DETERMINACIÓN DE PROVEEDORES Necesidades del proyecto Necesidades del proyecto

Having examined state and society relations from legal, political and ethnical points of view in the last two sections, this section now critically discusses these relations in the realm of natural resource management. For a country of moderate size, Vietnam harbours a globally significant diversity of species, much of which is still being catalogued (Sterling et al., 2006). Sterling et al. (2006) report that, between 1992 and 2004, three turtles, 15 lizards, four snakes, 31 frogs and more than 45 fish were newly described in Vietnam, while thousands of species are still waiting to be discovered. In addition, several new species of mammals were discovered in the forests of the Annamite Mountains in the 1990s (see Chapter 1).

Unfortunately, over the last 50 years or so, Vietnam’s forest heritage has been gravely undermined (de Koninck, 1999). Between 1943 and 1993, 50% of the natural forest in Vietnam disappeared (Morrison and Dubois, 1998). This loss accelerated between 1980 and the mid- 1990s (see Figure 4.2), when deforestation was encouraged to fuel economic development for the country (Jones, 1982; Sikor, 1997; Huynh, 1998; Sikor and Apel, 1998; Pham, 2000; Tran, 2002a; Nguyen, 2006a). In fact, pressures for using the country’s forest resources to fuel continuously high rates of GDP growth increased since the early 1990s. As such, forest exploitation has often taken precedence over conservation (Collins, 1990; Sikor, 1997; de Koninck, 1999; Pham, 2000; Sunderlin and Huynh, 2005; World Bank, 2002b, 2005, 2006). The degradation of natural resources has arguably made the lives of many local people more difficult and worsened poverty in many areas. Research has shown that there is a negative correlation between forest cover and poverty in Vietnam (Poverty Task Force, 2002). Widespread deforestation has been accompanied by degradation of arable land, soil erosion, degradation of water catchments and diminished groundwater sources (Tordoff, 2002). According to Vo and Le (1994), by the early 1990s, as much as 40% of Vietnam’s land became barren as a result of deforestation. This has serious implications for a country where more than 60% of the people depend on agriculture (DfID, 2007). Among the people worst affected by forest degradation and deforestation are the ethnic minorities, because they tend to be forest dependent (United Nations Country Team Vietnam, 2005; World Bank in Vietnam, 2007).

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Figure 4.2: Changes in Forest Area in Vietnam from 1976 to 2004

(Source: Forest Protection Department - FPD and Nguyen et al. cited in Nguyen, 2006a) The rapid decline of forest resources and its associated impacts on poverty levels among local forest-dependent communities have highlighted problems with the state-dominated system of forest management of the 1950s to 1980s, in which little attention was paid to local people (Pham, 2000; Nguyen et al., 2008a). This situation originated from the radical land reforms that began in the late 1950s, and from the nationalisation of forest on slopes steeper than 25 degrees in the 1960s29. In that period, local residents were excluded from and seen as a major threat to the state’s forest management efforts. Indigenous norms and traditional structures governing forest management were either replaced by centrally led institutions or received limited recognition under new laws in both the northern and southern parts of the country after the 1950s and 1970s, respectively, which led to the disappearance of locally controlled forest management practices. To manage forest and forest land, the state established a system of SFEs and SFs from 1954 onwards in the north (and from 1975 onwards in the south) (see Do, 2007). By early 1989, 413 SFEs were managing (i.e. exploiting) 6.3 million hectares of forest land, equivalent to almost 70% of the total forest land in the country. Until the end of the 1980s, the state was generally the only official actor in NRM. In turn, this encouraged a perception among local people that they had no rights to forests, whose management was the responsibility of state-led

29

My study sites are in the former Republic of Vietnam, where land reform and nationalisation of forest did not commence until after the Second Indochina War in 1975.

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forest protection units, such as the FPD (Poffenberger and Nguyen, 1997; Sikor, 1997; Sikor and Apel, 1998).

In this context, forest resources were exhausted in many places. By 2006, nearly half of the SFEs were reported to have no more commercially viable timber reserves to exploit (Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development – MARD, 2001a; Nguyen et al., 2001). Meanwhile, SFs failed to generate sustainable agriculture due to poor management and lack of incentives for farmers to work for cooperatives. This led to a situation where farmers cleared ever more forest to expand their agricultural fields and increase their food production (Castella and Do, 2002). In this regard, it was increasingly acknowledged among policy makers in the mid-1980s that centralized forest management through state-run institutions had failed to sustain productive forests and protect watersheds, and that the forestry sector, like other economic arenas, needed greater household involvement (Poffenberger and Nguyen, 1997; Pham, 2000; Nguyen, 2006a; Nguyen et al., 2008a).

Consequently, since the late 1980s onwards, the central government of Vietnam has adopted devolution policies in NRM in general and the forestry sector in particular, which saw forest management authority being transferred from SFEs to households, villages and communes. For a start, the 1987 Land Law (National Assembly Office, 1988) allowed agricultural land to be allocated to farming households and organisations under 50-year lease arrangements, which signified the abandonment of collective land ownership in both the agriculture and forestry sectors. When the Land Law (National Assembly Office, 1993; Ravallion and van de Walle, 2003) was revised again in 1993, transactions on agricultural land among individuals were permitted, for the first time since the establishment of the SRV. As such, rights to exchange, transfer, lease, mortgage and pass on land for inheritance under “Red Book”30 certificates were legalised. The 1993 revised Land Law signified a radical move by the government of Vietnam to further expand rights to individuals and devolve forest management authority to non-state actors (Sikor, 2001).

The legal framework for the forest devolution process established by the 1987 and 1993 Land Laws was further elaborated by legislation specific to the forestry sector. Among the first moves were the 1991 Tropical Forestry Action Plan, and the 1991 Forest Protection and Development Law, which introduced a new framework for forest management by entrusting private households to replace SFEs in overseeing the forest (National Assembly Office, 1991; Sikor and

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Apel, 1998; Hoang, 2009). In this spirit, the two biggest state-sponsored programmes for reforestation, Programmes 327 (or the “Greening the Barren Hills Programme”) and 661 (the “Five Million Hectare Reforestation Programme”)31 were formulated. Under these programmes, local households were contracted, together with state organisations, to protect areas of “special use” forests (i.e. protected areas) for the government in exchange for direct financial compensation, and promised private user rights to “production” and “protection” forests, such as the right to grow crops during the first years of forest re-growth and the right to collect forest products (McElwee, 2004b; Sowerwine, 2004; Sikor, 2006). Under the influences of these programmes, between 1993 and 1997, households, individuals, and communities received contracts to protect more than 1.9 million hectares, regenerate 224,000 hectares, and newly plant 559,000 hectares of forests (Pham, 2000).

Forest devolution accelerated in the 2000s with the recognition of communities (as opposed to individuals) as forest users by the revised Forest Protection and Development Law of 2004 (National Assembly Office, 2004). For the first time, this law legalised village communities as forest land managers, together with households and individuals (Article 5). As such, forest and forest land could now be allocated to communities (Article 29), and communities could extract and use forest resources for commune consumption and agro-forestry production activities while also being eligible for financial and technical support from the government for forest protection and development (Article 30). This indicated a greater recognition of communities as indispensable participants in the forest governance process. Going one step further, in 2007, MARD (2007) issued Circular 38/2007/TT-BNN to allow production forests to be allocated to communities, which, in turn, enabled them to grow timber for trading. This has conferred legal recognition on de facto managers of forest resources, often in ethnic-minority-dominated areas, and involved them in the forest devolution process. In this regard, the recognition of communities and their forest user rights has removed the biggest obstacles to the development of community-based forest management in Vietnam (Sunderlin, 2006).

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The programme 327 was officially launched by Government Decision 327-CT dated 15/9/1992, thus it is commonly referred to as ‘Programme 327’. Between 1993 and 1998, the government of Vietnam spent US$68 million on this programme (Tran et al., 2005), mainly from state funds (Do et al., 2004). The programme 661 was approved by the National Assembly in 1997 and the Prime Minister instructed its implementation by Decision No. 661/QD-TT dated 29/7/1998, thus it is commonly referred to as ‘Programme 661’. The programme has been implemented from 1998 until 2010, with the aim of afforesting barren lands in protection and special-use forests. Funds invested in this programme are expected to total US$256 million, comprising 64% from the state budget and 36% from donors (de Jong et al., 2006). One of the objectives of the 661 Programme is to increase forest cover to 43% of the national land area by 2010 (MARD, 2001b).

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Under this new legal framework, a wider range of forest users has been included in the forest- land allocation programme. The purpose of this programme is to allocate land to local people to encourage them to take part in forest management, in order to increase forest cover in the country (see Castella et al., 2006). At national level, forest land allocation (in exchange for forest protection contracts) is justified on the availability of land32 under the jurisdictional authority of MARD (Poffenberger and Nguyen, 1997). In Dak Lak province, where the forest land allocation programme is most advanced, management authority over large areas of forest land with standing forests has been transferred from SFEs to individual households, groups of households (since 1998) and whole villages (since 2000) (Nguyen, 2006b; Sikor and Nguyen, 2007; Nguyen

et al., 2008b). In particular, local households in many villages in this province had been granted

quite comprehensive rights over forests, including: property rights over forest land and forest resources; the right to convert 5% of the standing forest land to agricultural fields; and the right to exploit timber for sale and exclude others from access to forest land and resources on it. Also, local people were all granted ownership rights (i.e. Red Book certificates) that could be passed to others or used as collateral for mortgages (Sikor and Nguyen, 2007; Sikor and Tran, 2007). The National Forestry Strategy for the period 2006-2020 aims is to contribute to national poverty reduction goals by improving local resource users’ livelihoods and their participation in forest management and development. In this regard, communities, cooperatives and households have been given priority within the strategy to receive land and protection contracts for long-term protection, management and utilization of forests. In addition, the strategy also advises giving consideration to local customs and customary practices during the development of forest protection and development regulations (SRV, 2007). This indicates recognition of indigenous knowledge of local communities in forest policy. However, the participation of local resource users at the grassroots level, and thus the contribution of indigenous knowledge, to forest policy documents remains limited, because almost all members of the National Assembly (the key legislative body at the national level) are the leaders of social and political organizations from the district level and above, and the consultation period when citizens can raise their concern is often short, with only one or two weeks before the concerned regulations enter force (Hoang, 2009).

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19 million (or 89%) of the 33 million hectares that comprise Vietnam’s land area are legally classified as forest under MARD management, although only part of this area is actually vegetated with forest (Poffenberger and Nguyen, 1997). Therefore, a lot of forest land without forest has been used to promote forest devolution in the country.

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In spite of some successes in forest devolution in Vietnam, such as enhancing traditional forest management practices, contributing to poverty reduction in some villages in Dak Lak province (see Nguyen et al., 2008a) and increasing natural forest cover in some upland provinces (Castella

et al., 2006; Meyfroidt and Lambin, 2008), the overall assessment of the achievements of

devolution policies in Vietnam is still limited. For example, under Programmes 327 and 661, local people still did not derive great benefits from their participation in forest management practices, because SFEs were still in charge, and able, therefore, to retain good forests while allocating degraded forest with limited economic potential to households (Tran, 2002a). Also, the focus of these two programmes gradually shifted away from poverty reduction and local people’s participation towards forest protection (de Jong et al., 2006). While Programme 327 aimed at both reforestation and poverty reduction, through such activities as replanting and protecting forests, improving the utilisation of land, enhancing living standards of local people, and supporting fixed cultivation and sedentarisation (Tran et al., 2005), Programme 661 primarily focused on afforesting barren lands in protection and special-use forests (de Jong et al., 2006).

Other studies of forest devolution policies in the country have also raised doubts over their effectiveness (Do, 2007; Sikor and Nguyen, 2007; Sikor and Tran, 2007). Sustainable forest management has not yet become a shared vision for all villagers living around the forests under the community forest management programmes. For example, in spite of the implementation of forest land allocation polices starting in 1994 in Son La province, which allocated land to individual households as incentives to participate in forest management and protection, expansion of agricultural fields into protected forests rose between 1993 and 1997 in the studied villages (Sikor, 2001). Illegal logging for short-term use or conversion to agriculture within allocated forest land was also seen in some villages in Hoa Binh (To and Sikor, 2006; Nguyen et

al., 2008a) and Dak Lak provinces (Sikor and Nguyen, 2007; Nguyen et al., 2008b). In Hoa

Binh, the forest allocation programme also created conflicts between different groups of local people and between local government and local resource users when it failed to take into account of de facto rights to forest resources (Do, 2007).

These outcomes can be attributed to several factors. In Dak Lak, for example, there were conflicts over use of forest resources, which arose due to the exclusion of specific sections of the local population from the programme. For example, Kinh households, as well as villagers from surrounding villages who traditionally accessed forests for their daily use, were excluded from the programme on grounds of ethnicity (for Kinh households) and relative distance from forests

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(for the surrounding villages) (Sikor and Nguyen, 2007). In fact, this situation highlights the gap between statutory laws and local customary practices. This situation also occurred in Hoa Binh province during process of forestland allocation (see Do, 2007). As such, forest land allocation programmes in both Dak Lak and Hoa Binh have not yet paid adequate attention to local dynamics of forest resource use (Do, 2007; Nguyen et al., 2008a). This is compounded by the fact that forest allocation programmes were often perceived by local people as being an external intervention, given that they did not acknowledge current and traditional use of forests or traditional institutional arrangements for forest management in the area (as in the case of Dak Lak; Sikor and Nguyen, 2007) and the participation of local people was exchanged for domination by local officials, their relatives and their friends (as in the case of Hoa Binh; Nguyen et al., 2008a). Meanwhile, in Son La province, the reason was that the incentives for local people proved insufficient to encourage them to protect forests. The land allocation and forest protection contracts did not improve upon the ways in which villagers already gained access to forestry land and resources. Instead, they had the potential to weaken their control over land already under their de facto ownership before the devolution began (Sikor, 2001).

The previous discussion raises concerns about equity in forest allocation programmes. Research in 13 villages in Dak Lak province found that political connections were important in acquiring legal forest title and, therefore, legal rights to forest and its resources, which thereby excluded many poorer households without the necessary political connections from acquiring forests (Nguyen, 2006b). Moreover, unfair forest-land distribution was also evident as a result of unequal relations between state officials and local communities. Local government officers had priority over villagers to receive forest and forest land on the assumption that the officers were better equipped to manage these resources. Although this inequality might have led to better forest management (because government officers were more bound to state regulations to forgo immediate benefits, such as harvesting timber, in order to let forests re-grow), it came at the expense of depriving poorer households of opportunities to improve their livelihoods from allocated forest and forest land (Nguyen, 2006c). The pattern of forest allocation to government officials was repeated in Hoa Binh, where information about the forest land allocation programme was not properly disseminated to all households in each village. Instead, only commune and village officials and their relatives, who numbered among the richer households in the village, were informed of the programme and were able to apply for the land allocation on time. Other households in the village knew nothing about the programme until it was too late to apply (Nguyen et al., 2008a). These examples highlight the fact that, despite significant changes

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in forest policies to increase local participation in forest management, government officials (i.e. government control) still dominate the management of forest resources, especially at the local level.

In addition, benefits from allocated forests are often minimal. This is the gap between policy statement and reality. For example, the government has stated (in Prime Ministerial Decision No. 178; issued in 2001 – MARD, 2003) that it is ready to give two-thirds or more of the total revenues from the sale of forest products, including timber, to households and individuals to whom forest land had been allocated, leased or contracted. However, where individual households or communities are allocated forest, the benefits that accrue to them are often low, either because the areas of forest land they are allocated are small, the condition of the allocated forest is poor (the best quality forests are almost universally retained under the ownership of state actors, such as SFEs) and/or their user rights are limited to, for example, collecting dry fuel wood and minor forest products (Sikor and Apel, 1998; Nguyen et al., 2001; Sunderlin and Huynh, 2005; Wundera et al., 2005; Sunderlin, 2006; Sikor and Tran, 2007; Nguyen et al., 2008a; Nguyen et al., 2008b; see also Chapter 6). Often, configurations of forest land allocation programmes sometimes do not respond to local needs, for example, by prohibiting cultivation of sloping land in upland areas but not providing suitable livelihoods alternatives for sloping land cultivators, as in the case of the devolution programme in Bac Kan province (Castella et al., 2006). That said, in some villages in Dak Lak and Hoa Binh provinces, where forest land allocation has taken place, the actual use of forest resources varies among villages. In some cases, local people are allowed to clear forest land for crop cultivation and extract timber to support their livelihood activities. In one village in Dak Lak in particular, net revenue from timber extraction in 2006 amounted to VND 283 million (approximately USD 19,000), representing a significant source of income for local people in the village. However, this village was the only case among the studied villages in Hoa Binh and Dak Lak where forest land allocation programmes actually contributed positively to poverty reduction. In this case, the role of the donor was vital in helping local people to realise their rights towards allocated forests and overcome administrative procedures to harvest forest products (Nguyen et al., 2008a).

In regard to legal frameworks supporting the devolution of forest management authority to local people, meaningful changes for local empowerment remain few. The 2004 Revised Forest