Lower Mekong Market Chain
I am currently working on a book with Andrew Henderson (see A Palm, Two Botanists With Cameras) entitled "Systematics, Ecology, and Management of Rattans in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam: The Biological Bases of Sustainability". It's going pretty well, thanks for asking. As part of the section that I am writing now on the rattan trade, I put together a histogram that shows the value of the rattan trade in each of the three countries, how much of this actually goes to Vietnam where it is exported, and the combined production from all three countries relative to Indonesia which is the largest producer of rattan in the world.
Couple of things to note. A considerable proportion of the rattan produced in Laos and Cambodia goes to Vietnam. The whole region is indeed one market chain for rattan. Also, in the early 2000's, the production of rattan by Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam was a strong competitor for Indonesia. Production has notably decreased in recent years, and there is clearly a great need to manage wild stocks of rattan.
[NOTE: There are a number of caveats that apply to the data presented. Volume of rattan, rather than value, would be a more useful parameter to graph, but Laos does not report any trade data, and Vietnam records only import value. Indonesia's own data on rattan exports is significantly less than those reported by the countries that import the rattan. Grain of salt, please].
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