By the late 1980’s, Vietnam’s forestry sector was in crisis. The Ministry of Forestry classified 10 million out of 19 million hectares of designated forest land as "barren" because of its degraded status or use for the cultivation of food crops and grazing of livestock. The Tropical Forestry Action Plan rang the alarm bells stating, "the natural forest resources of Vietnam are not able to produce the logs needed by the wood-processing industry in a sustainable fashion even if managed properly" (FN 1). Fuelwood demands exceeded sustainable supplies in the Red River and Mekong deltas, as well as in the lower elevation midlands. The barren hills of the midlands, located in-between lush green rice fields, had become a symbol of land degradation and unproductive land use in and beyond Vietnam. Rapidly declining revenues paralyzed the forestry sector and threatened a financial crisis. In short, forestry had become unsustainable. The policy of direct state management, which was intended to ensure the rational utilization of national forests by excluding local people from the use of forest resources and land, had failed.
The crisis in the forestry sector, together with broader policy changes toward marketization and privatization, precipitated a radical shift in forest policy. The old policy of State Forestry became dependent on a combination of forest management by State Forest Enterprises (SFEs), technical supervision and support by the Ministry of Forestry (which was incorporated into the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development-MARD in 1996), and the sedentarization of upland cultivators. However, since the early 1990’s, this policy has also undergone revision with Vietnamese forest policy shifting away from direct state involvement to forest management by rural households. This current policy of Household Forestry endows rural households with use rights and provides them with access to credit and technical extension services. The SFE’s are being reorganized to support these household forest farms.
This chapter provides a brief historical overview of Vietnam’s forest policy as it shifted from State Forestry to Household Forestry. This shift in policy was intended to reduce conflicts between local people and state enterprises over the control of land and forest resources, while encouraging local investment in forest management. The change in policy appears to have stimulated reforestation on household farms in regions with relatively high levels of economic development and access to national wood markets. However, the new policy has failed to generate similar success in most of the upland regions of the North and Central Highlands. These regions include important upper watershed areas and are the home of most of Vietnam’s ethnic minority groups. Ethnic communities, such as the Tai and Dzao discussed in the following chapters of this monograph, have used and often protected forests near hill tops, ridges and streams. Therefore, the inadequacies of both State and Household Forestry in these regions suggest a need to explore additional policy solutions which build on sustainable local forest management systems. These will be discussed in the concluding sections of this chapter.
Until the early 1990’s, State Forestry implied the direct involvement of the State in the management, exploitation, processing, and distribution of Vietnam’s forest resources. A system of State Forest Enterprises managed forest resources. The Ministry of Forestry (MOF) supervised forest operations and provided technical expertise. The formation of large forest enterprise unions and their supervision by the central government vertically integrated forest exploitation, processing, and distribution. State-sponsored sedentarization programs encouraged upland cultivators to develop fixed cultivation systems and settle in permanent locations, ensuring state control over forest management. This section describes the major elements of State Forestry policy, its effects on the forest, and the major reasons underlying discrepancies between intended policy outcomes and its actual impact.
The government nationalized large areas of land in midland and upland regions of Northern Vietnam in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. Land with a slope above 25 degrees was designated for forestry purposes and was to be managed by a system of State Forest Enterprises. By the early 1990’s, there were 412 SFEs. Close to 350 smaller SFEs, which usually managed a few hundred hectares, were placed under the authority of provincial and district governments. Responsibility for day-to-day silvicultural management in these enterprises rested with provincial and district administrations and the SFEs themselves. Larger ones, which usually managed several thousand hectares and in a few cases more than 10,000 hectares, remained under central control and were grouped into 15 Forest Production Unions. The Forest Production Unions vertically integrated SFEs with wood-processing industries. But even for these SFEs the Ministry did not have general executive authority and only exercised more indirect control by issuing legally binding procedures that included detailed silvicultural management techniques.
In addition to forest management, SFEs played an important role in regional development. Particularly in remote upland areas, SFEs generated employment, developed infrastructure, and provided social services. Labor was often imported from other regions of the country. The SFEs provided their employees with housing, health care and hospitals, and operated schools and kindergartens.
The Ministry exercised rights of technical supervision over forestry operations in all SFEs and provided technical assistance, such as forest inventory and inspection. Technical supervision of forest management took the form of detailed silvicultural regulations that prescribed uniform procedures for forest management in the whole country. Annual operational plans prepared by the forest enterprises, which specified annual cuts, required approval by the Ministry. The enterprises also delivered harvested products to the state for central distribution. The Ministry carried out five main national programs to support forestry operations: the Forest Protection Program, Fixed Cultivation and Sedentarization Program, National Afforestation Program, Forest Management and Forest Industries Program, and the Human Resources Development Program, including research and extension.
The Fixed Cultivation and Sedentarization Program formed the cornerstone of the forest development strategy. The Department for Fixed Cultivation and Sedentarization (DFCS) was established in 1968 to stop swidden cultivation and facilitate socioeconomic development among the ethnic minorities. In the early 1990’s, the Department had representatives in about 200 upland districts in 34 provinces all over Vietnam. The objective of DFCS was to settle pioneering swiddeners by providing permanent settlements either in the same area or in more fertile, more accessible, noncatchment areas at lower altitudes. Government funding provided housing, some infrastructure and, if necessary, short-term food supply. Sedentarized cultivators also received tax exemptions and a variety of subsidies, for example low-cost transportation and cheap agricultural inputs.
Under State Forestry, Vietnam’s forestry sector was able to meet domestic demands for fuelwood and timber, generating a surplus for export. The sector provided about 15 million cubic meters annually to meet demands for fuelwood, industrial logs and sawnwood. Between 1986 and 1989, the forestry sector accounted for around 2 percent of national income and contributed up to 10 percent of Vietnam’s export earnings. More importantly, the forestry sector provided employment for about 1.2 million people during the same period, which corresponded to about 4 percent of Vietnam’s labor force, most of whom were employed on a part-time basis. In a report documenting permanent workers employed in the SFEs Bai Bang paper mill, ample social benefits including above average salaries, food rations, paid vacation, pensions, free medical care, maternal leave, children’s allowance, housing, and nurseries, facilitated a relatively high level of well-being.
Ministry of Forestry and State Forest Enterprise nurseries like this one have supplied billions of fast growing tree seedlings to household forest leaseholders and have been relatively successful in boosting market-oriented timber and fuelwood production in Midland and Delta regions. (photo: Poffenberger)
The state undertook significant investments into afforestation between 1961 and 1985, financing the planting of 1.4 million hectares of concentrated forest and 3.6 billion scattered trees. Between 1981 and 1985, the state established concentrated plantations mainly in the Northeast, North and South Central Coast, and the Mekong Delta. Scattered tree planting was concentrated along the Central Coast and in the delta regions. Mekong Delta farmers planted close to two-fifths of all scattered trees planted in Vietnam before 1985 (FN 2).
Afforestation activities, however, fell drastically short of halting the decline in Vietnam’s forest resources. For the whole country, forest cover declined at an annual rate of 300,000 ha, or 3.0 percent, between 1973 and 1985. The areas of annual forest lost were particularly high in the Northeast and North Central Coastal regions of Northern Vietnam, along the South Central Coast, and the South-East region. In the Red River Delta, almost all the forest that remained in 1973 disappeared by 1985. Only the forest in the Central Highlands remained more or less stable.
Experiences with the sedentarization program were mixed. By 1990, sedentarization programs involved 1.9 million people. Yet the government admitted that only 30 percent of the people who had received assistance had established stable production systems that could support their livelihood or found employment in state agricultural and forest enterprises; 40 percent employed agricultural practices that barely met their subsistence needs and often complemented fixed farming systems with shifting cultivation; and, the remaining 30 percent were not able to cover basic needs, widely practiced shifting cultivation systems, and often migrated to other regions. (FN 3)
State Forestry was not able to maintain forest capacity for supplying wood and providing services such as watershed protection because it could not contain pressures on the forest resulting from five general problem areas:
(1) Conflicts between local people and SFEs over control of forest resources and land.
(2) External demands for forest resources and land.
(3) Lack of investment funds.
(4) Limited capacity of the forestry sector to innovate.
(5) Coordination problems between different levels of the forest administration (FN 4).
These pressures took different expressions in each forest region and affected the forest in differential ways. For the country as a whole, they prevented State Forestry from a secure future provision of forest resources and services.
First, State Forestry inhibited flexible solutions to conflicts between local people and SFEs over control of forest resources and land. Because State Forestry excluded local subsistence needs and income generation from the forest, it prevented cooperation between local interests and the forest administration. Often, the State could not enforce legal forest boundaries. Actual boundaries of exercised authority over forests and forest land thus rarely overlapped with administrative boundaries. According to estimates by the Ministry of Forestry, there were about 22 million people who lived on or close to forest land in 1986. The forestry sector only employed slightly more than one million, most of them on a temporary basis, forcing the rest of them to find alternative sources of subsistence and income (FN 5).
Second, state management of forest land directly exposed the forest to pressures resulting from national demands for wood, electricity, the regulation of water flows, and new land for colonization. The requirements of the construction, energy, and industrial sectors during wartime and later national reconstruction led to growing requirements for wood products. The response of the SFEs was to optimize the current timber productivity rather than the management of forest resources for future production. As SFEs had considerable autonomy in their day-to-day operations, they often applied cutting rates in excess of approved levels. Demands for electricity, regulated water flows, and new land led to the diversion of forest land for hydropower dams, irrigation reservoirs, and colonization schemes. The establishment of so-called New Economic Zones under the resettlement program accelerated deforestation in previously less populated areas. The program moved approximately 5 million people between the late 1960’s and early 1990’s, primarily into upland areas. In the years after reunification, resettlement programs focused on the Southeast Region, a region that was among the forest regions that experienced the highest rates of annual forest loss between 1973 and 1985.
Third, capital for investment in the forestry sector was limited. The central government preferentially allocated capital to industry and infrastructure projects. Funds allocated by the State Planning Committee to the Ministry, provincial forestry departments, and State Forest Enterprises were limited and did not exceed 3 percent of investment outlays of the central government. The capacity of the forest sector to generate funds was also limited. In the period 1986-1990, the charges collected amounted to only 20 percent of the estimated total investment during the same period. In the late 1980’s, rapidly declining profits of centrally managed SFEs and their contributions to the state budget threatened a financial crisis. In 1989, profits and contributions to the state budget were below 40 percent of their respective 1986 levels. By 1990, the development budget for the forestry sector was US$9 million, one-third less than in 1986 and, hardly covering salaries (FN 6).
The shortage of capital was exacerbated by a tendency to channel investment funds into lowland plantations and industries, rather than upland natural forests or watershed management. A large share of the funds available went into the construction of a massive number of small-scale wood-processing plants (FN 7). Investment outlays were closely related with the establishment of concentrated plantations in lowland population centers. Management planning was also hampered by lack of staff and maps at central and local administrative levels. In addition, although the forestry sector built over 10,000 km of roads and upgraded another 3,500 km over the past 30 years, inadequate investment in road construction resulted in the over-exploitation of forest resources in more accessible areas.
Fourth, the capacity of the forestry sector to generate and accommodate innovation has been limited. State Forestry encouraged innovation at the central level through international exchanges and the establishment of a system of specialized schools and research institutes, but failed to facilitate or create fora for new ideas to emerge at the community and field level. The Forestry College in Xuan Mai, forestry departments at two universities, and several technical and vocational schools trained more than 7,000 university graduates, 17,000 professionals with a technical secondary degree, and 21,000 technical workers between 1961 and 1990 (FN 8). The Forest Science Institute with 70 research centers in different ecological zones of the country, the Forest Inventory and Planning Institute, and other research units employed more than 700 researchers with university degrees.
Forest scientists achieved significant success in developing techniques for silvicultural management of a variety of tree species under different ecological conditions. But the studies conducted in research stations could never produce the variety of knowledge required by the heterogeneity of ecological conditions prevalent in Vietnam. The scarcity of professional expertise in the field and inadequate knowledge of wood resources prevented adequate silvicultural operations. Local people, who had accumulated site-specific knowledge about their environments and resource-use practices, were excluded from the process of developing and practicing appropriate forest management systems.
Finally, the sharing of responsibility and power among different levels of the forest administration strengthened tendencies to over cut and engage in unsustainable management. Authority over production planning, forest protection, and silvicultural management was divided among different levels of administration in a way that obstructed the enforcement of planning targets and protection regulations by the central level. Control over daily logging and management operations firmly remained under control of SFEs and local authorities. The sale of wood products was attractive to local authorities and SFE managers as it generated employment, income, and local government revenues that were urgently needed for local and regional development. Over cutting, in excess of quotas approved by the Ministry, was therefore frequent. In response to these problems, new plans and policies emerged.
In 1991, the Tropical Forestry Action Plan, the Forest Resources Protection and Development Act, and the first National Forest Policy further shift away from State Forestry. Households were to increasingly take the place of State Forest Enterprises as basic management units for forest and forest land. Under Household Forestry, households receive long-term use rights for forest land, technical extension support by reformed state enterprises, and credit by a newly established rural banking system. Forest policy thus took a radical turn from a focus on securing national interests through the exclusion of local interests on forest land to enlisting rural households for national goals. This next section discusses the emergence, major components, and initial outcomes of the new forest policy.
Rural households, agricultural cooperatives, and communes were already assuming an increasingly important role in forest establishment, management and exploitation during the 1970’s and 1980’s. Vietnam began allocating forest land to cooperatives in 1968 and to households since 1983. By the beginning of 1990,2,638 communes, 7,442 cooperatives and work groups, and 473,500 households had received 4.4 million ha of forest land (FN 9). In addition, communes and cooperatives that received use rights for forest land often sub-contracted the land to farmers through contracts that were negotiated between the legal land user and the "secondary" land users. The contracts were usually of long-term character and provided for a division of the value of the tree output at the time of harvest. By the end of the 1980’s. Household Forestry was becoming a viable alternative to State Forestry.
By the late 1980’s, the policy emphasis on direct state involvement in forest development and operation had increasingly become juxtaposed with the growing importance of the nonstate sector. Government statistics reported-an importance of the nonstate sector for forest production, employment, afforestation, and wood-cutting that far outweighed the role of the state sector. The nonstate sector accounted for close to nine-tenths of total revenues and labor force in the forestry sector. Scattered tree planting by farmers far exceeded tree planting in concentrated plantations. Particularly in the two large deltas and in the smaller deltas along the Central Coast, where most of the population is concentrated, scattered tree planting was much more important than concentrated plantations. Concentrated plantations established by nonstate units on a relatively small share of forest land had exceeded plantations undertaken by the state sector since 1987. Wood-cutting by the nonstate sector far exceeded forest exploitation by the state sector (FN 10).
The allocation of forest land to households for management and protection has been the centerpiece of reforms to date. Land allocation takes two forms depending on the state of the forest land. For barren land and land with planted forest, the government is transferring long-term land use rights to rural households. Since 1993, the transfer of long-term land use rights has happened under the framework of the new Land Law and accompanying decrees. The law restricts the power of the state to the specification of the land use category and the right to recover land under narrowly defined circumstances. Household or individuals receiving land are given the rights to exchange, transfer, lease, mortgage, and pass on the land for inheritance. According to Decree 02/CP (January 15, 1994), land with standing forest is allocated to households for a period of 50 years, while barren land can be allocated for a longer period. Decree 202 (May 1994) further mandated that priority in forest land allocation should be given to local people, particularly pioneering swiddeners. By August 1992, about 800,000 households had obtained land use rights for parcels of forest land.
Remaining natural forests are expected to stay under the authority of SFEs or other state entities, which contract former employees and farmers living in surrounding villages for their management and protection. According to Decree 01/CP (January 1995), households receive regular payments by the state unit for the management of the forest. The forest is allotted to households for a duration of 50 years or the duration of the production cycle of the concerned species. If the forest is managed for production purposes only, households have to compensate the land-allotting unit for the value of the existing forest and sell forest products to the unit. By shifting control over production decisions to households, reforms are redefining state control over forest land. Forest land has been divided into land for production, protection, and special purposes, such as nature or wildlife preservation. The MOF has issued specific regulations for the management and use of each type of forest land. Authority over protection and special-use forest land is being transferred to newly created management boards. To enforce forest regulations, the government is strengthening the Forest Protection Department at the central, provincial, and district levels. At the provincial level, forest protection departments have become independent from agricultural and forestry departments and have moved directly under the People’s Committees. They also draw upon an independent organizational structure through forest protection units at the district and village levels.
The changing role of the state has also motivated attempts at SFE reform. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) envisions four different kinds of SFEs to complement household-based forest operations in the future:
(1) Forest service enterprises would support afforestation, management, and protection activities undertaken by households, but also extend into other rural support services (agricultural extension etc.).
(2) Forest exploitation and processing enterprises would purchase, process and market the processed product.
(3) Forest industry groups would explore and open up new marketing possibilities.
(4) Environmental protection enterprises would be responsible for the management of national parks and watershed reserves.
While the first three types of enterprises are intended to become financially independent, the last will mainly be financed through the state budget. SFEs will be required to reduce their labor force to 5 percent of the original working force. As a further step to increase the autonomy of SFEs, the government announced that it would transfer authority over most of the centrally managed enterprises from the central to provincial and district levels in 1996 (FN 11).
The government has created various organizations that provide specialized functions in forestry and rural development to households to complement reformed SFEs. The General Department of Land Administration oversees all matters related to land administration and land use. The most urgent task of the Department is the implementation of the national program of land allocation to households. For this task the Department has received the authority and necessary funds to establish land management offices at provincial and district levels under the control of local authorities.
The Vietnam Bank for Agriculture (VBA) has provided households with credit for agricultural and forestry production since 1991. The Bank reaches out into rural areas through offices at the provincial, district, and subdistrict level, and is represented in more than 80 percent of Vietnam’s districts. In 1994, the VBA extended loans to between 2 and 3 million households, 20-30 percent of the about 10 million rural households in Vietnam. Lending to the nonstate sector, mainly households, has increased from VND245 billion (US$22 million), or 10 percent of total loans outstanding, at the end of 1991 to over VND5,377 billion (US$489 million) or 73 percent of the total loan portfolio in September 1994 (FN 12). Correspondingly, the share of loans going to state enterprises, who were the primary recipients of loans until 1991, drastically fell. The Bank has granted preferential interest rates for investments in upland areas and into afforestation programs.
The central government is shifting the financing of forestry operations from periodic budgetary allocations to project-based funding. In 1992, Decrees 264/CT and 327/CT initiated two central government programs that support efforts at afforestation and barren land development. Projects funded under the two programs received a large share of central government transfer payments to provinces and districts during 1993-94, approximately US$70 million per year (FN 13). Projects are mostly proposed and implemented by district authorities and SFEs and are structured around a two-prong strategy. Investments that do not generate immediate financial returns to rural people, as in the case of infrastructure construction, planting of protection or special use forest, and social services, receive government funding through grants. Investments that generate financial benefits to rural people, such as the cultivation of agricultural crops and animal husbandry, however, only receive support through credit at reduced interest rates.
Similarly, the sedentarization program is shifting toward a project-based approach, often financed out of Decree 327 funds. The administration of the program has been shifted to the Committee for Ethnic Minorities and Mountainous Areas (CEMMA), which was created in 1992. The program today follows a more integrated approach to rural development, striving to improve the agricultural production of swidden cultivators before settling them permanently.
The integration of Vietnam’s economy into world markets has also entailed an increasing inflow of significant foreign loans and some direct foreign investment into the forestry sector. Multilateral international agencies, such as the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, and bilateral donors have committed US$232 million until the year 2000. The share of foreign funds in the national forestry budget and their importance for forest operations have thus drastically increased since the second half of the 1980’s. For example, approximately 800,000 ha have been allocated to households under internationally financed programs. Direct foreign investment into the forestry sector has been much more limited. There have only been a few foreign plantations of fast-growing trees for export pulp and wood chips.
The drastic change in policy from State Forestry to Household Forestry has yet to be fully implemented by the Vietnamese government. Land allocation, state enterprise reform, and the development of new support organizations will continue during the coming years. Yet experience from the implementation of the new policy indicates discrepancies between intended policy outcomes and its actual impact. Issues of land allocation, rural banking, the Decree 327 program, and illegal wood exploitation and trade have received the most attention.
Land Allocation. The effects of land allocation on the productivity of forest land differed according to regional economic conditions and the degree of support received from the government and foreign donors. In general, forest land allocation failed to produce the rapid improvements in the productivity of land use achieved in agriculture. When labor and capital were invested in wealthier agricultural communities with strong market ties and better government support, the land allocation program was more successful. For example, Swedish support for afforestation in the midlands of Vinh Phu province helped households to successfully reforest vast areas of the previously barren hills. By contrast, in highland regions that lacked access to national markets, forest land allocation programs had limited impact on intensifying forest production. Some households in more remote regions that received forest allotments unsustainably felled them for short-term profits, often due to tenure anxieties linked to frequent policy changes.
The land allocation process itself has progressed at different paces. In general, the implementation of land allocation has been slow, much slower than for agricultural land. At the current rate, forest land allocation will occupy government agencies for several more decades. By the end of 1992, less than one percent of the forest land allocations were recorded in formal land use rights certificates (FN 14). The financial requirements of land inventory and mapping far exceed the financial capacity of the central government. Particularly in remote areas, for which local authorities lack infrastructure and detailed maps, land titling is prohibitively expensive. Some local authorities therefore issued preliminary certificates. But, as Smith reports from Son La Province, the conduct of allocation has tended to be rushed and inaccurate (FN 15).
Provincial and local governments have wielded considerable influence on the implementation of land allocation (FN 16). Provincial and district authorities have placed priority on areas for land allocation and instituted ceilings on land holdings. For example, local authorities in Son La have decreed provincial ceilings on land holdings and concentrated land allocation on areas bordering National Highway 6, which are targeted by a provincial program for the development of cash crops. Village authorities have shown considerable flexibility in the principles governing land allocation. Contracts for forest land have generally been negotiated between households and local authorities, creating a diversity of contractual arrangements.
In villages where forest lands fulfill important productive functions for the whole village, where local authorities have previously invested into the forest, or where the forest has served as a collateral for local authorities to get loans from the bank, local communities have been reluctant to allocate forest land to households. Among households, forest land allocation has resulted in stark differences in land holdings (FN 17).
Land allocation has entailed shifts in control over forest land from the state to households in some regions, while increasing state control over land and land use in others. For example, in some areas of the midlands of the north, land allocation has increased household control over forest land and, facilitated by additional technical and financial support, resulted in a relatively fast implementation of forest land allocation and successful afforestation. In other regions, however, where villagers have previously relied on forest land for the cultivation of food crops, local people have been reluctant to participate in land allocation. Particularly in food-deficient areas, local people do not want to formally take up the land as they would have to commit to use the land for forestry only and stop illegal cultivation outside their commune. In those areas, the sole announcement of the pending land allocation has generated insecurity that is likely to lead to the short-term exploitation of forests and forest land. In response, the Forest Science Institute and the Da River Social Forestry Project have experimented with the allocation of land for "agroforestry purposes."
Rural Banking. Credit to households for forestry through the Vietnam Bank for Agriculture has been limited. In 1994, the Bank extended only VND26 billion (US$2.4 million), less than one percent of total lending, as loans to households for forestry purposes. Credits obtained by rural households are rather small, most lending is for short-term only, and less than one-quarter of all rural households receive loans. Borrowing from private lenders with or without interest is much more wide-spread, with 70 percent of rural families carrying such loans. In more remote areas, the VBA faced severe problems in establishing financially viable operations. With the sole exception of three provinces, the VBA provincial branches in upland areas lost VND11 billion (US$1 million) in 1992. Logistical problems, lack of funds for medium- and long-term lending, and sluggish economic growth made VBA operations unprofitable in most upland areas. In response, VBA laid off part of its personnel and closed some district offices to cut operational costs (FN 18).
Decree 327. Decree 327 has received much criticism for its limited success in meeting the goals envisioned by the original policy. The State Planning Committee estimates that implementing agencies, mainly district authorities and SFEs, have diverted more than 50 percent of total funds for other purposes (FN 19). The Decree has also been criticized for its top-down design, implementations that exclude local people, poor planning, emphasis on infrastructure, and promotion of tree plantations on land that is crucial for local food security. Resettlement and sedentarization projects have received funding priority under Decree 327 (FN 20). However, by late 1996, priorities began stressing forest protection over sedentarization and production goals. State enterprises have played a crucial role in implementation. Rural families had rarely been allocated land rights, mostly working with state enterprises under contracts for afforestation and forest protection. Project personnel were mainly recruited from former state enterprise employees. Projects thus contributed to a considerable degree toward refinancing state enterprises.
Illegal Wood Exploitation and Trade. Under the direction of the upgraded Forest Protection Departments, efforts to conserve forests have achieved mixed success. In some respects, the forestry sector has made substantial progress in the establishment and implementation of Vietnam’s system of protected areas, facilitated by strong support of multilateral and bilateral donors. The Biodiversity Action Plan compiled management plans for the more important parks and reserves. MARD, in conjunction with various foreign donors, prepares plans for park protection and buffer zone development for the most important sites. Cases of illicit cutting and trade of wood, however, are increasing despite the strong measures taken by MARD to curb illegal activities. In early 1992, the government banned the export of raw cut and sawn wood and reduced cutting quotas by 88 percent (FN 21). In 1993, it further restricted logging by closing almost all forests in the north and banning the export of forest products. Yet, in 1993 and 1994, the government reported 70,000 cases of illegal cutting and trade (FN 22). Due to these illegal activities, the Ministry investigated cases of suspected tax evasion for a total of US$6 million in 1993, almost as much as the total amount of taxes collected in the forestry sector.
From the 1960’s through the 1980’s, State Forestry policy bolstered Vietnam’s economy by accelerating the exploitation of natural forests at a rate that resulted in a rapid decline in forest resources. Urban-based demands for wood, and population redistribution programs, placed new external pressures on forest and forest land. The dependence of rural people on these same forests to meet income and subsistence needs sometimes generated local conflicts with SFEs over access and control of forest lands and resources. The lack of investment funds limited efficient forest exploitation and reforestation efforts. The concentration of research and innovation around a few state-sponsored, technically oriented research centers could not produce the diversity of innovations that forestry in an ecologically and socioeconomically diverse territory requires. The distribution of responsibilities for and power over forest protection, production planning, and daily management between different levels of the forest administration facilitated forest exploitation at the cost of protection.
In the late 1980’s, the government responded to the crisis in State Forestry through a shift in policy with mixed results. Household land allocation and the formation of support institutions began creating new opportunities for local people to participate in forest management, as well as helping relieve conflicts between them and the state over forest land. The pooling of financial resources from households, the banking system, government, and international donors is increasing investment funds for forestry purposes. Initial experiments with alternative processes of land allocation at the central level and local flexibility in the interpretation of central land policy is beginning to allow greater experimentation. The transfer of protection authority and central SFE management to the provincial government may also bring greater support for protective goals versus short-term commercial exploitation.
Yet, discrepancies between intended outcomes of the new policy and its actual effects have become apparent. Since 1992, the government has had to resort to increasingly drastic measures to curb forest exploitation. Conflicts between the state and rural people, external demands on the forest, lack of investment funds, operational rigidities, and coordination problems between different levels of the forest administration still remain serious problems. Nonetheless, forest policy reform is changing the intensity and geographical distribution of the impact of these forces. Decentralization policies are also facing a new problem: conflicts between different local interest groups concerning forest management goals.
While the allocation of forest land to households may be decreasing conflicts between rural people and state enterprises in some areas, in other regions these policies appear to intensify conflict. In the lowlands and parts of the midlands, allocation increases the forest use rights of local households, and often government program goals and community management objectives are similar: to produce timber for a market economy. In many highland areas, however, land allocation may erode community control over forest resources by imposing rigid government-defined guidelines that reduce management freedom held for generations on a de facto basis (FN 23). Land allocation in those areas may accelerate deforestation as it pushes people to open up new areas for the cultivation of food crops and leads to the short-term exploitation of forest land before allocation.
Similarly, the effects of forest management contracts between SFEs and rural people depend on the capacity of the state to provide stable employment and enforce forest management regulations. The contracts may result in successful reforestation and protection if the state has sufficient financial resources to implement the program, as in the case of national parks supported by international funding. In other areas, contracted households are likely to plant trees but also exploit access to forest land for short-term benefits, such as the cultivation of cash crops until the tree canopy closes, with detrimental effects of soil fertility and forest growth.
While forest allocation to households is decreasing conflicts between local people and state enterprises, different local interests in the use of forest and forest land are creating new conflicts detrimental to the forest. Community interests in forest preservation to protect local watersheds conflict with individual interests in forest exploitation. Interests in the establishment of tree plantations for sale conflict with other interests in multipurpose use of forest land. Forest land is becoming a base of capital accumulation for households who command more resources and have access to political power and social networks, as those tend to get larger forest land holdings and have easier access to credit and other support services. Less well-off households still rely on the forest as a source of subsistence, but increasingly lose access to the forest as it is being allocated, mostly to the better-off. These conflicts over competing uses of the forest by local people may intensify with government land reallocation programs.
External demands on the forest and forest land are increasing on the national level, but are generating geographically differentiated effects on the forest. Migration and the demand for wood by booming construction and industrial sectors are increasing pressure on the forest in areas which possess fertile soils or are more easily accessible from urban and industrial centers. Liberalization is inducing a significant increase in spontaneous migration. Since the late 1980’s, the Central Highlands have received a significant influx of new settlers from the lowlands and the Northern Mountains. Logging restrictions and bans could not protect the forest against these pressures. External demands on forest and forest land, however, remain lower in areas that are remote from urban and industrial centers and do not offer favorable opportunities for agricultural colonization.
As forestry has begun to compete with more profitable urban/industrial and agricultural investments, capital scarcity has limited forest investments, differentiating it by tree species and regions. The government mainly generates funds for forest investment through taxation in other sectors and international transfers. Rural households investing into reforestation do not generate the profits that will produce sizeable tax revenues. Fast-yielding tree species and agricultural cash crops are replacing more valuable tree species with longer rotation cycles. Investments into tree plantations only payoff in regions where they can be grown as part of a highly commercialized agricultural cash crop system. More wealthy provinces, such as An Giang province, use provincial funds for reforestation projects (FN 24). Capital scarcity forces the government to make tough choices between the goals to strengthen accumulation and to tailor credit conditions to regional circumstances.
The improvement of relations with Southeast Asian and Western countries and increasing contacts with international agencies are exposing Vietnamese policy-makers to new concepts and policy approaches. Forestry research and training is increasingly considering socioeconomic aspects of forestry. Yet, experience from Decree 327 projects indicates that opportunities for local innovation and channels to bring community ideas to the attention of MARD planners and administrators are still limited. For example, experiments with alternative processes of land allocation are still limited to a few pilot projects like the Social Forestry Development Project (SFDP) in the Da River watershed. Still, forest policy reforms are creating opportunities for government intervention that does not attempt to exclude, but incorporates the socioeconomic forces that shape forest use. The trend toward growing access to, and control over, forest resources and land by households and governments at local and provincial levels is expanding the possibility for flexible forest policy that responds to locally specific forest use problems. Hopefully, strengthening innovative capacities at local and central levels will facilitate an adaptive process of trial and error that can sustain Vietnam’s forests.
1. Ministry of Forestry, Vietnam Forestry Sector and Tropical Forestry Action Programme. (Hanoi: Ministry of Forestry, 1991a)
2. Ministry of Forestry, 30 years Construction and Development of the Forestry 1961-1990 (Hanoi: Statistical Publishing House, 1991b).
3. Sophie Witter, "Working with Ethnic Minorities in Vietnam: An Introduction to the Issues". (Hanoi: Save the Children Fund, 1993), program document.
4. These generic problem areas have been suggested by Jeff Romm and applied by the author to the case of Vietnam. Jeff Romm, "Sustainable Forestry, an Adaptive Social Process" in Defining Sustainable Forestry, G. Aplet, N. Johnson, J. Olson, and V.A. Sample, eds. (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1993).
5. Ministry of Forestry, Vietnam Forestry Sector and Tropical Forestry Action Programme (Hanoi: Ministry of Forestry, 1991a). Ministry of Forestry, 30 Years Construction and Development of the Forestry. 1961-1990 (Hanoi: Statistical Publishing House, 1991b).
6. Ministry of Forestry, 1991.
7. Ministry of Forestry, 1991a.
8. Ministry of Forestry, 1991a, b.
9. Ministry of Forestry, 1991b.
10. Ministry of Forestry. 1991b.
11. Lao Dong, 6 Jan. 1995, p. 1, and 6 Jun. 1995, p. 2.
12. International Fund for Agricultural Development, "Preparation Report: Grassroots rural Finance Project" (Rome, Italy: IFAD, 1995).
13. Vietnam Investment Review. 24, 30 Jul. 1995, p.23.
14. Vu Van Me, Nguyen Tuong Van, and Hans Warfinge, "Land Classification and Land Allocation in Vietnam and in Tu Ne Commune of Tan Lac District, Hoa Binh Province," in Renovation of Strategies for Forestry Development (Hanoi: Ministry of Forestry. 1993).
15. William Smith, Implementing the 1993 Land Law: The Impact of the 1993 Land Law on Rural Households in the Mai Son District of Son La Province (Hanoi: Action Aid Vietnam, 1995).
16. The results of a nation-wide survey of cadre at provincial, district, and local level is indicative. The survey found that local authorities did not necessarily recognize all five rights of the holder of LURC’s (Institute for Agricultural Economics, 1994).
17. Yujiro Hayami, "Strategies for the Reform of Land Policy Relations," in (ed.) Randolph Barker, Agricultural Policy Analysis for Transition to a Market-Oriented Economy in Vietnam (Rome, Italy: FAO, 1994), pp.1-26.
18. State Planning Committee (SPC), Vietnam Living Standards Survey: 1992 - 1993 (Hanoi: General Statistics Office, 1994).
19. Nhan Dan, 19 Apr. 1995, pp. 1-3.
20. G. W. Hyles, "Environmental Policy and Program Priorities for an Economy in Transition," unpublished consultant’s report (The World Bank, 1993). G. A. Smith, "Livestock and Barren Land Development, Working Paper No. 1, Vietnam Environment Program and Policy Priorities," Consultant’s Report, (The World Bank, 1993).
21. Sarah B. England and Daniel M. Kammen, "Energy Resources and Development in Vietnam." Annual Review of Energy and Environment, 18:137.
22. "Methods and solutions proposed for solving critical problems in forestry raised by the fifth session of the party central committee" (Hanoi: Ministry of Forestry, 1993). Vietnam News, 7 Mar. 1995, p. 1.
23. Pascal Bergeret, "Management of Natural Forests, in Vietnamese Studies, 45(1):31-45.