RESEARCH NETWORK REPORT # 10

STEWARDS OF VIET NAM'S UPLAND FORESTS: A COLLABORATIVE STUDY BY THE FOREST INVENTORY AND PLANNING INSTITUTE AND THE ASIA FOREST NETWORK

An elder Dzao expert in traditional medicine displays one of the forest tubers that is a key ingredient in many of her prescriptions. Eighty percent of the households in Yen Son village, a buffer community of Ba Vi National Park, gain much of their cash income from ethnomedicine.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Over the past five years Asia Forest Network and the Forest Inventory and Planning Institute have been supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. We are most grateful to the Foundation for this opportunity to collaborate, with special thanks to Dr. Kuswata Kartawinata. We thank the East West Center's Program on the Environment for their administrative assistance, especially Jeff Fox and Meg White. The Asia Forest Network would also like to appreciatively acknowledge the core support it received from the Wallace Global Fund and USAID's Global Bureau.

Many individuals have contributed to the development of this report. The commitment of Dr. Nguyen Huy Phon, Deputy Director of the Forest Inventory and Planning Institute, to Viet Nam's participation in the Asia Forest Network has encouraged this work throughout its gestation. FIPI field staff frequently left their families for extended periods to conduct field trips with AFN colleagues. We are also grateful for the guidance we received from Jeff Fox, John Ambler, Mike Benge, Alex Moad, and Jerker Thurnberg. We are indebted to Neil Jamieson for his past advice and his careful reading and thoughtful comments on this manuscript.

This AFN study substantially benefited from the pioneering research and publications of the Center for Natural Resources and Environmental Studies (CRES) and the East-West Center. We are grateful to Le Trong Cuc, Terry Rambo, and other members of that fruitful collaboration for their contributions to our thinking. The AFN team also gained many insights from discussions with Paul Van Der Poel and Guenter Meyer of the Social Forestry Development Project Song Da (SFDP), and we are indebted to them for sharing their experiences and knowledge with us.

We would like to thank Kevin Kolb and the cartographers of FIPI and to Peter Walpole's staff at ESSC for developing the maps and transects presented in this report. We are appreciative of the work of Kathryn Smith-Hansen in developing the manuscript, Gary Mcdonald for his careful editing, and Magdalene Khoo for her artful layout. Finally, our thanks to Jack vander Brulle and Apollo Press for printing this monograph.

FOREWORD

(by Mark Poffenberger)

In pre-colonial times, the uplands of Viet Nam were heavily forested and sparsely inhabited by a variety of ethnic groups who settled in the narrow mountain valleys growing irrigated rice or practiced long-rotation rainfed farming at higher elevations. Even remote watersheds were inhabited by diverse hill tribes who had moved into the region from other parts of Southeast Asia and Southern China. Community institutions and regional chiefs defined territorial rights, permitting the establishment of new villages established as the population expanded. Forests lands were valuable resources for hunting and gathering, providing land for new fields and settlements, and for stabilizing the water sources that fed their villages, fish ponds, and rice fields. Ethnic communities controlled forest use through their unique traditional institutions, imposing fees, fines, and other regulatory mechanisms.

Over the past century, the government has gained increasing control over the management of Viet Nam's forests. As government ministries and public and private industry have taken a broadening role in resource exploitation and management, traditional forest use systems have eroded. During the 1960's and 1970's, the government intensified efforts to establish new administrative structures and implement national policies in many remote upland regions around the country, accelerating the displacement of indigenous institutions.

Upland resources have been exported to lowland, urban centers to finance economic development, often at the expense of resident people. Population growth in upland provinces is driven both by natural increase and a steady influx of lowland migrants, sometimes exceeding 6 percent annually, and placed intensifying pressure on the mountainous areas leading to progressive forest degradation and ultimately deforestation.

There are many parallels between Viet Nam's experiences in forest management and that of other Asian nations, and other countries around the world. At the end of the 20th century, human societies are confronted by the challenge of balancing the roles of government, community, and the private sector in sustainably managing forest ecosystems allowing upland watersheds to perform essential environmental functions while meeting the resource needs of expanding populations.

Part I provides a brief history of forest management in Viet Nam, followed by an assessment of the sociopolitical and demographic forces that are the underlying causes of deforestation. Part II examines changes in national forest policies, focusing on the transition from state control to household management. The success of emerging privatization policies and programs in stimulating increased timber productivity in some lowland and midland regions is contrasted with the difficulties encountered when such projects are implemented in upland contexts, especially where communal forest management traditions persist. Part III describes how Tai and H'Mong communities in Yen Chau District in the Da River watershed of Northwest Viet Nam use their forest resources and discusses some of the forest management issues villagers face as demographic pressures build and policies change. Part IV reviews how one Dzao village was resettled in a buffer area, bounding on Ba Vi National Park near Hanoi, and how villagers continue to depend on the forest for their livelihoods. Both case studies illustrate ways community forest use practices are supported by and are in conflict with emerging policies. Part V synthesizes the information presented in this monograph and suggests how community forest management policies and programs could be strengthened in the uplands and made more responsive to local cultures and indigenous management systems.

The Asia Forest Network (AFN) seeks to synthesize learning from academic research and development activities to illuminate both the underlying causes of and potential solutions to the problem of deforestation. Over the past five years, the AFN has published a series of country reviews that describe the state of community involvement in forest management in Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, and India. Each case examines the history of forest management and evolving forest policies, and presents case studies illustrating contemporary strategies and emerging issues. This fifth country case study examines the changing direction of Viet Nam's national forest policies and how they are affecting forest dependent communities.

THE NATIONAL FOREST SECTOR

(by Mark Poffenberger & Nguyen Huy Phon)

Any study of Viet Nam’s forest resources must include a discussion of the ways the nation’s population has expanded, especially over the past two hundred years. The densely populated Red River Delta has supported large populations for centuries. As early as 1600, an estimated 6 million people lived in Viet Nam, 90 percent of whom resided in the north’s lowland delta and flood plains. Between 1600 and 1800, evidence indicates the population was relatively stable; however, by 1921 it had expanded to 15.6 million, growing primarily along the central coastal plains and in the Mekong Delta. Since 1921 the population has increased steadily, reaching 54 million in 1982, 61 million in 1989, and approaching 75 million in 1997, making Viet Nam one of Asia’s most densely populated countries. Current projections indicate that the population will reach 100 million by the year 2020.

Since Viet Nam declared its independence from France in 1945, the country’s upland population has expanded rapidly through natural growth and migration. The population of upland areas is currently 25 million people, representing one-third of the country’s inhabitants. While war, policy changes, economic development, and the introduction of new technologies have all been linked to the steady decline of Viet Nam’s natural forests, population expansion is arguably the fundamental, underlying cause of deforestation. Future policy strategies to stabilize the country’s upland forests and critical watersheds must consider how to accommodate a population that will continue to expand for at least several decades to come.

CHANGING FOREST COVER

Fifty-eight percent, or 19 million hectares, of the 33 million hectares comprising the total land area of Viet Nam is legally classified as forest under the jurisdictional authority of the state Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD). Ecologically speaking, only part of this area actually possesses forest vegetation. The total forest cover has declined steadily throughout the 20th century and the decline has accelerated in recent decades. Forest cover fell from 14 million hectares in 1943 to 9.3 million hectares in 1995, with over 10 million hectares covered by grasses, brush, or a few scattered trees. Only 3 million hectares are considered to possess well-stocked, healthy forests.

While massive investments in lowland and midland tree planting have begun to stabilize national forest cover statistics, natural forests in upland regions are under mounting extractive pressure. Old growth natural forest is estimated to have fallen to 2 million hectares. Recent estimates indicate that deforestation is progressing at a rate of 100,000 to 200,000 hectares annually. Deforestation is not taking place evenly across the country, however, and consequently it is important to discuss regional patterns. Viet Nam can be divided into nine forestry regions, providing a framework to examine forest management conditions and needs. The regions can be grouped according to whether they are in the densely populated Red River Delta or Mekong River Delta, or in coastal provinces, or in upland areas.

RED RIVER AND MEKONG DELTAS

The Red River Delta has an average population density exceeding 1,200 persons per square kilometer, making it one of the most populous agricultural regions in the world. In the Red River Delta, trees are only sparsely found along roads, canals, and in home gardens. Forests are rare. As indicated in Table 1, Red River forests cover only 3 percent of the land area in the delta, having changed little over the past 50 years. The Mekong Delta is not as densely populated, with 369 persons per square kilometer reported in 1992. Since population growth has occurred steadily over the past 50 years, forest cover has receded from 23 to 9 percent during this period. As centers of government for the majority Kinh cultural groups, the urban centers of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City and their four neighboring districts have been the focal points for the economic growth of the past decade, attracting approximately 80 percent of the $21 billion of foreign capital invested in Viet Nam between 1988 and 1996.

Foreign capital investment levels in most of the outlying upland provinces are less than one percent of urban districts like Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City. The delta regions function as agricultural and industrial production centers dependent on the upland regions for forest and other natural resources, irrigation, and hydropower. The Hoa Binh Dam, which inundated some of the best agricultural land in the remote Northwest region, now supplies 75 percent of the nation’s hydropower. primarily to delta agricultural lands and urban centers. Imbalances in flows of capital and resources into the deltas from outlying regions raise equity concerns.

Beyond Ho Chi Minh City to the north and east are undulating hills, often terraced and planted to tree crops. These Eastern Midlands, sometimes referred to as the Eastern Nam Bot, include substantial rubber plantations, with farm forestry gaining popularity in response to growing urban and industrial markets. Further to the south is the Mekong Delta. This region has experienced rapid deforestation of its coastal mangroves, with little natural forest remaining. Natural forests, however, are being partially replaced with scattered groves of exotic species, largely pines, acacias, and eucalyptus. Between 1961 and 1985, farmers planted 1.3 billion fast growing trees, setting a national record. Foresters hope that the establishment of exotic plantations can increasingly meet industrial needs while taking pressure off the natural upland forests. Plantations are not always well received by farming communities, and as one researcher reports, the "widespread planting of eucalyptus has exacerbated soil erosion and led to land use conflicts as land designated for plantation was in many cases already in use by local people."

COASTAL PLAINS

The coastal plains, located between the two major deltas, have also experienced steady population growth over the past century, with forests receding as agriculture and industry has expanded. While forest cover has declined by 50 percent since the end of World War II, the hill tracts bordering Laos, that rise up from the coastal plain, still maintain some intact, well-stocked old growth forest, covering approximately 35 percent of the total land area. The North Central Coast receives annual rainfall of 3,000 mm making it one of the wettest parts of the country, while allowing it to support rain forests rich in biodiversity. The dense forests of Nghe An in the north of the region, which border on the Red River Delta, are under heavy pressure due to their proximity to population and industrial centers. The South Central Coast possesses some of the country’s driest forests, with precipitation falling to 700 mm in Ninh Thuan Province. The North and South Central Coast regions possess 17 million people with rapidly developing industries, including wood-processing factories situated near Da Nang and other major sea ports. The regions’ forests, which possess 38 percent of the country’s wood volume, will likely continue to be a major source of industrial timber in the future.

THE UPLANDS

Beyond the delta and coastal zones are Viet Nam’s uplands. In this report, the uplands will be subdivided between the "midlands" located from 15 to 200 meters elevation, and the "highlands" situated above 200 meters. The four regions of the Northwest, North, and Northeast and Central Highlands together possess 87 percent of Viet Nam’s upland. For over a century, the uplands have been the primary source of raw material for the commercial timber industry. Hundreds of publicly managed State Forest Enterprises (SFE) have operated logging and milling operations on nearly four million hectares of largely upland watershed over the past 50 years. In the Northwest, forests have been cleared through centuries of shifting cultivation and natural burning, leaving small fragments of natural forests and bamboo groves on ridgetops and steeper slopes. Logging in the Northwest intensified during the 1960’s and 1970’s to supply timber and generate money to fund the war and to accommodate lowland settlers. Many of the remaining old growth forests benefit from the protection of ethnic minority communities, although such indigenous management systems receive little recognition and are threatened by government policies and programs developed in distant administrative centers.

Deforestation is also widespread in the North and Northeast where a growing rural population, which now exceeds 10 million, remains heavily dependent on subsistence use of forest lands and products, often competing with industrial demands. Estimates of forest cover for the mountainous north in 1943 range from 50 to 95 percent of total land area, while currently most provinces have between 10 to 25 percent of the area under forest. Demand for fuelwood, pulp, and industrial timber has accelerated tree plantation establishment in areas with viable market access; however, such activities are primarily located in the midlands within 100 kilometers of Hanoi. Market demands from the Mekong and Red River deltas push unsustainable and illicit felling.

In the densely populated Red River Delta, virtually all available land is used for agriculture. Growing market demands are stimulating tree planting on the fringes of the delta.

With the case of water transport, wood-processing industries are expanding along the riverways of the Central Coast.

The Central Highlands possess the nation’s best and most extensive forests: 42 percent of Viet Nam’s total forest cover and its most valuable timber reserves. While population densities are still relatively low, migrant and industrial pressures have driven rapid deforestation in this region. Scores of State Forest Enterprises and resettlement programs were initiated in the 1970’s, accelerating timber extraction and land clearing as millions of lowland Kinh moved into the region, competing with indigenous Ede, Bana, and Jarai populations for access to resources. As recently as the 1960’s, up to 90 percent of the Central Highlands possessed natural forest cover. However, the forests had receded 57 percent by 1995, with much of the cleared land classified as barren.

Given the demographic, economic, and cultural variation within the nation, government planners in Viet Nam will need to create forest policies that are responsive to this regional diversity and that can fulfill varied local and national requirements. In the past, government planners sought to develop policy instruments that provided uniform strategies to foster growth, however, their success has often been limited to regions with enabling characteristics such as road networks, markets, industries, and other support services. Policies developed by lowland Kinh planners are sometimes in conflict with the cultures and resource use traditions of ethnic minorities.

A HISTORY OF STATE-UPLAND COMMUNITY RELATIONSHIPS

In the pre-colonial era, the lowland Kinh courts maintained agreements with some upland minority groups, as did the French colonial government, to facilitate trade in certain forest products and to recruit tribal men for military service. While trade and military contacts between upland communities and lowland governments existed over the centuries, until the end of World War II life in the remote upland watersheds of Viet Nam followed the cultural traditions of the ethnic minority inhabitants.

During the colonial period, while most of Viet Nam’s upland forest areas were legally claimed by the State, the French colonial government had little operational control over these forest resources, except in upland areas selected for commercial enterprises. According to Nguyen Van Thang, "the ownership of forests and forest land remained in the hands of the rural communities who controlled their use by customary law. Boundaries were elaborately defined by these communities, with some lands available for cultivation and others for preservation as forests."

Prior to 1954, most of the upland regions of Viet Nam were sparsely inhabited by over 50 ethnic minority groups practicing traditional systems of land use. Some communities, like the Tai of the Da River, lived along mountain rivers practicing irrigated padi cultivation and aquaculture. The Tai and many other cultural communities were essentially sedentary, often inhabiting the territory for centuries. Other ethnic minorities, like the Hmong, lived on higher slopes, relying on long rotation or swidden agriculture, moving their settlements periodically. As populations grew, these groups came into closer contact. Tribal governance structures and customary laws predominated as methods for managing resources and arbitrating conflicts.

After independence in 1954, industrial timber production was placed under the authority of public corporations (State Forest Enterprises), with other public forest lands administered by provincial, district, and commune-level government offices. Traditional forest management systems received limited recognition under new laws in both the northern and southern parts of the country. Since the late 1980’s, however, State Forest Enterprises have been de-emphasized and are being replaced by policies supporting privatization, especially at the household level. In many situations, private household management of woodlots has led to improved productivity.

Between 1958 and 1962, the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam began nationalizing upland forests in north and northwestern parts of the country. This process was extended to the south after the unification of the country in 1975. According to national policies of the period, upland areas were perceived by planners to be "wasteland" or "wilderness." More recently the terms "barren land" or "land not yet in use" have become more common. Ethnic minorities continue to be viewed as "backward and superstitious" people who need to be integrated with the national socialist orientation and the dominant lowland Kinh majority.

A number of resettlement policies and operational strategies were implemented, often similar in concept to the transmigration programs of neighboring Indonesia. The thrust of the strategies involved moving Kinh people from the densely populated lowlands into the uplands. This achieved the dual objectives of bringing in a labor force to exploit the natural resources of the area and to facilitate national integration by exposing upland cultures to those from the lowland delta areas. Under the New Economic Development Zone policy of the 1960’s and 1970’s, approximately 4 million people were resettled, mostly into the Da River and, after 1975, the Central Highlands. The nationalized forest land was placed under the management of SFEs.

The construction of roads into the uplands regions facilitated the flow of people from the lowlands. Traditional institutions of ethnic minorities, considered backward by cadres from lowland Kinh groups, were replaced with new social organizations like the Farmer’s Associations, Women’s Union and Youth Brigades.

In 1968, the Department of Fixed Cultivation and Sedentarization was established with the objective of resettling the upland ethnic minorities in areas where they could be brought under the formal governance systems of the state. The policy also intended to eliminate rotational agriculture systems (swidden or "slash and burn") which were viewed as destructive to forests and low in productivity.

By the 1980’s, of Viet Nam’s 33 million hectares of total land area, 19 million hectares had been legally classified as state forest land. Publicly managed companies (SFEs) held over 4 million hectares, and conducted logging operations on 150,000 hectares each year, rapidly exploiting them for commercial timber production. Generating 15 million cubic meters of industrial logs and fuelwood annually, the timber sector contributed substantially to the national economy. Exports alone, which typically represent only 10 percent of the national market in timber products, generated US$140 million in 1991. Yet the costs to the environment were significant. Existing national forest cover declined from 42 percent in 1943, to 36 percent in 1973, and finally to only 23 percent by 1991. Currently, old growth natural forest is present on only 6 percent of Viet Nam’s land area. By the mid-1980’s, the failure of SFE and resettlement programs to sustain productive forests and protect watersheds created growing concern among policy makers. There was an emerging consensus among Vietnamese political leaders that the forestry sector, like other economic arenas, needed greater household involvement. Many SFEs were continually running at a loss, while cooperatives were collapsing.

The decision to allow households to play a greater role in rural development was a response to these difficulties, and was part of the fundamental change in policy that began in the early 1980’s and gained momentum under the banner of the "Doi Moi" (Renovation) program. Change manifested itself in governmental decisions to begin to scale down all state enterprises and collectives, while gradually allowing the private sector a greater control of industry, and household management of much of the agricultural economy. The government, nonetheless, continues to see a prominent role for the state in guiding the economy. At the same time, state enterprise managers with powerful patrons are also reluctant to lose control during this economic transition. While state enterprises were told to release 95 percent of their employees and facilitate their transition into the private sector, managers of public companies continue to control the growing flow of investments. It is estimated that 95 percent of the foreign investments entering Viet Nam are channeled through state enterprises. In fact, state enterprises "now account for almost 45 percent of Viet Nam’s GDP, up from 32 percent in 1991, and 25 percent in the late 1980’s."

ADAPTING NATIONAL POLICIES FOR UPLAND CONTEXTS

Emerging from a long struggle with the French in 1954 and with the United States in the mid-1970’s. Vietnamese leaders struggled to formulate policies to reunify the nation and improve the standard of living. Emerging strategies reflected the prevailing socialist values of the Vietnamese Communist Party and the cultural perspective of the dominant Kinh ethnic majority of the lowland deltas. Viet Nam’s leaders saw the uplands as a "new frontier for national development...underpopulated areas containing immense pools of untapped natural resources and vast areas of unutilized lands". It was believed that only labor, capital, and new technologies needed to be invested to release the immense productive potential of the uplands.

However, in structuring policies for the uplands, the largely lowland Kinh planners were confronted by the confusing diversity of some 50 ethnic minority groups, each with their own language, political institutions, and agro-economic systems. Ethnic minority norms and values that differed from those of Kinh were often viewed as "backward". The diverse array of long rotation agriculture and settlement movement patterns, often well adapted to upland forest regeneration and bionutrient recycling processes, were viewed as examples of inefficient production systems and of ignorance.

The low fertility soils of much of the uplands required long fallow cycles, a reality reflected in the use practices of Viet Nam’s ethnic minorities. However, government planners, primarily familiar with the highly intensive farming systems of the rich alluvial deltas, rejected the viability of such upland agro-ecosystems viewing them as wasteful and environmentally destructive. To combat them, "sedentarization" policies were implemented to move communities of swidden farmers into permanent settlements and to encourage them to adopt fixed cultivation practices. Three million shifting cultivators were targeted for participation in the program.

The planners’ view of the uplands as a frontier area ripe for development has persisted. Indeed, mineral resources are present. But, the government increasingly recognizes the fragility of the uplands environment. Concern over the continuing loss of natural forests resulted in a 1991 ban on the export of unprocessed logs. The increase in "barren" land from 3 million hectares in 1943 to about 12 million hectares in 1995 or nearly 40 percent of the nation’s land area has led to a host of environmental restoration programs. These include new forest laws on resource protection and the formulation of a multisectoral government program with a cost of VND9,000 billion (US$820 million) during the coming five year plan.

Planners are increasingly aware of how upland forest loss threatens the economic development of the lowland deltas and coastal plains. The ancient threat of downstream flooding in the Red River Delta and-the disturbance of irrigation waters to fertile rice-growing areas is now combined with the possibilities of electrical brown-outs to rapidly expanding urban-industrial centers. The Hoa Binh dam, located in the Northwest uplands, supplies half the nation’s electricity. Powering factories in the distant South, it is expected to have its productive life reduced from an estimated 100 to 300 years to only 50 years due to the extraordinary rate of reservoir sedimentation caused by deforestation and subsequent high level soil erosion.

While the Kinh people comprise 87 percent of Viet Nam’s population, in the mountainous interior including the Northeast, North, Northwest and Central Highlands, ethnic minority communities often represent the majority population, especially outside administrative townships and district and provincial capitals. Tenure systems, technologies, and rotational lengths vary widely among the 52 ethnic minorities living in highland areas, which comprises two-thirds of the national territory. Forty-six of the ethnic groups utilize a variety of shifting cultivation systems, requiring a careful linking of agriculture and forest resource use practices.

Each ethnic community possesses its own institutions, leaders, rules, and rights for managing forest and agricultural lands and water resources. Many ethnic minorities specialize in the propagation, collection, processing and marketing of forest products. For example, Dzao communities in the Northwest specialize in the collection of medicinal plants, cinnamon, and lacquer. Many Hmong villagers gather and process high quality bamboo, canari, and rattan, while the Khmer, who live in the forests of the South, collect aromatic oil from the melaleucu forests, honey, and other high value products from the aquatic mangrove forests.

Ethnic minority communities are under pressure from their own expanding populations. Migratory and semi-migratory peoples, like the Hmong and Dzao, are increasingly recognizing that opportunities to move are quickly decreasing. Forced to shorten rotation and lengthen cultivation periods, soil fertility is falling and crop yields declining in many areas. A cooperative research program between the Center for Natural Resources and Environmental Studies at Hanoi University and the East-West Center found that the average fallow period in a Tai village in Hoa Binh Province had fallen from ten years or longer to only one to two years, while farmers continued to plant for up to three years instead of for only one year.

This is also forcing a change in resource use systems. Nguyen Van Thang identifies ethnic minority farming systems in three broad categories: open cycle swidden cultivation, closed cycle swidden cultivation, and intensive paddy agriculture. Open cycle swidden traditionally relied on extensive tracts of forests, which are now increasingly unavailable. Farmers are moving towards closed cycle swiddening and intensified paddy and tree crop farming systems. However, specific agricultural adaptations vary widely from farmer to farmer and from one valley to the neighboring watershed. Program managers attempting to "sedentarize" farmers face frustration, forcing national policy makers to confront the need to accommodate local agricultural strategies, and their individual market, capital, and technological requirements.

CONCLUSION

Expanding population pressures on upland forests are generating tension and conflict among lowland migrants and ethnic minority people. Resettlement programs have exacerbated tensions in some areas by intensifying competition for limited fertile lands. Kinh migrants, and prominent ethnic minorities living in district towns and commune centers, are better positioned to benefit from land allocation programs in contrast to the poorer ethnic communities living in more remote watersheds. Yet scattered, forest dependent villagers are best positioned to protect the fragile uplands and rely most upon it for their survival. Clarifying resource use rights may help reduce tensions and allow for capital and labor investments leading to more intensive management. The process of clarifying forest management responsibilities must consider the historical usufruct rights of local communities. In Van Thang’s study of the Hmong and Dzao, the author found that:

Each community had its own sphere of territory, including land used as the place of residence and cultivation...Apart from the fixed rocky fields privately owned by individual households, the forest, mountains, streams and rivers were the common property of the community... The community prohibited or limited the exploitation of land or forests within its territory by persons from the outside-especially the utilization of virgin land covered by primary forests.

Forest lands were subdivided into those used for cultivation, forests under exploitation for timber, and forest land forbidden for exploitation including upper slopes and ridge crests. Within the forest, households often held specific rights to certain precious woods, trees with bee nests, and herbs growing naturally. Such community management systems and traditional modes of use rights allocation to clans, extended families and households continue to receive little recognition under law and little reflection in emerging privatization schemes.

While sedentarization and resettlement programs are still given considerable attention by planners, forest management policies have increasingly emphasized privatization in the uplands as an alternative to state control. In 1991, a policy was passed to allow the Forest Protection Service, which functions under the People’s Committee at the Provincial and District offices, to contract households to manage forest lands providing them a fee of VND55,000 (US$5) per hectare. With nearly 20 million hectares of forest land, a protection budget of $100 million annually would be required to fund management of the entire public forest estate. In the following chapter, Sikor examines this policy transition, exploring the effects of new forest allocation programs on resource productivity, particularly within the upland’s unique and diverse social contexts.

FOREST POLICY REFORM: FROM STATE TO HOUSEHOLD FORESTRY

(by Thomas Sikor)

By the late 1980’s, Viet Nam’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 Viet Nam are not able to produce the logs needed by the wood-processing industry in a sustainable fashion even if managed properly". 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 Viet Nam. 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 Viet Nam’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 Viet Nam’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.

STATE FORESTRY

Until the early 1990’s, State Forestry implied the direct involvement of the State in the management, exploitation, processing, and distribution of Viet Nam’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.

MAJOR POLICIES

The government nationalized large areas of land in midland and upland regions of Northern Viet Nam 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 Viet Nam. The objective of DFCS was to settle pioneering swiddeners by providing permanent settlements either in the same area or in more fertile, more accessible, non-catchment 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.

POLICY OUTCOMES

Under State Forestry, Viet Nam’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 sawn wood. Between 1986 and 1989, the forestry sector accounted for around 2 percent of national income and contributed up to 10 percent of Viet Nam’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 Viet Nam’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 maket-oriented timber and fuelwood production in Midland and Delta regions.

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 Viet Nam before 1985.

Afforestation activities, however, fell drastically short of halting the decline in Viet Nam’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 Viet Nam, 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.

PROBLEMS OF STATE FORESTRY

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:

Conflicts between local people and SFEs over control of forest resources and land.

External demands for forest resources and land.

Lack of investment funds.

Limited capacity of the forestry sector to innovate.

Coordination problems between different levels of the forest administration.

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.

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.

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. 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. 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 Viet Nam. 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.

HOUSEHOLD FORESTRY: THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW MODEL

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. Viet Nam 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. 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 non-state sector. Government statistics reported-an importance of the non-state sector for forest production, employment, afforestation, and wood-cutting that far outweighed the role of the state sector. The non-state 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 non-state units on a relatively small share of forest land had exceeded plantations undertaken by the state sector since 1987. Wood-cutting by the non-state sector far exceeded forest exploitation by the state sector.

MAJOR POLICY REFORMS

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:

Forest service enterprises would support afforestation, management, and protection activities undertaken by households, but also extend into other rural support services (agricultural extension etc.).

Forest exploitation and processing enterprises would purchase, process and market the processed product.

Forest industry groups would explore and open up new marketing possibilities.

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.

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 Viet Nam 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 sub-district level, and is represented in more than 80 percent of Viet Nam’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 Viet Nam. Lending to the non-state 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. 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. 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 Viet Nam’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.

EXPERIENCE FROM POLICY IMPLEMENTATION

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. 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.

Provincial and local governments have wielded considerable influence on the implementation of land allocation. 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.

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 Viet Nam 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.

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. 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. 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 Viet Nam’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. 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. 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.

CONCLUSION

From the 1960’s through the 1980’s, State Forestry policy bolstered Viet Nam’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 socio-economically 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. 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. 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 Viet Nam’s forests.

COMMUNITY CASE STUDIES FROM UPLAND VIET NAM

Over the past 30 years the communities of the Da River watershed have come into contact with the outside world. By the mid-1960’s, after centuries of relative isolation from lowland governments, the ethnic minority communities of the Northwest uplands were connected to the outside world by an improving network of roads. During this period, the Northwest was also targeted for government programs and national policies were actively implemented and new socialist governance structures established.

In the past, land, water, and forest resources were managed through indigenous institutions, but increasingly their resource management systems are shaped by government policies. Expanding government resources have allowed the initiation of large-scale development projects and social programs to implement national policies in once remote upland regions. This report provides a brief description of the experiences of the communities in Chieng Hac commune as they attempt to balance their traditional cultures with a commercializing economy and the growing presence of government policies and programs.

DA RIVER WATERSHED: A REGIONAL OVERVIEW

The Da River watershed is one of Viet Nam’s poorest and least developed regions. Many highland people are now confronting growing population and environmental problems, national and world market forces, and increasing government presence in their lives. Government attempts to meet basic food needs, economic development targets, and educational goals confront vast cultural and agro-economic diversity present in the mountainous Da River drainage. The Da River (Song Da) watershed is located in the northwestern corner of Viet Nam bordering Laos and China. The topography is mountainous and strongly dissected, with an average elevation of over 500 meters and a maximum of nearly 3,200 meters. One million people presently inhabit the watershed, up from 320,000 in 1945, with a corresponding increase in population density from 12 to 37 persons per square kilometer over the past 40 years. Present growth rates are projected to enlarge the watershed’s population to 1.24 million in 1999 and to 2 million in 2019, reflecting a population density of 75 per square kilometer.

Due to the mountainous topography of the Da River watershed, only 6 percent is designated for agricultural production, with less than 2 percent high productivity irrigated rice fields. Although the region’s total land area is 2.6 million hectares, 86 percent of the Da River watershed is legally classified as forest, but only 10 percent possesses good forest cover. Much of this shrub-and grass-covered, "barren" land is used by shifting cultivators. The region was probably well-forested several hundred years ago, but has experienced extensive forest loss that has accelerated in recent decades. Denudation appears to have resulted from successive waves of ethnic communities migrating from southern China, relying on fire to clear lands for agriculture and grazing, combined with more recent pressures from commercial logging and lowland migrants.

The fundamental issue in Son La province and other parts of upland Viet Nam is how indigenous cultural systems are adapting to broader sociopolitical and economic trends emanating from lowland Viet Nam, and how new government policies and programs are supporting ongoing transitions. The region’s cultural communities remain distinctive, with continuing reliance on traditional leaders and institutions, and on human-ecological practices adapted to the Da River watershed. At the same time, local government officials and structures have increasing influence on the lives of ethnic minorities, while growing market access and privatization has stimulated trends towards commercialization of the local economy. Government policies and programs have also had a marked impact in the area. Policies enforced over the past 5 years banning the opening of new swidden fields and the cultivation of opium have affected the land use practices of many Tai and Hmong households living in the Song Da. New land allocation programs have also brought government further into resource use practices. The new forest land allocation policy encourages the commoditization of land resources, a supportive action for those households ready to invest in commercial crop production, but inappropriate for upper watersheds traditionally held under communal forms of management. Sedentarization, land tenure, intensification, and the management of remaining forests are all important issues in the Vietnamese uplands.

The allocation of forest land to households is now being attempted on both sides of Highway 6 in the Da River watershed. Replicating this effort in more remote parts of the watershed presents major problems. The reallocation process, while participatory in its design, reflects a local government, committee-driven process that gives little emphasis to the integration of the traditional resource management systems of the diverse ethnic minority groups present.

ETHNIC GROUPS AND THEIR LAND USE PRACTICES

The Tai. The Da River watershed possesses 23 ethnic groups. The Tai are the most populous ethnic group, with over 410,000 people, followed by Kinh and Hmong, each representing 18 percent of the region’s population. The Tai are believed to have migrated into northwest Viet Nam from southwest China 700 to 800 years ago. Tai farmers sought out reliable water sources and valley bottoms to establish wet rice fields and fish ponds, growing other crops and establishing orchards on the lower slopes. In Son La Province, over 70 percent of the population is Tai. Tai communities are organized around chau, river valleys which historically comprised politico-territorial units. So great was the concentration of Tai in Northwestern Viet Nam/Northeastern Laos that in recent centuries they formed a political confederation termed the Sip Song Chau Tai (Twelve Tai State Confederation). The Tai presence in the Yen Chau administrative center (Huyen or district headquarters) is immediately striking. Many district officials are of Tai descent including the woman who heads the district people’s committee and the woman who manages the local guest house.

Fundamentally oriented towards irrigated rice cultivation, the Tai have been concerned with water resource management, irrigation channel maintenance, rotation of hillside crops, and have planted grasses and trees for centuries. Tai houses are typically large, raised on stilts with wide porches upon which much food preparation and textile design is undertaken. This has been a traditionally stratified society. Wealth is manifest not only in the size of the house, but also with the number of boxes or trunks holding textiles, jewelry, and other valuables, which are arrayed about the living area, and also by the number of fa or fold-out mattresses stored in the attic above the ground floor.

The Kinh . As members of Viet Nam’s dominant lowland majority, most Kinh have moved into the area during the past twenty years. Kinh population in the Da River watershed is concentrated near the provincial capitals of Son La and Lai Chau and around provincial agricultural and forestry enterprises. The New Economic Zone policy of the 1960’s, and other programs, have encouraged Kinh migration from the densely populated Red River Delta. The population of Kinh people in the upland regions of Northern Viet Nam grew from 640,000 in 1960 to 2,560,00 in 1989, a four-fold increase placing immense pressure on natural resources. Many Kinh came to work on State Forest Enterprises, clearing large tracts of timber. Frequently, public companies experienced management problems driving Kinh migrant workers to run their own logging operations and clear additional forest land to establish farms. It is estimated that up to 75 percent of the deforestation occurring over the past three decades has resulted from SFE, collective logging operations, and migrant land clearing.

The Hmong . The Hmong are believed to have begun immigrating into the Da area approximately 200 years ago. Movement of Hmong from isolated regions of southern China into the uplands of northwestern Viet Nam and across the border with Laos continues today. The 170,000 Hmong of the Da River watershed population are concentrated in upper mountains and plateaus. They practice shifting cultivation on hill slopes for varying durations, planting such staples as dry rice and corn, while growing opium poppies in the winter for sale or barter. The productive potential of the soil and water resources of upland Hmong communities is generally much less than that of the valley dwelling Tais. To maintain the productivity of their farms, Hmong will shift their fields and their settlements periodically. One study of 170 Hmong villages in Bac Ha district in the Da River watershed found 62 percent of the villages moved between 1974 and 1989.

Nguyen Van Thang, a Vietnamese anthropologist, explains, "Within the uplands of northern Viet Nam, the Hmong people tended to move northeastward...from highland to lowlands, around the base of mountains that were not occupied by other ethnic groups, practicing swidden agriculture." Thang continues, "Recently, due to the Vietnamese government’s policy banning opium poppy cultivation and reduction in the forest area available for making swidden, Hmong people have begun moving into the remotest forests ". He concludes that Hmong existence is precarious at present, with some communities fleeing into the forests of Laos and others being forced into resettlement villages.

The Hmong, the Tai and some of the other semi-migratory ethnic minority groups that practice subsistence swidden agriculture have been the de facto managers of much of the Da River’s upper watershed for well over 500 years. They have played an important role in transforming the vegetative cover of the landscape and even altering the microclimate. While the government has established policies and programs to halt shifting cultivation, it is not clear how far they can be implemented, or what viable alternatives will be available to swidden farmers.

Due to their isolation the Hmong have experienced difficulties in relating their village economies with the expanding lowland market that is penetrating the region, not to mention accessing health care and educational services offered predominantly along major roads. The 1993 government policy to destroy all poppy fields, while not entirely successful, has greatly reduced income from the group’s only major cash crop. Project-based efforts to provide substitute crops such as fruit trees, sugar cane, and peanuts have had limited impact, due to their lower profitability and limitations of government capacity to deliver the necessary extension and market support.

THE HOA BINH DAM

The Da River watershed has been profoundly changed by the construction of the Hoa Binh Dam between 1979 and 1994 at a cost of US$2 billion. The region was only connected to the lowlands in the 1960’s when the road was built to the Northwest in conjunction with preparations for the construction of the dam. The dam now supplies nearly 50 percent of Viet Nam’s electricity, powering much of the urban, industrial development taking place in the lowland deltas. Damming the Da River resulted in the inundation of 200 square kilometers of surface area, extending 230 kilometers upstream. As a consequence, 58.000 people were relocated, largely Tai, Hmong, and other ethnic minorities who had resided there for generations.

The Hoa Binh Reservoir extends 230 kilometers behind the massive Hoa Binh Dam, inundating 11,000 hectares of farmland including 4,000 hectares of high-productivity irrigated rice that once was the fertile Da River Valley. The reservoir displaced 58,000 people, many of whom resettled on the upper slopes of the watershed, farming marginal and eroding soil.

Hmong man of Chieng Hac Commune uses his cow to haul a log from the forest. Upland families displaced by the Hoa Binh project are even more heavily dependent on upper watershed forest resources since their lower-elevation fields were flooded.

After losing their wet rice padis and dry fields, displaced families are forced to clear an additional 2,000 hectares of forest annually, placing additional pressure on the watershed. Erosion levels have increased to such a degree that engineers have been forced to reduce the projected life of the dam from 300 years to 50 years due to heavy sediment loads filling the reservoir. A second dam is being planned upriver from Hoa Binh at Ta Bu near the provincial capital Son La. If constructed, an additional 130,000 people could be displaced and much of the remaining irrigated padi land in Son La and Lai Chau provinces would be inundated, creating even greater pressures on the upper watershed. While the second dam is attractive to some foreign investment firms and could provide much of the power needed for further economic growth in the delta over the next 35 to 50 years, it would create immense displacement for the people and economy of the Da River.

LOCAL ADMINISTRATION

Son La Province. Son La is one of three provinces which comprise northwest Viet Nam, and together with Lai Chau province, controls most of the land in the Da River watershed. Three quarters of the provincial population are Tai, with Kinh residing in the provincial and district centers, and the Hmong scattered through the higher mountains. The provincial government is responsible for assigning district heads and formulating development plans for the district and communes based on central government policies, programs, and budget allocations. Since the national economic liberalization was initiated in 1986, district and commune level officials are allowed to review and evaluate the plans before they are finalized.

Yen Chau District . The Yen Chau district has thirteen communes and one town, with most communes consisting of 10 to 20 scattered settlements, each possessing 10 to 100 families. Yen Chau’s total population is 49,000. The centers of economic prosperity are located in the town and eight larger villages along the Sap and Vat rivers, where much of the district’s 8,000 hectares of rice land and fish ponds are located. Tai people tend to dominate the river valley communities, with Hmong, Xing Mul, and other ethnic minority groups living in villages along the tributaries and in small highland valleys and hillsides. The Tai are more dependent on irrigated agriculture, fish farming, and animal husbandry, but also practice long rotation cassava farming on unterraced hillsides neighboring their communities. The higher elevation ethnic minorities often possess little or no wet rice land, concentrating their agricultural activities on three distinctive forest-based swidden systems; maize, dry rice, and opium. The chief of the district (huyen) is a local Tai who holds a two-year term and works with a council of 20 to 40 members. District government responsibilities include tax collection, property assessment, monitoring development activities, and carrying out basic administrative functions.

Chieng Hac Commune . Chieng Hac commune is located approximately 6 kilometers to the south of Yen Chau town, on the road to Hanoi. The commune has 3,400 people living in 11 culturally distinct villages. Eighty-one percent are Tai, 16 percent Hmong, and 3 percent Xing Mul. Divided by the Sap River, which is paralleled by Highway 6, the commune stretches 5 kilometers to the north and 7 kilometers to the south, sharing its border with neighboring Laos. Of the commune’s total area of 8,700 hectares, almost half is upland fields. Another 40 percent is old growth and secondary forest or bamboo groves, and only 12 hectares are irrigated rice land.

The commune is governed by a council representing the resident population. Each member on the council is appointed for a 2-year term. There are quarterly meetings to discuss the implementation of the commune 5-year plan. Commune members undergo short training programs on national laws and policies at the district level.

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN A TAI VILLAGE

Ban Tat village was established approximately 100 years ago, although the ancestors of most residents have lived in Yen Chau district for at least 300 years. Before 1954, the entire area was largely covered by old growth evergreen forest, with only seven families inhabiting the village. The original settlers depended primarily on irrigated rice cultivation, home gardening, and fish raising. By 1975, the village population grew to 76 families, and today there are 101 households in the community. Expanding the irrigated rice area was not possible due to water shortages. The growth of the village required much of the surrounding forest land to be cleared for cassava and corn fields. In recent years, village households have gone farther into the uplands to open forests for additional dryland fields, traveling up to 7 kilometers from the community, which is located at 250 meters on the banks of the Sap River, up to elevations of 700 to 900 meters.

Tai Land Use Practices

In the local Tai dialect, Ban Tat means "the village with narrow padi fields," reflecting the difficulties farmers have experienced in creating fields for irrigated rice. Of Ban Tat’s 1,342 hectares, only 7 hectares are irrigated fields. 700 hectares are natural forest, with most of the remainder dryland fields under a long rotating fallow and cultivation cycle. In a map of Ban Tat, the extensive tracts of old growth (Pa Dong) and secondary forest (Pa Kai) are visible, with the extensive cassava fields (Hay Co) in the lower slopes above the village. As a result, most households in the community are heavily dependent on the cultivation of cassava and corn on the sloping land above the village, supplemented by cattle raising, small orchards, and fish ponds.

The community lives in long, raised wooden houses where two to four nuclear families reside. Most houses are clustered just above the road. The buildings are situated in large compounds with fruit trees and vegetable gardens in small bamboo fenced enclosures. Most house yards possess a fish pond with the animal pen situated on the side. Home gardens, aquaculture, and animal husbandry systems exchange nutrients efficiently and are highly productive sources of protein and vitamins, as well as important for generating cash.

MAP OF TAI LAND USE CLASSIFICATION - BAN TAT VILLAGE, DA RIVER, VIET NAM

The local Tai resource-use system recognizes many categories of land use. These include:

1A: Lowland Irrigated Rice (Phieng Na Tat): Phieng means "flat or open place," and Na refers to "padi field." Most phieng are level terraces formed in valley bottoms at 250 to 300 meters. Phieng often have fish ponds attached above or below the padi fields. Due to their productivity, phieng are highly valued. Community organizations mobilize labor for maintaining irrigation systems. The water requirements of phieng and fish ponds are a major incentive for protecting upland forests and watersheds.

1B: Rainfed Rice (Phieng Thuong and Phieng Na Noi): These small rainfed fields are located in upland valleys at elevations ranging from 900 to 1,100 meters. They tend to cover smaller areas, rarely more than 1 to 2 hectares in size. Due to their higher elevation and lack of irrigation, they tend to be less productive than Phieng Na Tat.

2: Grazing Land (Phieng Quai). Fallowed dry rice and cassava lands, which when fallowed are used for grazing water buffalo. During the rainy season they revert to use as rainfed padi fields (Phieng Thuong) or dryland fields (Hay Co).

3A: Dry Upland Fields (Hay Co). Hay Co is largely used for the cultivation of cassava for domestic and limited market production. Fields normally range in size from 0.5 to 2 hectares and are situated on steep slopes of’ 20 to 40 degrees and at elevations up to 600 meters. The cassava crop is normally left for two years to reduce soil disturbance. Maize is also grown as a secondary crop, along with some legumes. Bananas are planted on the edge of fields.

3B: Dry Upland Orchards (Hay Mac). Hay Mac is usually used for fruit trees, primarily mangoes. It is likely that these lands were once Hay Co which were planted with fruit trees after the annual cropping period was finished.

4: Bamboo Forest (Pa). Extensive bamboo forests are located from approximately 600 to 800 meters. In 1976, 15 hectares were planted (Dendrocalamus sericeus) by a group of 10 households. Bamboo poles are harvested and shoots are collected both for domestic needs and the market.

5: Fallow Dryland Fields (Pa Lou). Usually found on sloping land and covered with 1- to 10-year-old shrubs and saplings, this land is usually on a 2- to 5-year agricultural rotation. In some cases, if its nutrients were overly depleted because it was cropped too long or excessively burned, the land may become dominated by imperata grass. In better sites, young secondary forest may emerge.

6: Middle-Aged Forest of 10 to 20 years (Pa Kai). These forest types are usually located on abandoned upland fields that were not reopened due to fertility problems or lack of accessibility. They may be considered agricultural lands under a long fallow cycle.

7: Primary or Old Growth Forest (Pa Dong). These forests are often situated on ridges or hill tops. Tai communities protect Pa Dong from timber felling and field clearing in recognition of their hydrological importance. The Tai of Ban Tat understand the need to conserve the upper watershed to ensure reliable water flows from springs to downstream rice fields and fish ponds. In many cases, these forests are also located on steep limestone bluffs where farming is impractical. Some Pa Dong are believed to be the home of spirits and ancestors.

TRANSECT OF TAI LAND USE CLASSIFICATION - BAN TAT VILLAGE, DA RIVER, VIET NAM

EMERGING FOREST MANAGEMENT ISSUES

Ban Tat village has a traditional system of forest protection under the leadership of older men known as Xompa, meaning "forest protector." The Xompa was responsible for overseeing forest use including 1) ensuring the strict protection of upper watershed forests; 2) designating production forests and allocating selective cutting rights for housing and tools; and 3) mobilizing the community to control forest fires. The Xompa system appears to have fallen out of use in recent decades as the authority of the commune has been extended over forest resources.

In an interview with the research team, Mr. Lo Van Beo, the headman of Ban Tat said, "We need more Xompa. The last Xompa was Mr. Quang Van Hien, born in 1904, and since he died we have had no new Xompa." "We feel Xompa is a very useful part of our Tai tradition. Many Tai villages in our area had Xompa, not just Ban Tat. Now outsiders have come and the populations have grown." Mr. Beo noted that before 1992, each village made their own forest use rules. He suggested that a new Xompa be chosen and that each household should assign one member for forest protection and management activities. Mr. Lo Van Lai, one of the oldest men in Ban Tat, echoed the headman’s sentiments when he said, "Most importantly, we must value highly forest protection and our village needs to promote this. We need to focus on the benefits of forest protection to local people. We need to reorganize the Xompa system with the support of the commune. As a second measure, we need to identify on a simple map, forests in need of protection and those we could use."

Bamboo suspension bridges like this connect the Tai Villages of Chieng Hac Commune that are located along the Sap River. Forest and upper watershed protection are gaining importance as commercial aquaculture, dependent on upland springs and rivers, has grown rapidly as a primary source of income for many households.

Tai elders in Ban Tat Village meet to celebrate the building of a new house constructed of timber from community forests. Traditional gatherings of this type provide opportunities to discuss resource management issues. The opinions of the elders remain influential, although new