My friend Charles Alton, who has died aged 69, was a development worker, and devoted most of his life to Laos.
He was born in Fort Madison, Iowa, and first travelled to south-east Asia as a US Peace Corps worker in northern Thailand. Then, armed with a PhD in agricultural economics from the University of Kentucky, in 1977 he returned to Khon Kaen in Thailand. In 1989 he moved across the Mekong to start aid projects in Laos. He remained there for 23 years, with a short interlude working in Cambodia, frequently conducting socio-economic research for NGOs, UN agencies and the World Bank.
What set Charles apart from many western consultants was his commitment to bettering the lives of the local people, and a passion for learning all he could about the history and culture of this small landlocked nation. He spoke Thai and Lao fluently and engaged with villagers and poor farmers in the remotest areas.
He frequently collaborated with Houmphanh Rattanavong, founder of the Institute of Cultural Research in Vientiane. In 2004 they were jointly commissioned by the UN Development Programme to undertake a survey of the livelihoods of ethnic peoples in northern Laos, in the wake of a controversial opium eradication campaign.
Their study, the Livelihood Resettlement Report, implicitly challenged the US government policy, backed by the UN drugs agency, of pressurising the Lao government to cut down all opium poppies before alternative livelihoods had time to be established. Charles told me: "Opium was never much of a problem in Laos." He concluded that far from achieving the UN's goal of reducing poverty, the eradication of opium had worsened the situation.
Charles was a seriously committed scholar and practitioner of Buddhism, and was close to many of the senior abbots in temples around Vientiane and in Thailand. I am indebted to him as being one of my most reliable journalistic sources for my reportage of Laos.
He is survived by his wife, Noi, and his son, Ben.