Vietnam’s forest policy and management systems must respond to several immense challenges in the coming decade. As the preceding sections indicate, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), as state custodian for nearly 58 percent (19 million hectares) of the country’s land area, will need to establish effective partnerships with local communities to protect Vietnam’s critical watersheds and natural forests (FN 1). Millions of upland households continue to be dependent on forest resources for fuel, fodder, housing materials, foods, medicinals, and for other raw materials that provide cash income. There is mounting evidence from many of the world’s nations that formally involving user communities can strengthen forest management systems, making them more responsive to local needs. The process of transferring management authority to community groups, however, is complex and will require coordinated policies and operational strategies. Most challenging, public land reform policies and processes can be manipulated by local elites, undermining the intention of planners to allocate forest lands to those most dependent upon them and exacerbating economic inequities.
The second challenge will be restoring the productivity of national forest reserves that are already badly depleted through decades of excessive logging, clearing for agriculture. and war. According to a recent assessment, only 3 percent of the nation’s forests were classified as well-stocked (over 150 cubic meters per hectare), with moderate forest 8 percent (80-150m3/ha), poor forest 38 percent (less than 80m3/ha), and 51 percent of all forest land classified as treeless or barren (FN 2). Eighty-nine percent of the country’s forests are therefore considered seriously degraded and of marginal productivity. During 30 years of war, an estimated two million hectares of forests were badly degraded by 13 million tons of bombs and 72 million liters of herbicides and defoliants (FN 3).
Protecting Vietnam’s watersheds is one of the Ministry’s priority goals. Densely populated delta and coastal regions are highly dependent on irrigation water from upland watersheds to sustain their intensive agricultural systems. The economic growth of lowland urban-industrial centers will continue to require increasing supplies of hydroelectric power generated by large dams and reservoirs like Hoa Binh. While Vietnam has designated six million hectares as protected forests, half in critical watersheds, such policies are difficult to implement given the large rural, resource-dependent populations. In the Da River watershed, for example, much of the population continues to rely on swidden farming techniques that can sustain densities of 20 persons per square kilometer, while actual population densities for the watershed have risen from 12 persons per square kilometer in 1945 to 37 person/km2 in 1993 and will likely reach 75 persons/km2 in the year 2020, substantially surpassing estimates of sustainable carrying capacity under traditional technologies (FN 4). Where shifting cultivators have been "sedentarized" it remains unclear whether the fragile, erodible upland soils can support continuous farming. Further population expansion in the Vietnam uplands will lead to a further acceleration of environmental degradation processes.
In Part II, a review of national forest policy indicates that planners have attempted to shift authority for public lands from State Forest Enterprises to households under the Doi Moi economic restructuring strategy initiated in the mid-1980’s. However, the process of allocating leaseholds of public forest land to individual households has proceeded slowly, in part reflecting the complexities of land reform processes. Land surveys, negotiating use rights, reviewing applications, and issuing leases for each parcel requires large investments of capital government staff time. The MARD plans to redistribute seven million hectares of forest land to cooperatives, households, and individuals under 30-to 50-year leases by the year 2000. While this ambitious target will be difficult to achieve, there are also more fundamental questions whether such programs will lead to better forest management, especially in the uplands (FN 5).
Throughout Asia, land allocation programs have been manipulated to the advantage of village elites and local officials, while low-income, forest-dependent families who were targeted for participation in such activities have been left behind. Typically, market-oriented, agroforestry projects perform better in lowland areas with high populations, available sources of credit, good transportation, and well-developed markets. Similarly, in Vietnam lowland and midland households involved with forest land programs have been more successful in raising forest productivity than families in more remote upland watersheds. Household forest land allocation programs were designed to provide greater tenure security to families who were in positions to develop degraded forests into small plantations, or who were already using small tracts of public lands on a de facto basis.
Such privatization programs are not designed for larger tracts of forest in upper watersheds that need to be managed to meet a diversity of goals including hydrological, hunting and gathering, and subsistence timber requirements. In the Da River watershed, forest allocations are only being implemented within a few kilometers on each side of the primary regional highway. Remote watershed forests that comprise much of the nation’s land area are often distant from roads and settlements may best be protected from fires, illegal clearing, and other threats by community groups. Individual households, due to limitations on labor, are unable to actively monitor and control access to forests far from their homes.
In remote upland regions, predominantly settled by ethnic minority groups, forest management by private households may also be in conflict with indigenous or traditional community-based institutions that have historically controlled forest use and access. The land use systems and the resource management institutions of ethnic minority groups in Vietnam are in a process of change. Highland communities are responding to new systems of governance, commercial agriculture, and growing population pressures. Yet, despite the emergence of new political systems, cash crops, and emerging markets, indigenous institutions and leaders remain influential in shaping community decision making regarding resource use in the Da River watershed and many other parts of the country. To establish effective policies and programs for the nation’s upland communities, planners will require more information regarding traditional resource management institutions, land tenure systems, indigenous knowledge, technologies, and forest use practices.
The current distribution and effectiveness of informal upland resource management systems is difficult to determine. Where ethnic minority communities have been resettled, as in the case of the Dzao of Ba Vi, traditional institutions and land use systems have often undergone significant change. With other groups, like the Tai of the Yen Chau district, traditional management institutions still operate, but have lost much of their authority as communities spent decades under the governance of cooperative administrators. Without policies which acknowledge and legitimize community-based forest management, many local systems experience a gradual erosion of influence. In both of the case studies presented here, however, communities perceive a need for a greater role in resource decision making and management. Tai, Hmong, and Dzao community leaders in Ban Tat, Khao Khoang, and Yen Son stressed the importance of increasing the productivity of their farmland and forests and protecting them from further degradation. They also expressed fears that their resources could be captured by "outsiders." and unsustainably exploited.
Building resource management and development strategies based on local community knowledge and interests can strengthen government efforts as well. Communities frequently have an intimate knowledge of their physical environment. including soils, flora, fauna, and microclimatic conditions. They are also keenly aware of communication channels and market conditions. The village headman of Yen Son, for example, suggested that important endemic tree species be reestablished in Ba Vi National Park, as alternatives to Eucalypti and Acacia. If agreements could be developed to begin planting within the Park’s boundaries, families in Yen Son would have considerable knowledge regarding seed sources, nursery techniques, appropriate planting environments. and the marketability of products. While this kind of proposal would assist in achieving both community and park objectives, the dialogue has never been initiated due to the absence of any fora for such communication or discussion.
Community decisions to invest in forest resource development usually reflect careful assessments of opportunities and risks. Government support and tenurial security are often major considerations. Government extension efforts should enhance community initiatives and resource development strategies, rather than importing rigidly packaged projects that are not responsive to local needs and opportunities. Working with community initiatives is made easier when forest management partnerships have already been established with local resident populations and frameworks for collaborative discussions already exist.
For government policies and programs to interface successfully with indigenous land management systems, they will need to identify and be compatible with local land classification and use systems, distinguishing those held under community and household control. As the ethno land use classification systems of the Tai of Ban Tat and Hmong of Khao Khoang illustrate, these specialized terms allow greater precision in labeling actual land use, and provide a clearer basis for land use planning exercises between government staff and village leaders. New forest land allocation policies to transfer rights to households can be used effectively in the case of land under agroforestry or long rotation agriculture, however communally managed upper watershed forests need community-based tenure mechanisms.
In protected areas like Ba Vi National Park, biodiversity conservation and recreational goals must mesh with local community requirements for produce and income. Complementary objectives can be achieved by engaging specialized forest dwelling communities like the Dzao in Park management strategies. The Dzao’s knowledge of the Park’s medicinal plants can contribute to the monitoring and study of changes in biodiversity, while local involvement creates opportunities for community income generation while providing health services for neighboring populations. Increasingly, scientists and tourists visiting conservation areas are equally interested in the natural environment as the cultural context. Creating protected area management systems which integrate local community use with forest ecosystem preservation can respond to these needs, while reducing conflict between communities and government.
Vietnam has established a variety of forest management and upland policies in the past decade to enhance the stability and productivity of the natural resource base. Oriented towards decentralization and privatization, millions of parcels of forest land have been transferred to rural households. While these investments have been relatively successful in regions with good market access, remote upland regions inhabited by ethnic minorities still engaged in more traditional agroeconomies have experienced little benefit. While policies have shifted away from forest management by public corporations, and restructuring is ongoing, in 1991 over 450 State Forest Enterprises still controlled 6 million hectares of the most productive forest land (FN 6), MARD recently announced that the number of SFE’s has fallen to 241 and will be further reduced to 200 over the next few years. MARD has also stated that it will phase out commercial felling of natural forests in 18 of 36 provinces, while investing VND9 billion (US$820 million) to establish 2 million hectares of production forests to meet domestic and industrial needs (FN 7). This shift towards upland forest protection is significant and should help to relieve pressure on already deteriorating upland watersheds.
Vietnam’s recent forest policies and programs reflect a variety of subsidies and tenurial instruments to facilitate privatization, market engagement, and to encourage commercialization. Most forest protection strategies are limited to providing cash incentives to families to act as custodians and lack strategic direction to effectively conserve and restore upland watersheds. There is a striking absence of community forest management policies in Vietnam. In Nepal, the Philippines, India, and other Asian nations forestry agencies are formulating policies that recognize indigenous forest-dwelling communities and other forest-user groups as comanagers of public forest lands. In eastern India, newly formulated community forest management policies have supported the emergence of tens of thousands of village-based forest protection committees that now protect several million hectares of regenerating natural forest. These groups receive no payment from the government, contributing their labor on a voluntary basis to ensure the presence of healthy local forests to meet their need for important products and to stabilize hydrological functions and microclimatic conditions.
In Vietnam, as in many other countries, the formal involvement of local communities in planning forest production and conservation management actions will likely be a critical element in the success of upland resource management. To engage rural communities as partners in forest management, they require treatment as equals in planning decision making, rather than as beneficiaries of central or regional government-driven projects or as employees of SFEs. To interact with a diversity of indigenous institutions, government staff will require flexibility to deliver financial and technical resources that are responsive to local needs. A new generation of community forest management policies and tenure mechanisms are required to authorize informal forest users groups and reempower the traditional resource management institutions of ethnic minority groups and the forest-dependent communities of the uplands.
1. Ministry of Forestry, "Guidelines for Development and Allocation of Productive Resources for Forestry Development in Vietnam: 1986-2000," Research Documents on Forestry Inventory and Planning: 1961-1991 (Hanoi: Forest Inventory and Planning Institute, 1991), p. 277.
2. Hoang Hoe, "The Role of Forestry for Sustainable Development in Vietnam," in Neil Jamieson et al.. eds., The Challenges of Vietnam’s Reconstruction (Fairfax, Virginia: The Indochina Institute, 1992), p. 85.
3. Ministry of Forestry, "Vietnam Forestry" (Hanoi: Agricultural Publishing House, 1995), p. 25.
4. A. Terry Rambo, "Perspectives on Defining Highland Development Challenges in Vietnam: New Frontier or Cul-De-Sac?", in Rambo et al., The Challenges of Highland Development in Vietnam (Honolulu, HI: East - West Center, 1995), p. 23 - 25