeast Asia. Noteworthy are the assumptions that central institutions are definitive of authoritarian states, and divides between study of the sacred and secular. I propose the notion of “ritual governance” to address these conceptual issues and illustrate this with an ethnographic case study from a major development project in Laos, the Nam Theun 2 hydropower scheme. I show how Lao government officials working with ethnic minority villagers used a baci ritual and village meeting to combine a persuasive sense of unity with coercive use of hierarchy. Significantly, the baci and other Buddhist rituals were suppressed by the early socialist state, but regained prominence with ideological shifts from socialism to modern developmentalism. This case study demonstrates the contemporary significance of state-sponsored ritual for development in Laos as well as the need for more nuanced conceptions of the state in discussions of religiosity and authoritarianism across Asia.

The composition of an open-forest lizard assemblage in eastern Australia was examined before and after a low-intensity controlled fire and concurrently compared with that in an adjoining unburnt area. The effect of fire on the available structural environment and the habitat used by two focal species, Carlia vivax and Lygisaurus foliorum, was also examined. Lizard species richness was unaffected by the controlled burn as was the abundance of most species. C. vivax was the only species to display a significant reduction in abundance after fire. While the low-intensity fire resulted in significant changes to the available structural environment, there were no compensatory shifts in the habitat preferences of either C. vivax or L. foliorum. The reduction in abundance of C. vivax was congruent with this species' avoidance of burnt areas. C. vivax displayed a non-random preference for ground cover and litter cover, which were reduced in burnt areas. Changes in the availability of preferred structural habitat features are likely to contribute to changes in the abundance of some lizard species. Therefore, even low-intensity disturbances can have an impact on lizard assemblages if critical habitat features are lost or become limiting.