Abstract
A new forest policy of allocating forestland to individual households for management and development, has been applied in Vietnam since the early 1990s. This study was designed to examine how local forest-related people have used forestland and forest resources under the new policy, and to determine their level of dependency on forests. An upland forest-related community in northern central Vietnam, where the policy was introduced in 2002, was chosen as a case study. It was found that local residents in the community have not complied with the forest allocation policy well, in that they violated the policy to freely lend forestland to and borrow from villagers for cropping purposes, regardless of whether they were rich or poor, had enough land or not, or were legally forest recipients. Regarding forest dependency, all households studied lived on forest resources (forestland and forest products). More than 65% of the total annual income of poorer households was derived from the forest, compared to less than 40% for the richer households. Forest-derived income accounted for more than 75% in their total income in some of the poorest households.
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Notes
Vietnam’s forests are functionally categorized into three classes: special-use, protection and production forests. Special-use forests are mainly used for the purpose of protecting nature, plants, animals and the ecosystems of the nation, scientific experimentation, maintaining historical and cultural relics, sight-seeing, and tourism. Protection forests are mainly used for protecting water and land resources, preventing erosion, limiting natural calamities, regulating the climate, and contributing to the protection of the ecological environment. Production forests are mainly used for the purpose of producing timber and non-timber forest products and specialties, and protecting the ecological environment (Sam and Trung 1999, cited in Vien et al. 2005). The special-use forest can also be managed by individual households, but only in very limited cases.
$1 US = 16,000 Vietnamese Dong (VND) approximately, as of October 2007.
More precisely, there are six kinds of forest (of the three functional categories) that can be allocated to local people: (1) Special-use forest, (2) Protection forest, (3) Forestland without forest cover but designated to be a protection forest, (4) Natural forest but designated to be a production forest, (5) Production forest which already has trees planted by the state’s investment, and (6) Production forest without forest trees (barren land). Timber cutting is forbidden in most forests unless people have permission from state authorities. Even when trees are ready for harvest, a permit from state authorities is still needed (except in cases where production forest recipients invest in forestry with their own money). Local people are allowed to take timber from production forest for building or repairing their own houses, as long as they have a permit from authorities (Articles 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 of Decision 178/DQ-TTg 2001).
As well as swidden (or slash-and-burn) land, this can be upland crop cultivation land used to grow upland rice, maize, cassava and other crops, with a fallow (non-cropping) period of just 1 to 2 years. In Vietnam in recent years the time left between crop years for land fertility recovery has declined from 10 to 15 years, due to lack of land.
Under the new Land Law promulgated on November 26, 2003, a Vietnamese community (or village or hamlet) having the same customs and/or kinship is officially eligible to be allocated land or to have land use rights (Point 3, Article 9, Land Law 2003). Since then the community forest management and traditional forest management systems have been promoted and encouraged.
The remainder of the production and protection forest area has been handed over to local organizations which are farmer associations, elderly unions, women’s associations, war veteran unions, and youth associations (DoNRE 2006).
The managers, which were formerly state-owned forest enterprises, are local Protection Forest Management Boards, at the district or regional level depending on the scale (area) and location (watershed area) of the protection forest.
This is a variation of the normal practice, in that the honorarium logically and normally is paid to those with a contract to manage protection forest, based on their area of protection forest.
Timber logging is illegal activity.
Under Article 15 of the Decree 02/CP 1994, the forestland recipient has the right to lend or even sell the land use certificate to others, though this will effect the subsidy and support from the government.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the Fuji Xerox Setsutaro Kobayashi Memorial Fund and the Kyushu University Interdisciplinary Programs in Education and Projects in Research Development, for their financial support for the two field surveys of this research. Our special thanks also to farmers and officials in the study site. We gratefully acknowledge Steve Harrison from the University of Queensland, for his valuable comments and editing.
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Quang, N.V., Noriko, S. Forest Allocation Policy and Level of Forest Dependency of Economic Household Groups: A Case Study in Northern Central Vietnam. Small-scale Forestry 7, 49–66 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11842-008-9040-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11842-008-9040-8