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DESK STUDY REPORT

Reviewing legal documents related to the process of land and forest allocation to the community in Thua Thien Hue and Quang Nam provinces

Implemented by CENTER FOR DEVELOPMENT OF COMMUNITY INITIATIVE AND ENVIRONMENT (C&E)

Hanoi, September 2013

The Center for Development of Community Initiative and Environment (C&E) C&E is a Vietnamese not-for-profit and non-governmental organization working to promote participation and improve capacity of local groups and organizations for better solutions to environmental issues that are related to their life, contributing to the development of civil society and sustainable environment in Vietnam.

C&E was founded by members of the Advisory Group of the Sida Environmental Fund (SEF). The Center inherited SEF experiences and lessons over 12 years promoting and supporting community initiatives in environmental protection and sustainable use of natural resources, and promoting NGOs and CBOs that worked at the grass roots level. SEF was established by the Swedish Embassy in Hanoi.

C&E was granted establishment decision from the Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Associations (VUSTA) number 1202/QD-LHH dated 27 August 2008 and operation license No. A-754 from Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) dated September 12, 2008.

Vision: C&E envisages the future of Vietnam in which grassroots communities and organizations actively participate in solutions to environmental problems, sustainable use of natural resources, and maintenance of sustainable life of themselves.

Local participation – of local communities and government – is highlighted in C&E works. We believe that no one know and solves local problems as good as the local stakeholders do.

Missions: C&E embraces the mission to support local communities, community-based organizations, and civil society organizations in formulation and implementation of locally sustainable initiatives to protect the environment, natural resources management, and promote sustainable development.

Areas of Focus: • Natural resource management • Environmental protection and sustainable development • Climate change • Civil society development and participation Program and activities: • Research and Intervention • Capacity building • Education and communication • Policy advocacy • Networking and partnership

This study is in the framework of the project: “Sustainable Management of Natural Forest through Awareness Raising and Capacity Building to Improve the Use of Rights and Legal Status of Ethnic Minority Communities towards Natural Forest in Central Vietnam” funded by Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (RSL) in 2013

Content and photo: Center for Development of Community Initiative and Environment Copywright: No use of this publication may be made for resale or for any other commercial purpose Edit: Hoang Thanh Tam, Bui Thi Thanh Thuy Design: Nguyen Hoang Vu

Center for Development of Community Initiative and Environment Address: No.12 - Lane 89 Xa Đan street, Phuong Lien, Dong Da, Ha Noi Tel: 04.35738536 - Fax: 04.35738537 Website: www.ce-center.org.vn/ www.ichange.vn Email: ce.center.office@gmail.com Facebook: www.facebook.com/ce.center.vn

TABLE OF CONTENT II 1

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS INTRODUCTION I. GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION ABOUT RESEARCH AREAS 1. Thua Thien Hue Province 2. Quang Nam Province II. RESEARCH FINDINGS 1. The legal provisions of land and forest allocation from 2003 to present 2. Positive impacts of the policies on forest land management 3. Inadequacies in land and forest allocation policies 4. Shortcomings in LFA to the community 5. Evaluation of local implementation 6. Evaluation of documents related to local LFA training and communication III. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 1. Conclusions 2. Recommendations LIST OF PERSONS CONSULTED REFERENCES INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR OFFICIALS

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List of maps Map 1: Administrative Map of Thua Thien Hue province Map 2: Administrative Map of Quang Nam province

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List of table Table 1: The current land use in Thua Thien Hue province Table 2: The current land use in Quảng Nam province

Lis of abbreviation CFM C&E DARD DONRE FPD LFA LoFPD MARD MONRE PC PPC

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Community forest management Center for Development of Community Initiative and Environment Department of Agriculture and Rural Development Department of Natural Resources and Environment Forest Protection Department Land and forest allocation Law on Forest Protection and Development Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment People’s Committee Provincial People’s Committee

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This report presents the findings of a desk review of legal documents and the process of land and forest allocation (LFA) to the community in the two provinces of Thua Thien Hue and Quang Nam which was carried out by the Center for Development of Community Initiative and Environment (C&E). We sincerely thank the agencies, organizations and members who contributed to this report.

First of all, we express our gratitude to the Forestry Science and Technology Association of Thua Thien Hue province and Forest Protection Department of Quang Nam province who supported us in our research activities in Thua Thien Hue and Quang Nam. We are truly grateful to our partners and stakeholders in Thua Thien Hue and Quang Nam who facilitated useful meetings and discussions with our experts.

We also thank the experts, members of the research team and C&E officers who were enthusiastic in implementing the activities as well as provided support to the field work.

Finally C&E expresses our sincere thanks to Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (RLS) Southeast Asia who has funded this research.

C&E

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INTRODUCTION BACKGROUND Forests and forestland are not only invaluable resources and the most important component of the environment; they are also a major location of culture, customs, society, security and defense. Therefore, it is essential to protect and use forest and forestland in sustainable ways. Recognizing this, the Communist Party of Vietnam and the Government of Vietnam have issued suitable policies on management and use of land and forest resources. The Vietnamese State has implemented the policies on land and forest allocation (LFA) for long-term use to organizations, households and individuals to improve and stabilize the lives of mountainous people and help protect and develop forests.

The results obtained from the LFA program is that forest coverage has increased significantly. Under the previous national forest concentration management, our country lost over 2.6 million hectares of natural forest from 1976 to 1990. Under the LFA program, the forest area had expanded from 11 million hectares to 13 million hectares by 2009, that was, over 10% in 19 years (Ibid.p.7).

The gains of the LFA program, however, have not brought about practical effects. In mountainous areas where most of the ethnic minorities live, the program has been slow and many communities have not had long-term rights to manage and use forestry land. Moreover, results have not met concerns of the people and as Nguyen Quang Tan et al point out, “in most cases, the impact of LFA policies has been limited, if not negative” (cited in Rights and Resources Initiative, 2011:53).

One of the major challenges for the LFA program mentioned in the RRI report (2011:53) is how to officially recognize custom land rights and institutions in the written law. Articles 29 and 30 in the Law on Forest Protection and Development (LoFPD), one of two Vietnam’s laws which are the basis for the LFA program, state: “All households and individuals who live in the same village are those who have rights over the forests that they have been managing and using effectively”. This law also recognizes that “traditional practices and customs are the basis for conducting LFA to these groups”. However, there is a big gap between the current implementation and these articles.

In general, although traditional knowledge is the key element in the culture of indigenous people and local communities, they are often neglected in policy-making and planning for conservation and development. The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development proclaims in Principle 22 that “Indigenous people and their communities, and other local communities, have a vital role in environmental management and development because of their knowledge and traditional practices. States should recognize and duly support their identity, culture and interests and enable their effective participation in the achievement of sustainable development”.

The Land Law in 1993 and Decree No. 02/CP of the Government of Vietnam in 1994 have created a legal framework for the rights to use forest and forest land. Subsequently, a series laws and by-law documents such as the amended Land Law in 2003, the amended LoFPD in 2004, Decree No. 01/ND-CP, Decree No. 163/1999/ND-CP, Decree No. 181/2003/ND-CP, Decree No.135/2005/ND-CP and others have allowed many subjects the rights to participate in the forest and forest land management, protection, development and use.

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Nevertheless, many difficulties exist in applying these policies in reality because regulations of state agencies have been asynchronous or in conflict with each other and there has been a lack of coordination among relevant authorities. Therefore, the Center for Development of Community Initiative and Environment (C&E) carried out a desk study to review legal documents on LFA and to formulate recommendations for improvement of the LFA to meet this inevitable requirement of the reality.

URGENCY OF THE RESEARCH PROBLEM Community forest has existed as a part of local traditions. It links the benefits of people with spiritual beliefs and the religion of the community and plays an important role in the life and culture of ethnic minority groups. To promote the interests of the community and their roles in the sustainability of forests, the Government of Vietnam has allocated forest to the community to manage and use for the long-term since the 1990s. According to 2011 statistics, Vietnam has a total forest area of 13.565 million hectares, in which 11.4 million hectares have been allocated to forest owners including state organizations, private companies, village communities and households (MARD, 2012). However, the institutionalizing process and implementation of the policies have faced many difficulties and legal position/status of the community has remained unclear. The rights and legal responsibilities of the community as a real forest owner have not been recognized by the State. The policy system on the rights of people to access, manage and use natural forest differs from the reality and this explains why these policies have not really come to life.

Behind this situation are two main problems. First, the law views traditional livelihoods of shifting cultivation and gathering forest products as “deforestation� and prohibits such activities. Second, insufficient or no understanding of the legal procedures related to forest management have limited people’s legal position/ status with forest land. They often manage land by traditional customs which are not recognized by the law. (The law only recognizes allocated land which has been registered with the government). These factors have put owners who are minority communities in unfavorable circumstances in relation to forest land which they have used for generations. This requires managers and policy makers to design and implement policies that are appropriate for each region and each locality and ensure full rights of the community when they participate in natural forest management.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

The research objectives were to assess the popularity level, effectiveness and efficiency of the legal documents on natural forest allocation to the community in Thua Thien Hue and Quang Nam and based on this assessment to propose implementing solutions that are suitable with the local situation.

RESEARCH AREA This study was about the implementation of the legal documents of the State on the activities of LFA to the community in the two provinces of Thua Thien Hue and Quang Nam.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY This study collected both secondary data and primary data which were mainly qualitative.

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We combined a few data collection tools such as literature review methods and group discussions in combination with in-depth interviews.

• Literature review We collected and analyzed information about the system of legal documents on natural forest allocation to the community and results of the implementation of these documents.

In addition, we utilized existing information, documentation and data related to land and natural forest allocation to the community.

Simultaneously, we collected LFA training and communications materials which has been used in the locality and based on these materials made recommendations about methods for effective training for and communication with people in the research areas.

• Interview The research team used semi-structured questionnaires to interview managers and experts who had extensive experience in natural forest allocation to the community such as Provincial People’s Committee (PPC), Provincial People’s Council, Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD), including Forestry Department and Forest Protection Department (FPD), Department of Natural Resources and Environment (DONRE), Women’s Union, Committee for Mountainous Ethnic Affairs, Provincial Forestry Association, district and commune officers and people. Interview formed the basis for our review of the past LFA process and recommendations to functional agencies to adjust and supplement the legal documents to make the future LFA more effective.

To obtain accurate data, the consultants adopted a participatory method. We involved all stakeholders in the interview process and ensured that they, especially women, the poor and ethnic minorities, all raised their voices and contributed to the review.

RESEARCH TEAM 1. MSc. Hoang Hong Hạnh, Expert in Forestry, Gender and Community Development C&E Center, Team Leader.

2. MSc. Pham Ngoc Dung, Expert in Environmental Management - Forestry Science and Technology Association in Thua Thien Hue, Team Member.

3. BSc. Nguyen Van Tinh, Vice Head of Division of Forest Protection and Management Quang Nam Forest Protection Department, Team Member.

4. MSc. Hoang Thanh Tam, Expert in Natural Resource Management, C&E Director, Team Member.

5. MSc. Vu Quoc Phuong, Staff of C&E Center, Team Member.

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GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION ABOUT RESEARCH AREAS 1. Thua Thien Hue Province Basic information Thua Thien Hue is a plain province with mountains in central Vietnam. It borders Quang Tri province in the north, Quang Nam province and Da Nang city in the south, the East Sea to the east and Se Kong province and Salavan province of the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos in the west. According to the Statistical Office of Thua Thien Hue province, the province population in 2010 was 1,090,879 people with a population density of 215.48 people per square kilometer. This included 470,970 urban people and 619,972 rural people. In term of gender composition, there were 540,172 males and 550,707 females.

Map 1 - Administrative Map of Thua Thien Hue province

(Source: http://d.data3.cadviet.com/hc_thuathienhue.jpg)

Ethnic characteristics and some cultural traditions and customs Thua Thien Hue has four main ethnic communities, of whom Kinh people are an absolute majority. Other ethnic groups include Ko tu, Ta oi - Pa co and Van Kieu. There are some people such as Chuc, Tay and Nung who have a very small population. Specifically, there are 1,042,287 Kinh people, accounting for 95.55% of the population. The ethnic minorities account for only 4.45% of the province population with 48,592 people. These minorities concentrate mainly in bordering mountainous communes and districts.

Ko tu ethnic minority has about 14,680 people. In the past, Ko tu people cultivated primarily upland rice and cassava by slash-and-burn method, i.e. slashing forest, pricking holes and

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inserting seeds for crop cultivation. Other economic activities include animal husbandry, weaving, knitting, food gathering and hunting. They knew to grow paddy rice when they implemented sedentary during the 1980s under policies of the Communist Party and the State.

There are around 32,878 Ta oi people in Thua Thien Hue province, including three main groups of Ta oi, Pa Ko and Pa hy. Similarly to Ko tu people, Ta oi people used to grow upland rice and cassava for food by slash-and-burn method i.e. slashing forest, pricking holes and inserting seeds for crop cultivation which are usually called ’slash, burn, prick and insert’.

Van Kieu people are also called Bru, Tri, Khua or Ma-coong. Thua Thien Hue province only has about 800 Van Kieu people who live in A Luoi District, that is, in communes bordering Dak Krong district of Quang Tri province. Unlike Ta oi and Ko tu people, most Van Kieu people live in small houses which are suitable for small families including a father, a mother and unmarried children. Adult children who are married often split up to build separate houses.

Current forest resources Table 1: The current land use in Thua Thien Hue province Thua Thien Hue Forest land types Area (ha) % Total natural area 503.320,53 100.00 1. Forest land area 317.333,87 63.05 1.1 Special-use forest land 79067,03 15,71 1.2 Potection forest land 100964,54 20,06 1.3 Production forest land 137302,30 27,28 2. Agricultural land 59285,34 11,78 3. Non-agricultural land 88529,74 17,59 4. Aquaculture Land 5895,49 1,17 5. Unused land 31976,42 6,35 According to Report No. 16/BC-UBND 2nd March, 2011 of Thua Thien Hue Province In recent years, Thua Thien Hue forestry sector made significant contributions to social and economic development, national security, eco-environmental protection and biodiversity conservation in the province. The development orientation of Thua Thien Hue forestry in the coming period is to promote economic restructuration; form social forestry focusing on forest protection and development; ensure forests’ functions for protection and biodiversity conservation; develop processing activities in association with concentrated areas of raw material sources; generate jobs; contribute to hunger alleviation and poverty reduction; and increase the value of forestry’s contributions to the provincial economic development.

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2. Quang Nam Province Basic Information Quang Nam is located in the central Vietnam. It is 860 km to Hanoi in the north and 865 km to Ho Chi Minh City in the south. The province borders Thua Thien Hue and Da Nang in the north; Quang Ngai province in the south; Kon Tum and People’s Democratic Republic of Laos in the west and the East Sea in the east. The total natural land area of the province is 1,043,836.96 hectares, including 2932.98 hectares of unused land. The province’s terrain varies, lowering from the west to the east forming three distinguished types of ecological landscapes which are high mountains in the west, hills in the middle and a coastal plain trip in the east. As of 2010, Quang Nam’s population was 1,435,629 with an average population density of 139 people per square kilometer, including an urban population of over 260,000 people. With 81.4% of the population living in rural areas, Quang Nam has a higher proportion of population living in rural areas than the national average rate. Nam Giang and Dong Giang districts (two project districts) are among the high mountainous districts of Quang Nam province.

Map 2 - Administrative Map of Quang Nam province

(Source: internet http://www.tamky.gov.vn/Portals/9/BanDo/BanDo_Large.jpg)

Ethnic characteristics and some cultural traditions and customs Quang Nam has four ethnic minorities who traditionally live in the province, i.e. Ko Tu, Co, Gie Trieng and Xe Dang and some minorities who are new migrants. The total ethnic minority population is over ten thousands, accounting for 7.2% of the province population.

Despite differences in cultural traditions, especially in ancestor and deity worship, the ethnic

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minorities in two provinces share traditional slash-burn-prick-and-insert farming practices, and are heavily dependent on nature. Their main food crops are upland rice, paddy rice, cassava and corn. Wildlife trapping and hunting, gathering forest products are also part of their livelihoods. Therefore, the life of ethnic minorities include many difficulties, depending on forest resources and thereby exerting pressure on forest management and protection.

Current forest resources Quang Nam has a total forest land area of 714,221 hectares (accounting for 68.40% of the province’s area) including 517,063 hectares of land with forest (394,185 hectares of natural forest and 122.878 hectares of planted forest) and 197,158 hectares of land without forest.

Forest area and forest land divided by function: 133,784 hectares of planned special use forests (including 105,748 hectares of land with forest), 326,831 hectares of planned protection forest (including 231,668 hectares of land with forest) and 248 903 hectares of planned production forest (including 174,943 hectares of land with forest).

Table 2: Current land use in Quang Nam province

Forest land kinds Total natural area 1. Forest land area 1.1 Special-use forest 1.2 Protection forest land 1.3 Production forest land 2. Agriculture land 3. Non-agricultural land 4. Aquaculture Land 5. Unused land

Quang Nam Area (ha) 1.043.836,96 682.256 129.627 309.080 243.549 56.409 89.535 3.533 154.980

% 100.00 65.36 12.42 29.61 23.33 5.40 8,58 0.34 14,85 Decree No. 74/NQ - CP on 13 June 2013

Forest coverage is 48.2% (according to Decision No. 1828/QD-BNN-TCLN on 11 August 2011 of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development- MARD- announcing the forest situation in 2010). Estimated volume of timber reserve is about 30 million cubic meters. Quang Nam now has about ten thousand hectares of rich forest which are distributed at the tops of high mountains. Other forests are mostly poor, average or regenerated with a timber reserve of about 69 cubic meters per hectare. The special-use forest system is planned and concentrated mainly in the districts of Phuoc Son, Nam Giang (Song Thanh Nature Reserve), Nam Tra My (Ngoc Linh Nature Reserve), Nong Son (Elephants and habitat conservation area) and Tay Giang and Dong Giang (Sao la Reserve). Song Thanh Nature Reserve was established in 2000. Sao la conservation area was established in April 2011. These established an open corridor for animals living in the mountain region between Laos and Vietnam, especially Sao La which is an endangered specie.

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The forest management system, policies and institutions related to forests in Thua Thien Hue & Quang Nam In the two provinces, the state management functions in relation to forests and forest land belong to the People’s Committee (PC) at provincial, district or city and communal levels.

Professional bodies provide advices to these PCs. The Provincial People’s Committee (PPC) leads the organizational system of forest management of the province. PPC performs the functions of state management of forestry in the province. The Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD) advises PPC to implement these functions.

DARD has two offices, Forest Protection Department (FPD) and Forestry Department, to advise and assist it in performing the functions of State management of forests. FPD assists DARD in performing the state management in forest management. FPD has a system of ranger offices in districts and cities. These ranger offices perform duties assigned by FPD and advise the district and city’s PC in implementing its functions of state forest management in the district or city, respectively. Forestry Department helps implement the state management function primarily in terms of silviculture in the province.

In addition to the two departments, there are management boards forprotection of the forest in different districts. Besides, in Thua Thien Hue, there are three management units of special-use forests which are Bach Ma National Park (under the MARD), Phong Dien Nature Reserve, Saola Reserve and Song Thanh Nature Reserve, Saola Quang Nam Reserve in Quang Nam. PCs of districts or cities is the agency performing the state management functions towards forests and forestry land in the respective district or city. It is advised by Division of Natural Resources and Environment, Division of Agriculture and Rural Development and the ranger office in the district. The Commmune PC is the agency performing the state management functions towards forests and forestry land in the commune. Officers in charge of agriculture, forestry, land administration and commune forest rangers advise and assist the Commune PC. Besides the state agencies involved in forest management and protection, community-based institutions which are locally involved in forest management exist at the grassroots level such as agricultural and forestry extension clubs, boards of community forest management (CFM), or interest groups in forest management and protection.

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RESEARCH FINDINGS 1. The legal provisions of land and forest allocation from 2003 to present The Party and State have been institutionalizing their policies, step by step decentralizing their management of forest resources which include promotion of the role of community in forest management. This is clearly demonstrated in the Land Law in 2003: “village communities are recognized as subjects to be allocated with land”. However, according to the Civil Code (1995) and the Land Law (2003), the village communities are not part of regulated subjects of protection forest land, production forest land and special-use forest land.

To create a legal basis for the subjects participating in forest resource management, the LoFPD amended in 2004, regulates clearly about rights to use, to own forest and responsibilities of forest owners and concurrently highlights responsibilities of forest owners towards allocated, leased forest, and planted forests owned by them. This has motivated forest owners and increased their confidence to invest in forestry business and production and forest protection and development. In addition, the LoFPD in 2004 formally recognizes the role and position of village communities in forest management, protection and development.

Rights and responsibilities of village communities to allocated forest are specified in Clauses 1 and 2, Article 30 of the LoFPD in 2004. This provision has some restrictions such as: “it is not allowed to distribute forest to members in the rural community and convert, transfer, donate, and lease the rights to use allocated forest, or use as bond or guarantee or contributing capital to businesses” (point d, Clause 2, Article 30 of the LoFPD in 2004). The restrictions show that the forest allocation to village communities is mainly to serve their shared purposes. This is also an important legal basis to ensure the management and supervision ability of the State of forests allocated to the village communities (Nguyen Ba Ngai, 2004).

Along with the Land Law in 2003 and the LoFPD in 2004, there have been many by-law documents related to policies on LFA such as:  Decree No. 181/2003/NÐ-CP on the implementation of the Land Law in 2003; Decree No. 23/2006/ND-CP on the implementation of the LoFPD in 2004; Decree No. 88/2009/ND-CP on 19 October 2009 about issuance of certificates of landuse rights or ownership rights to house and other assets attached to land; Decision No. 304/2005/QD-TTg on 23 November 2005 about piloting forest allocation and contracting forest protection to on-site households and the community as in ethnic minority villages in Central Highlands provinces; Decision No.186/2006/QÐ-TTg on 14 August 2006 issuing forest management regulations; Decision No. 18/2007/QĐ-TTg on 5 February 2007 approving the Vietnam Forestry Development Strategy period 2006-2020; Circular No. 38/2007/TT-BNN on 25 April 2007 of MARD guiding the order and procedures for allocating, and leasing forest to and recovering forest from organizations, households, individuals and village communities; Inter-ministerial Circular No. 07/2011/TTLT-BNNPTNT-BTNMT guiding some contents

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about allocating and leasing forest in association with forestry land allocation and leasing. Decision No. 178/2001/QÐ-TTg on 12 November 2001 of the Prime Minister regulating rights to benefits and obligations of households and individuals who are allocated, leased or contracted forest and forest land. Circular No. 70/2007/TT-BNN on 1 August 2007 of MARD guiding the formulation, organization and implementation of conventions on forest protection and development in village communities. Decision No. 106/2006/QD on 27 November 2006 of MARD guiding the management of village community forest. Decision No. 112/2008/QD-BNN on 19 November 2008 of MARD promulgating the technical-economic norms for forest allocation and leasing and issuing certificates of land use rights for forestry purposes associated with forest management documentation. Document No. 2324/BNN-LN on 21 August 2007 of MARD guiding technical criteria and procedures for community forest exploitation. Dispatch No. 123/BNN-LN on 15 January 2008 of MARD guiding piloting the establishment, management and use of funds for forest protection and community development. Decision No. 434/QD-QLR on 11 April 2007 of the Director of the Forestry Department promulgating guidelines on developing regulations to protect and develop forest at the commune level and guiding allocation of forest and forest land to village communities. Decision No. 550/QD-QLR on 8 May 2007 of the Director of Forestry Department promulgating guidelines on developing conventions on forest protection and development for village communities. Document No. 1326/CV-LNCD on 7 September 2007 of the Forestry Department guiding management planning for community forest. Document No. 1327/CV-LNCD on 7 September 2007 of Forestry Department guiding surveys of community forest. Document No. 1703/CV-DALNCD on 14 November 2007 of Forestry Department guiding the monitoring and evaluation of the implementation of CFM plans. Document No. 141/CV-DALNCD on 5 February 2008 of Forestry Department amending and supplementing the Guidelines for surveys of community forest. Document No. 588/CV-DALNCD on 12 May 2008 of Forestry Department guiding boundary demarcation and mapping of assigned forest for the community.

The legal documents have created a legal framework for the LFA to be effective in practice.

However, these legal documents have many drawbacks that need modified to make the LFA legislation more perfect.

2. Positive impacts of the policies on forest land management • Households and individuals who receive LFA and issuance of certificates of rights to use forestry land are satisfied because they have an asset and initial resources which they

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can use their own households labor in the management, protection and development of forests. This proves people are very keen on land, very needed the land to produce, and needed the right to use forest land stability.

• LFA results have created a premise where true forest owners have been developing their household economy. Families and individuals have been able to effectively use resources provided by state programs and projects by participating in planting and protecting forest on forest land that have been allocated to them, thus becoming forest owners. This has made positive impacts to forestry development and households and farm economy development. This has, in turn, promoted the production of forestry goods and socio-economic development in rural mountainous areas.

• The hand-over of the rights to use forest land to households has helped enhance economic thinking for all households and brought new resources to link land to labor and to develop household economy.

• Policies to contract land and productive forest have created jobs and income for households living in the operating area of State forestry enterprises and the boards of forest management.

3. Inadequacies in land and forest allocation policies Despite these positive signs, after more than 15 years of implementation, LFA policies have many shortcomings, namely: • Lack of legal documents on the collection of forest-use fees in the cases that the State have allocated forest and collected forest-use fee for and compensation when the State recovers forests (Pham Xuan Phuong, 2008).

• Lack of post-LFA-support policies for forest owners who are households, individuals and village communities such as investment, credit, technical support and product consumption ... (Pham Xuan Phuong, 2008; Dinh Huu Hoang, Dang Kim Son, 2008, Le Du Phong et al., 2007).

• The policies on benefit entitlements also have similar shortcomings. So far, Decision 178 has not come to life and cannot be implemented in the upland. Therefore, these policies should be adjusted or modified to suit the conditions of mountainous households, and communities when they participate in forest management (Nguyen Ba Ngai, 2004; Pham Xuan Phuong et al., 2004).

• Some traditional customs and practices are incompatible with policies on allocation and leasing of forest and land. People’s awareness of forest differs. The long-existing tradition that field and land ownership are a legacy for future generations can hardly be changed. They together with some other reasons are obstacles for the forest receivers to have clear awareness. They continue to exploit forest in an illegal way (GTZ, 2008; Vu Ngoc Kich, 2001 cited in Tran Duc Vien et al., 2005).

• The lack of fairness in the land allocation process has hindered the achievement of the policy objectives (Pham Duc Tuan; 1999 cited in Sunderlin and Ba, 2005; Sikor et al., 2005, Hoang Thi Sen, 2009).

• Land and forest allocation has limited rights of access to the resources of the poor and fragmented traditional cultural space (Vuong Xuan Tinh, 2008).

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4. Shortcomings in LFA to the community Many legal documents such as the LoFPD and Decree 181/2004/CP view village communities as subjects who have the rights to receive forest and land but do not have the rights to transfer, lease and use forest as bond, guarantee or contributing capital for businesses.

These communities are not entitled to subsidized loans or incentives according to the law on encouraging investment.

Regarding the term ‘community’, Clause 3, Article 9 of the Land Law uses the concept of “residential communities”, while Clause 13, Article 2 of the LoFPD uses the concept of “village communities”. In fact, there are many community groups and household groups and interest groups but not all villagers in a village who have received forest. Therefore, the two concepts should be united into one concept of “residential communities” which does not necessarily mean all households in a village as the LoFPD defined. It is necessary to expand the concept to include “household groups and interest groups ...”

In addition, it is required to examine and amend Clause 7 of Article 33 of the Land Law because this article does not recognize residential communities as a subject to receive forest land while the LoFPD regulates that they (village communities) are the subjects of forest allocation. The contradiction is that the community only has the rights to forest but not to land while forest is a property attached to land. Thus, amendments are necessary to recognize residential communities as a subject to receive forest land along with civil transaction rights on their allocated forest land.

The provisions in the LoFPD in 2004 also have some following shortcomings: In Clause 4, Article 3 defines “forest owners are organizations, households and individuals to whom the State allocates forest, leases forest, allocates land for forest plantation, leases land for forest plantation, whose forest use rights are recognized by the state, whose ownership of production forests (which are planted forests) are recognized by the State or those who received forest transferred from other forest owners.” This complements Article 5: “Forest owners consist of Boards of Protection Forest Management, Boards of Special Use Forest Management, domestic economic organizations, households, individuals, armed units, scientific research and technological development organizations &, overseas Vietnamese, and foreign organizations and individuals.”

Although the concept of forest owners has been expanded, Article 5 does not recognize “residential communities” as forest owners so the communities automatically do not have the common rights in Article 59 and the general obligations of Article 60. In Clause 13, Article 3 explains the term “village community is all families and individuals living in the same village or equivalent units”, whereas according to Clause 3, Article 9 of Land Law in 2003 “Residential communities include Vietnamese communities living in the same villages and the same population areas with the same customs, practices or family lineage to whom the State allocates land or whose land use rights are recognized by the State.” Thus, the Land Law only uses “resi-

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dential communities” as a term but does not stipulate that residential communities should include “all households, individuals” in the scope.

In addition, other types of forest owners who have received forests in reality have not been included in the law. They are, for example, household groups, interests groups, and clubs.

Accordingly, the term “residential communities” should be expanded to include the whole village, household groups, interests groups, clubs and others who together protect the forest. Similarly, the term “community” of the LoFPD needs to be amended to be the same as that in the Land Law in 2003: “Residential communities include Vietnamese communities living in the same villages or the same residential areas with the same customs, practices or family lineage to whom the State allocates land or whose land use rights are recognized by the State.”

Point b, Clause 1, Article 30 states that rights of village communities who are allocated with forest including “to exploit and use forest products and other benefits of forest on public purposes and household needs for members in the community”. If the community only receives forest use for public or household purposes, thats not attractive enough for them to protect the forest (except for the sacred forests and ghost forest…) because forests assigned to them is mainly natural but poor forests which do not have sufficient reserve or canopy coverage (Decision No. 304/2005/QD-TTg; Circular No. 17/2006/TT-BNN and Decree No. 200/2004/ND-CP of Clause 4, Article 4). For example, Thuy Yen Thuong village community (in Thua Thien Hue) has been allowed to log wood in advance to serve the needs of the community but not to sell and divide income among the members of the community. This has discouraged the community to continue to manage the community forest.

Clause 2, Article 30 provides that the obligations of village communities who are allocated with forest include “not to divide forest among the members of the village community and not to convert, transfer, donate, lease, and use the rights to use the allocated forest as bond, guarantee or capital contribution to businesses”. Factually, the civil transaction rights of the community towards the allocated forest are not recognized. Understandably, they do not want to invest in protecting and developing forest because they do not see the legitimate rights for what they spend or invest in. Therefore, it is essential to recognize the civil transaction rights of village communities to allocated forest such as the right to transfer the increasing portion of forest (in the case members of the community move out of the locality), the right to lease, and to use the added value of forest as bond, guarantee or contributing capital to businesses and to inherit (in case the heirs still live in the locality).

The Civil Law 2005 has no provision that recognizes the legal status of the community. This has made civil transactions on the forests allocated to communities difficult to implement.

This also means that the rights and benefits of the community from the forest have been much more limited than those of forest owners who are households and individuals. Therefore, it is necessary to recognize the legal status of the residential community to encourage their participation in allocated forest protection and development with the benefits that they will gain in the process.

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5. Evaluation of local implementation a. Thua Thien Hue Province The legal documents implemented in Thua Thien Hue Province: Thua Thien Hue Province has implemented most of the legal documents about LFA passed

by National Assembly, Government and Ministries. The Province itself has issued a number of documents to specify guidelines, policies and regulations of the Central Government about LFA to create a legal framework for the implementation of these policies, as follows: - Decision No. 1430/2006/QD-UBND on 05 June 2006 regulating benefit entitlements from logging in planted forests invested by the budget of Thua Thien Hue Province.

- Guidance No. 410/HD-NN.PTNT on 14 May 2007 of the Thua Thien Hue PPC providing temporary instructions on procedures to recover forests and then transfer forestry land to localities for management.

- Guidance No. 21/HD-TN&MT-ĐK on 28 May 2007 of the PPC guiding land allocation, land lease, issuance of certificates of land-use right to households, individuals and communities.

- Resolution No. 8i/2010/NQ-HĐND of the Provincial People’s Council on 02 June 2010 approving the Forest Protection and Development Plan of Thua Thien Hue from 2009 to 2020.

- Decision No. 1347/QĐ-UBND on 23 July 2010 of Thua Thien Hue PPC approving the Forest Protection and Development Plan of Thua Thien Hue from 2009 to 2020.

- Decision No. 430/QD-UBND on 02 March 2010 of Thua Thien Hue PPC approving the scheme of forest allocation and lease in Thua Thien Hue province from 2010 to 2014.

Results of LFA to communities in Thua Thien Hue: • From 2003 to 2010, Nam Dong, Phu Loc, A Luoi, Phong Dien districts allocated over 12,955.84 hectares of natural forests. Most of the budgets invested in the LFA activities came from international projects such as the PROFOR project of UNDP, the Enhancing capacity of Forestry Management ForHue project of the Netherlands Development Organization (SNV), Extension and Training Support Project for Forestry and Agriculture in the Uplands (ETSP) of Helvetas, Green Corridor project of WWF and others.

• In 2011 and 2012, the focus of Scheme 430 was to allocate natural forests to PCs of communes, households, and communities and household groups for management.

- In 2011, over 7323.8 hectares were allocated and documents for the allocation of 2583.5 hectares of natural forests before 2010 were completed. These included mainly poor forest with an average timber reserve of 90 m3/ha, the lowest reserve of 10 m3/ha (in Phu Loc district, Huong Tra town) and the highest reserve of 228 m3/ha of rich forest (in Nam Dong district). At the same time, procedures were completed to allocate over 9070.7 hectares of natural forests to 28 communities, 62 groups, and 109 households.

- In 2012, over 10,682 hectares of natural forests were allocated to households, groups, and communities in 18 communes of five districts. Among them, 8,164 hectares were for the first time allocated to 14 village communities and 85 rural households. Documents were completed for an allocated area of 2.518 hectares from 2010 and earlier.

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• After being allocated with forest, the communities have rapidly built their conventions and regulations on forest management as a basis for their stable management, protection, and development of forest in the village.

Shortcomings in the implementation process in Thua Thien Hue For nearly ten years, Thua Thien Hue province has allocated more than 28,400 hectares of natural forests to hundreds of communities, households and groups. Basically, local departments and agencies have well fulfilled the function of state management of forests and forestry land. They actively worked to allocate forest, obeyed the allocation procedures, and met the required progress and legal procedures for forest allocation documentation. Commune officials, especially forest rangers, participated in many training courses to improve technical skills. They have not only managed the forest but also measured its quantity and quality, and based on this knowledge proposed solutions to improve the efficiency of natural forest management. Thua Thien Hue province has timely specified the legal documents from the Central government and Party into policies and guidelines appropriate for the province’s own reality to meet requirements of land and natural forest allocation to the local community.

However, the implementation of legal documents on LFA has not achieved the desired results. The implementation process has generated many problems which were difficult or even impossible to solve because of the inextricable issues, conflicts among the laws, limited or poor awareness and capacity of the officials and local people as well as the poor quality of allocated natural forest.  Inadequacies in the contents and practicality of the legislations - Given the many documents related to CFM, some of the document contents lack practicality and, are in conflict with each other or are too general and need to be more specific for more effective application in reality.

- Decision 178/2001/QÐ-TTg of the Prime Minister about the rights and responsibilities of households and individuals who are allocated with forest land, has motivated them to receive natural forest. Unfortunately, some of the contents of this decision are only theoretical. In practice, it is difficult to fully implement the benefits of this decision.

- Decision 178 does not attend to the amount of forest growth, while according to Decision No. 40/2005/QD-BNN on 07 July 2005 of MARD on logging wood and gathering other forestry products, logging is allowed only when the forest volume reaches 110m3 per hectare and exploitation intensity shall be from 18-23% for trees of groups III to VIII being 40cm in diameter. If forest grows but its reserve stays under 110m3 per hectare, logging is not allowed. Thus, people have to wait for decades to benefit from the forest via logging if their allocated forest is poor.

- Household groups managing forests only get benefits through gathering rattan, leaves for making hats, bamboo, honey and others. Because most of the forest has been heavily exploited before being allocated to the people, the economic benefits from the exploitation of forest by-products are very low compared with the people’s efforts, making their enthusiasm decline.

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- Point b, Clause 1, Article 30 of the LoFPD stipulates the rights of village communities who are allocated with forests to: “exploit and use forest products and other benefits of forests for public purposes and domestic purposes of members of the community”.

The problem is that if a community receives forest only to serve public purposes, these purposes are not attractive enough for them to protect the forest (except when it is a sacred or ghost forest...) because forest allocated to this subject consists mainly of natural forest which is neither rich nor average but cannot meet prescribed volume and canopy coverage requirements (Decision No. 304/2005/QD-TTg, Circular 17/2006/TT-BNN and Decree No. 200/2004/ND-CP: Clause 4, Article 4 ).

- Inter-ministerial Circular No. 80/2003/TTLT/BNN-BTC of MARD and the Ministry of Finance dated 03 September 2003 on “Guidelines on the implementation of Decision No. 178/2001/QD-TTg dated 12 November 2001 of the Prime Minister stipulating the rights to benefits and obligations of households and individuals who are allocated with forest land” cannot be implemented because it is unsuitable with existing benefit mechanisms and beneficiaries.

- Document No. 754/CV-LNCD dated 31 May 2007 of Forestry Department on “Guidelines on silvi-cultural techniques applied to forest communities” is difficult to implement given the limited resources and capabilities of communities.

- Document No. 815/CV-LNCD dated 06 December 2007 of Forestry Department on “Guidelines to build model of desired forest structure supplying natural wood” is hard to carry out because of difficulties in building standard structural models for all forest conditions in different ecological areas.

- Inter-ministerial Circular No. 07/TTLT-BNNPTNT-BTNMT dated 29 January 2011 of the MARD and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE) guiding some contents of forest allocation, forest leasing with land allocation and forestry land leasing has been implemented since 2011. However, as the coordination mechanism has been unclear and inconsistent and suffered from staff shortage, the forests were often allocated before land allocation the implementation of which has often been delayed.

- Circular No. 38/2007/TT-BNN dated 25 April 2007 of MARD guiding the order and procedures for forest allocation and leasing to or recovery from organizations, households, individuals and village communities just focuses on administrative issues but not the participation of the community and does not emphasize the role of consultation. Therefore, this circular has not been implemented effectively.  Inadequacies in documents and procedures, quality of allocated forest, and postallocation monitoring Before 2010, the allocation of natural forest to communities was primarily accomplished with funding of international programs and projects. Each project had its own, different approach and thus different procedures and implementation methods and different ways to enhance the participation of stakeholders. These have greatly affected the effectiveness of forest allocation. In some areas, these procedures were superficial.

Before their allocation to communities to manage, many of the natural forests were not surveyed and evaluated carefully, particularly in terms of forest resources. Allocation was

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mainly based on existing data provided by forest ranger offices. Therefore, it has been very difficult for the communities to develop a workable plan to exercise their rights and obligations as stated in the law.

Most of the allocated forests were poor or exhausted and located near the communities.

Such forests produced nothing but rattan leaves for making hats and bamboo. Communities have not been entitled to even the annual forest protection payments, which other forest owners received, therefore it has been very difficult for them to access subsidized resources of management, protection and development of forests as they could hardly invest in the forests, including silvi-cultural activities to improve the quality of received forests. In short, the communities are given the all the work of managing forests without any funds, so it has been hard for them to get the benefits and exercises rights recognized by law which they expect from managing state-allocated forests.

The procedures and documents have not been completed for many forest areas allocated before 2010 in accordance with the state regulations.

After allocation to the community, local authorities and agencies have not attended properly to support, check, monitor and evaluate the community performance. These activities are not in harmony and therefore in conflict with each other or are close to non existent in some regions. ďƒ˜Awareness of officers and people of the legal documents: Research findings show that people gained information about legal documents through village meetings so their information and understanding of the state policies related to land and LFA have been limited. Many people, even forestry officials and local authority officials do not know fully and clearly the state policies. When being asked what documents they knew, most respondents could not answer or remember the name of the documents. Moreover, the legal documents lacked detailed studies of ethnic life, culture and their traditions in protecting forests as well as the connection between their lives and the forest. This is one of the major reasons that made the implementation of legal documents on LFA unsatisfactory.

The findings confirm that public understanding of the forest policies depends much on the capacity of local officers and the dissemination of relevant policies by state agencies.

Another reason for the legislation not effectively reaching ethnic groups is due to a lack of ethnic minority staff who understands the policies to guide ethnic people. Kinh officials often understand the policies very well but due to language barriers or unsuitable communication methods, their dissemination and explanation of and guidance on the policies for the locals are not effective. ďƒ˜The participation of the people in LFA in and other activities: Currently, the mountainous districts of Thua Thien Hue province have been conducting LFA to communities for management. However, each locality has its own way of implementation and these activities have not been as effective as desired. Many reasons have led to the inef-

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fectiveness of LFA. One of them has been the lack of participation of the people in all steps of the LFA process. (Le Van Lan & Pham Dinh Hien, 2013).

Research findings show that LFA training activities were mainly for commune officials, onsite forest rangers and the members of the Board of CFM. People have hardly been involved in all LFA steps. Therefore, people know about the state policies mainly through local officers in village meetings.

On being asked about community conventions, even provincial officials said that conventions were usually built following formats provided by state agencies and brought to the community to apply. There was absolutely no people’s participation in the construction of the terms of these conventions and as a result the conventions did not have characteristics special to their communities. Although the mountain communities had their own conventions on the protection and exploitation for ages, the terms of the new conventions are less realistic. Therefore, the construction of the convention has been superficial but not practical. Interviewees said that there were many training courses such as management skills for forest protection, monitoring and evaluation skills, forest resource surveys and others.

Few people, however, could remember any of them when being asked. Most of the Boards of CFM could not make their own operation plans work efficiently, and often hesitate to ask and work with local authorities, agencies and ranger offices to report, propose and recommend CFM-related issues. The main reason for this problem is the poor qualifications and capacity of the Boards of CFM. Leaders of the Boards of CFM in Nam Dong, A Luoi and other districts cannot compose proposal documents and activity reports properly based on the state formats. They even do not know the responsibilities, positions and authorities of the agencies to work with. Therefore, it is essential to provide soft skills for members of the Boards of CFM. b. Quang Nam Province Legal documents implemented in Quang Nam Province Quang Nam province, like Thua Thien Hue, has implemented most of the legal documents passed by National Assembly, Government and Ministries about LFA. The Province has also issued a number of documents to specify LFA guidelines, policies and regulations of the Central Government to organize and implement LFA as follows: - Resolution No. 05 NQ/TU dated 11 October 2002 of Quang Nam province Communist Party Committee issued some key policies and solutions on ethnic peoples and the mountainous area. To implement this resolution, Quang Nam PPC made Decision No. 52/03/QÄ?-UB dated 9 June 2003 to issue an action plan for ethnic and mountainous affairs in 2002-2007; - Decision No. 3508/QD-UB on 26 August 2003 by Quang Nam PPC approving the LFA project in the province developed by the DONRE; - Document No. 43/TNMT-DD on 13 February 2004 by DONRE issuing guidance on formulating LFA options and LFA forms; - Conclusion No. 19/KL-TU dated 02 August 2004 of the 16th Provincial Communist Party Committee Meeting to continue implementing the Resolution 05-NQ/TU of the XVIII

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-

- - -

-

- - - -

-

Central Committee.

Announcement No.487/TB-UB dated 19 December 2004 of the PPC on its conclusion on the Preliminary Completion Conference on LFA pilot to residential communities in the six high-mountainous districts of the province; Announcement No. 216/TB-UB dated 07 June 2004 of the PPC on speeding up LFA to residential communities ; Document No. 189/TNMT-DD on 22 July 2004 of DONRE issuing guidance on forestry land allocation to residential communities; Decision No. 05/2005/QD-UB on 25 January 2005 of PPC promulgating benefits and obligations of village communities when they are allocated with forest and forest land by the State to manage, protect, grow, regenerate and plant forest; Notice No. 224/TB-UB dated 13 July 2005 of PPC on forestry land allocation to residential communities and allocation of residential and production land according to Decision No. 134/2004/QĐ-TTg on 20 July 2004 of the Prime Minister; Notice No. 331/TB-UBND dated 03 October 2005 on the PPC’s conclusions in the working session with DONRE on forestry land allocation to the community.

Notice No. 05/TB-UBND dated 05 January 2006 on the PPC’s conclusions in the Mountainous Region Conference on 27 December 2005.

Notice No. 670/TB-UBND dated 24 October 2006 on the PPC’s conclusions in the Workshop on Forestry Land Allocation to residential communities in the province.

Notice No. 122/TB-UBND dated 28 April 2010 on the conclusions of Vice Chairman of PPC Mr. Nguyễn Ngọc Quang in Summary Conference on forestry land allocation to residential communities in the province.

Document No. 916/STC-NS on 11 July 2007 by the Department of Finance on the use of budget funds to support forest management after LFA to residential communities in the province in the 2007 budget.

Results of LFA in Quang Nam Over three years from 2004 through 2006 (to 2007 when it was stopped), the PPC assigned DONRE to organize and implement policies on forestry land allocation to residential communities of ethnic minorities in the province. The results were that a total area of 160,540.05 hectares of forest land was allocated to 249 communities in 46 communes in eight mountainous districts.

Most of the mountainous districts of Quang Nam like Tay Giang, Dong Giang, Nam Giang, Phuoc Son, Hiep Duc, Tien Phuoc, Bac Tra My and Nam Tra My have implemented the LFA. These communes have established their local steering committee on forestry land allocation and professional assisting teams and developed plans for forestry land allocation to residential communities in each commune.

After the allocation, the communities have rapidly built their conventions and regulations on forest management as a basis for their stable protection, management and development of forests within their villages.

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Although the MARD issued Circular No. 38/2007/TT-BNN dated 25 April 2007 guiding the order and procedures for forest allocation and leasing to organizations, households, individuals and village communities, Quang Nam Province has not yet implemented this circular because of funding shortage.

Quang Nam PPC issued Document No. 2623/UBND-KTN DPC dated 25 July 2011, directing the PCs of districts and cities and related departments and agencies to implement the forest allocation and leasing in association with forestry land allocation and leasing in the province. District PCs assigned their functional units to develop projects to implement the forestry land allocation and leasing to households, individuals and village communities in the province.

According to Decision No 99/2010/NÄ?-CP dated 24 September 2010 on policies on forestry environmental services payment, all of the services benefiting from forest like water sources, hydropower and tourism services have to pay a fee for forest protection entities in that area. In fact, Quang Nam is now collecting fees from hydro powers to pay for this. The results showed that people keep forests better than other areas because the forest was allocated to household groups (with a group leader and a deputy leader). This allocation decision is recognized by the district authorities and is the legal basis for LFA. Shortcomings in the implementation process in Quang Nam Due to the nature of high-mountainous areas that consists of steep hills and dissected terrain and as the allocated areas are far from residential areas and difficult to travel to, organization of LFA on-site or survey and evaluation of forest volume, forest patrols and protection have faced many difficulties and obstacles. Therefore, the management units do not have specific information about forest conditions. They remain perplexed in determining resource distribution obtained from forests. Thus, LFA files only have information related to land, not the information related to the forest conditions or the planning of three forest types. It is unclear of the types and conditions of forest which have been allocated in order to distribute the benefits of resources.

As funding shortage prevented proper survey and evaluation of the forest volume before allocation, the benefit mechanism from forest has been unclear. Moreover, the mechanisms for people to benefit from forest management and protection are also unspecific and unclear. Allowance for forest management and protection, if any, is little and is only for the early period of the allocation while people live a difficult life and cannot even afford their short-term food. Therefore, they need to exploit forest resources to cater for the daily needs of their families and are not eager to protect the forest.

In some places, LFA have not been based on the needs of village communities. In many areas, LFA files were made based only on existing information and statistics without any survey or on-site hand-over, so people received forest on paper without knowing the allocated forest’s area, location or its characteristics. Moreover, the allocated forest areas have no plan of forest protection and development, so the authorities could not mobilize people to participate in the forest management and protection, reducing the LFA’s effectiveness.

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The needs for land use and forest protection have had no positive impacts on people’s livelihoods, so their awareness of the management and protection of the forest is neither high nor realistic in some regions. Besides, for the area of land without forests, the local people have poorly organized their production. They have never been guided on production planning, specifically the agro-forestry model. There is no specific beneficiary model to ensure the people’s life. Understandably, land allocation has not produced the expected results.

Besides, the land areas without forest allocated to community are often in remote areas far away from residential areas and have complex terrain and no roads, making it difficult for people to transport materials for sale.  Inadequacies in the contents and practices of legal documents Illegal exploitation and trafficking of forestry products as well as deforestation for agriculture still happen in the allocated forest areas. In some places, people have formulated conventions and regulations on forest protection and development or established village forest protection teams but these activities are superficial. Village forest protection teams have not worked effectively as they did not receive timely funding and equipment support (some teams only worked for a limited amount of time thanks to funding from a number of organizations, programs and projects).

Roles, responsibilities and benefits of forest protection teams are not clear. There are no clearly defined responsibilities and rights of each member of the community, so the people have poor awareness of protection of the forests under their community management. On the other hand, benefits-from-forest mechanism has not stimulated the participation of the people.

Decision No. 05/QD-UBND dated 21 January 2005 promulgating the rights to benefits and obligations of village communities who received forest and forestry land to manage and protect as well as regeneration by the State. This decision cannot be applied because the forest conditions and its resources were not surveyed and evaluated before allocation (due to the lack of funds to carry out these tasks) so it was impossible to determine the benefit levels for the people.

According to the Decision No. 05/2005/QD-UB, when natural forest land is allocated, each village community will receive an allowance of 25,000 VND/ hectare/ year in the early years.

This allowance for 2007 and 2008 was not brought to the village community until early 2008.

Compared with the actual costs of forest management and protection, the support level was too low and was delayed so it could not encourage the local people to actively participate in the management and protection of forests.

Point b, Clause 1, Article 30 of the LoFPD regulates the rights of village communities who are allocated with forest to “exploit and use forest products and other benefits of forests for public purposes and domestic purposes of members of the community”. However, the role of the communities in the system of forest management organization in Quang Nam is un-

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clear. Legally, the communities land use and benefit rights has not been recognized by the State. No guidance was provided on the legal origin of the communities’ forestry products.

Besides, some problems arose in the process of developing community forest as the communities’ customary laws were broken down and were not suitable legally.  Inadequacies in documentation, procedures, assigned forest’s quality and post-allocation monitoring Some documents require that after the LFA to the community, guidance should be provided to the communities to build a production plan but this requirement has not been implemented at the local level. The documents show that after allocation, people cannot exploit forests as freely as they did before, including a part of the community who used to depend on forests for a long time. As this income became lost, they faced many difficulties ahead.

Obviously, It has been difficult to conserve forest resources, not to mention development as land allocation was neither associated with the development of agro-forestry model nor specific benefiting mechanisms to ensure people’s life in a sustainable way.

Understanding of people about the legal documents According to a study by C&E done in 2012, Quang Nam people have limited understanding about the legal documents relating to the management and use of land and forest and the LFA to communities. Only 16.7% of interviewees said they knew the documents but they also said they didn’t understand clearly these documents’ contents.

In some places in the province, despite the establishment of forest protection and management units, deforestation and illegal logging still occur. One of the reasons for deforestation is that people are not aware of their rights and responsibilities towards the allocated forest.

Moreover, there is no guidance for people who are directly involved in the management and protection of forest. Legally, communities and households allocated with forest by the State have the rights to penalize those who come from other places and violate their allocated forests but communities did not use these rights, which is why their forest management was more difficult as a result.

Propaganda of LFA policies in some provinces has been limited. Many meetings were held in the villages but only representatives of the communities stood out to recognize the rights and responsibilities for the whole community. People passively gained the knowledge disseminated by the grass-root officers in village meetings. They had few opportunities to discuss, even when the regulations on forest management and protection were formulated after forest allocation. Therefore, the village people did not understand the specific contents of this policy.

The participation of the people in the LFA and other activities: The 2012 study by C&E also shows how local people were involved in the LFA process in Quang Nam. Particularly, an absolute majority only participated in the public meetings where officials disseminated the LFA. Only 37.8 % of the respondents were involved and no one participated in planning, drafting documents and field measurements. Most field

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measurements were made by professional officers and the people did not take part in this process.

Some local officials and local residents have an unclear understanding about the allocation of forestry land to the community. The involvement of local people has been quite passive.

The needs for land use and forest protection have not positively affected the life of the people. Thus, the sense of management and protection of forest land is weak and even unrealistic in some areas.

The participation of local people in the management, protection and development of forest communities is passive and lacking cohesion among its members. Besides, the negative effects of the market economy, high demand on timber and forest resources are significant and market value of forest resources is high. As the level of state allowance for forest management is very low (25.000d/hectare/year), some people could easily move to assist illegal loggers in destroying forests. Moreover, forest allocation was carried out for only three years (2004-2006) and stopped from 2007 because of funding shortage.

In some localities, community-based forest management with custom law has now become less effective because of the break of the customs and traditions and the weaker role of the village’s leaders and elders.

6. Evaluation of documents related to local LFA training and communication a. Thua Thien Hue Province Thua Thien Hue province has several funded projects of local and international organizations on LFA. These projects have organized many classes / training courses on LFA. Participants of these training and communication courses are quite diverse, including managers of forestry units at province and district levels, officers in charge of the district functional departments such as Natural Resources and Environment Division, Division of Agriculture and Rural Development and Agro-forestry Extension Unit, commune and village officials and local people. In particular, social forestry officers, forest rangers and members of the Boards of CFM are mainly the ones who take part in training and communication activities.

The training activities are carried out in short-term training courses, usually from two to five days. In addition, some programs also organize study tours inside and outside the provinces.

Many training courses lacked the connection between theory and practice and most of them have a focus on theories. Some of the programs and projects only provided technical training without linking it with the actual activity or investment of demonstration models.

As people did not have the opportunity to apply the knowledge learned into practice, they forgot the knowledge within a short period of time.

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Most training materials are no longer stored in the community. On being asked, members of the community said to have been involved in many training courses but most of them did not keep any documents, training lectures or materials. Some did keep them but the materials were too old and ruined to be used. This fact raises the needs to design practical training materials for people in forms of leaflets and posters made from durable materials for easy use and long-term storage. The Boards of CFM should also have common bookcases to store training materials so that community members can easily use when they need them. b. Quang Nam Province Compared to Thua Thien Hue, Quang Nam province does not have many international projects on LFA. Only a few courses on LFA guidelines were organized by state agencies. The interviewees said that very few people participated in this training which involved mainly officials of the DONRE and Forestry Department (20%). There was no course on LFA for people.

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CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 1. Conclusions One of the determinants of the success of the LFA process is to recognize long-term rights and benefits of the community. The community should have forms of forest management that are appropriate to their special conditions plus a sound organization and sound benefit sharing mechanisms for products from forests that ensure equality among the members of the community.

Forest allocation to the communities for management has been carried out for more than ten years in Thua Thien Hue and nearly ten years in Quang Nam (mainly from 2004-2006) and has achieved specific results. The provinces have implemented most of the legal documents of the Central Government and also actively issued documents at the local level to specify the central provisions on LFA. Despite the above positive moves, the results are not satisfactory. There are many difficulties and shortcomings in both content and the implementing methods of these documents.

Conventions and regulations to protect forests made by communities can be considered the “legal documents at the community level” in LFA. The ethnic communities in the mountainous areas of Thua Thien Hue and Quang Nam still maintain their traditions and customs which have positive impacts on the management, protection and development of forests.

Therefore, after being allocated with forests, they have rapidly built their conventions, regulations on forest management and protection which were approved by competent authorities to become a “basic legal framework “ and a tool to put the work of forest management, protection and development within the village in order. However, the application of the regulations on forest management has had many shortcomings and is not effective because they were not built by the community itself but were based on the format of the central government which was not suitable to the locality.

Communities allocated with forest are considered real forest owners who have much limited forest use rights. They are not allowed to transfer, assign, and lease or donate forest or use their forest use rights as a bond, guarantee or capital contribution to businesses (Article 30, LoFPD 2004). In addition, the Civil Code does not recognize these communities as legal entities so the role, status, responsibilities and rights of the communities in the management of natural forests are limited.

Both Thua Thien Hue and Quang Nam did not carry out survey and evaluation of forest conditions before forest allocation to communities, so it has been very difficult to determine the distribution of benefits collected from forests. The forestry land allocation files only have land-related information but no specific information on the forest conditions and planning of the three forest types. Therefore, it is not clear which type of forest is allocated and what sort of forest conditions exist for the distribution its resources.

The implementation of different departments, branches and specialized units has not been

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thorough. DONRE has led the implementation and directed its professional units in the districts to collaborate with commune people’s committees for implementation. There has been no coordination between relevant departments to demarcate the forest and assess its conditions. Consequently, forests were allocated to the communities but people had no understanding of forest location and resources based on which to exploit forest growth afterwards. Moreover, state allowance provided to people was too little and delayed so it did not encourage the communities to participate in the management and protection of forest.

The forest allocation to household groups seems more efficient than that to the community, despite the fact that “household groups” are also “residential communities”. The reason is that specific households that have been assigned with forest land voluntarily participate in the forest allocation while the community, which consists of all of the households in a village includes households that have no interests in LFA. A major number of training activities and communication were organized locally in Thua Thien Hue and a small number in Quang Nam. However, they did not have good results because of the old, traditional communication methods and local people’s poor learning capacity which prevented them from learning state policies quickly. Therefore, the people should have access to more training, meetings and conferences to learn and fully grasp the state policies, especially forest policies. This will help them know more about their rights and obligations in CFM so that they can manage, protect and develop allocated forest resources, improve their livelihood, and increase income for families and communities.

2. Recommendations • Although the 2003 Land Law, the LoFPD and a number of other documents of the State stipulate that village communities who are subject to LFA have the rights to manage and use forest, their legal status remains incomplete and unclear because the Civil Code do not recognize the community as a legal entity. A village community does not meet these conditions so it cannot be recognized as a legal entity. Research is needed to confirm a clearer legal status for the community when it receives natural forests for management.

• It is necessary to modify Decision No. 178/2001/QÐ-TTg dated 12 November 2001 of the Prime Minister on the benefits and obligations of households and individuals who are allocated, leased or contracted with forests and forestry land.

• It is suggested to modify Circular No. 38/2007/TT-BNN dated 25 April 2007 of MARD guiding the order and procedures for allocation, leasing of forest to and forest recovery from households, individuals and communities (with common interests, kinship, cultivation conditions and others) as a legal entity to receive forest.

• It is necessary to revise, review, and summarize the implementation of legislation for early adjustment and complement the inappropriate contents and regulations in order to enhance the practicality, effectiveness and efficiency of the implementation of policies on forest allocation to communities for management.

• It is necessary to immediately adjust and add the contents related to the rights and ob-

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ligations of communities, to ensure their legitimate interests of when they manage and protect forest allocated by the State.

• Communities need external support to develop forest-enrichment models, which have been successfully implemented in other places so that they can develop commodity production. New and suitable planting and cultivation models should be further developed.

• It is necessary to study and evaluate the implementation process of the forest allocation to local communities to find more appropriate, effective and practical solutions and apply them to implement the LFA to village communities in the future. Specifically, we need to evaluate forest reserves before allocation of forests to communities to manage in order to properly distribute future interests and benefits.

• To ensure effective participation of communities not only in quantity and quality, each community meeting should have minutes and every community consultation should have an agreement from at least 50% of the households in the community.

• The State should provide annual funding to support this work in order to ensure harmony between the rights and obligations of the people who manage and protect natural forests in the province. The level of support for the management and protection of natural forests should be secured at 100,000 VND/ hectare/ year (according to Decision No. 07/QD-TTg dated 28 February 2012 of the Government).

• The provinces should issue regulations on forest environmental service payments as a basis for payment for people who manage and protect forests according to Decrees No. 99/2010/ND-ND dated 24 September 2010 of the Government on policies to pay for forest environmental services through the trust fund of forest protection and development of the province.

• The provinces should implement Circular No. 56/2012/TT dated 06 November 2012 of MARD on improving poor forests to production forests earlier. In the near future, to solve the needs for farming land of the people who are allocated with poor natural forest, we suggest that in allocation of forest land to households and community to manage and protect, the province should partially fund forest regeneration profiles. This will facilitate people to have more land for production, plant multi-purpose timber trees and contribute to raise efficiency of environmental protection, economic and social development. At the same time, they can utilize forest products after forest regeneration to offset the cost of forest protection.

• Both Thua Thien Hue and Quang Nam provinces need to accelerate the work of land use planning and planning for forest protection, management and development at the commune level as well as provide budget for this work. These tasks should be linked together to ensure that the protection be associated with forest development and LFA be associated with the development of local livelihoods. Therefore, we can solve the resource problems in forest management and protection and make this work suitably with the process of developing a new modern rural area.

• It is necessary to review and inspect forest management and protection of forest owners to complete documents for allocation of natural forests, which were allocated before 2010. It is recommended to take back allocated natural forests from the forest owners who have not managed and protected the forest effectively or who are allocated with

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forests by incompetent agencies. This work is essential to enhance the LFA and unify procedures for the allocation records guided by Circular No. 38/2007/TT-BNN. • A mechanism for examination of the implementation of legal documents is needed in order to make the LFA effective.

• An agro-forestry production model should be developed to inform and guide people in communities to help them protect and exploit benefits from forest land. Initial capital investment should be provided for the community to plant, care, protect, regenerate and enrich forest, particularly poor forests, young forest which have recently recovered in a suitable time, because at this moment, there is virtually no income or products from forests.

• It is recommended to develop some models of forest management with suitable custom laws and rules and ensure specific responsibility of forest owners.

• It is necessary to promote agricultural and forestry expansion and create adequate benefit mechanisms to ensure and improve people’s stable life in the area of the allocated forest land. There should be policies to support seeds for mountainous people to develop agriculture and forestry. This will create good conditions for people to stabilize their life so that the forest management and protection can bring the most effective results.

• It is recommended to develop a mechanism for people allocated with forest to receive benefits in accordance with the local conditions (which is easy to apply and suitable with people’s education level).

• It is necessary to continue to LFA to the local community for their management and protection but this should be based on the principles of voluntary, non-compulsory, and respect of their tradition and custom. Another principle is to consider forest as an important factor to ensure stable life for ethnic people.

• It is necessary to conduct regular monitoring of the use of land and the efficient use of resource.

• It is necessary to modify preferential credit policies in the medium and long terms in planting forests. Forest growers should receive support to offset their contributions to environmental protection.

• It is necessary to develop policies to support the development of markets for forest products.

• It is necessary to research the value chain of forest products and help people enrich livelihoods after being allocated with forest land and protecting the forest.

For the organization of training and communication activities • More training is needed to raise awareness of the local community about LFA, especially those who have been allocated with the forest. Training priority should be given to members of the Board of CFM of villages, forestry officials, village heads, village secretaries, village elders, Women’s Union, Youth Union and households who received the responsibility of the management and protection of the forests. Special attention should be paid to poor households and single women.

• The most appropriate materials for training are multi-media materials to be presented by projector along with printed leaflets, videos and images. Training and communication materials should be brief and easy to understand.

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• It is necessary to enhance the capacity of the club members / Board of CFM in the villages, who will be communicators for the LFA. • It is necessary to train local media officials on communication skills as well as understanding the local culture and local language skills to communicate with and convey information to remote communities.

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LIST OF PERSONS CONSULTED Thua Thien Hue 1. Mr. Vo Van Du, Deputy head of the Provincial Ethnic Affairs, former Chairman of A Luoi People’s Committee, Head of Forest Protection Unit of Phu Loc district.

2. Mr. Nguyen Huu Huy, Head of Technical Division, Provincial Forestry Department 3. Mr. Le Ha, Director of the Provincial Center of Agriculture Forestry Techniques 4. Ms. Nguyen Thi Xuan, Deputy Head of Synthetic Division, Provincial Forestry Department.

5. Ms. Le Thi Dien, Lecturer of Forestry Faculty, University of Agriculture and Forestry, Head of the scientific project “A study to evaluate the current status and develop proposals to improve and amend the policies on allocation, leasing, and contracting of forest and forest land.”

6. Mr. Nguyen Xuan Hien, Head of Economic Office, People’s Committee of Thua Thien Hue 7. Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Dung, Head of Division Forest Management and Protection, Provincial FPD 8. Mr. Nguyen Van Kiem, Deputy Head of Forest Protection Unit of Huong Tra town.

9. Mr. Do Xuan Cam, Forestry Expert, Former Lecturer, Forestry Faculty, Hue University of Agriculture and Forestry.

10. Mr. Tran Huu Banh, President of Thua Thien Hue Forestry Science and Technology Association.

11. Ms. Hoang Thi Kim Quy, Forest Ranger Officer, Forest Protection Unit of Phong Dien district.

Quang Nam 1. Mr. Phan Tuan, Director of Forest Protection Department of Quang Nam. 2. Mr. Tu Van Khanh, Head of Division Forest Management and Protection, Forest Protection Department of Quang Nam. 3. Mr. Pham Be, Deputy Director of Department of Land Management, Quang Nam department of natural resources and environment.

4. Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Hieu, Cadastral officer, Department of Land Management, Quang Nam department of natural resources and environment.

5. Ms. Le Thi Thuy, Deputy Head of the Provincial Ethnic Affairs.

6. Ms. Truong Thi Loc, President of Women’s Union of Quang Nam. 7. Mr. Nguyen Duc, President of Ethnical Committee, People’ Council in Quang Nam 8. Mr. Vo Hung Nhan, Officer, Financial Planning Division, Quang Nam Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.

9. Mr. Tran Thanh Binh, Head of Financial Planning Division, Quang Nam Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.

10. Mr. Do Tien Trung, Deputy Head of Financial Planning Division, Quang Nam Forestry Department.

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REFERENCES 1. Land Law 2003 2. Law on Forest Protection and Development 2004 3. TBI Việt Nam, Forest Inventory and Planning Institute, 2012. Forestry Land Allocation – Policy and Situation in Vietnam. Workshop Proceeding, Hanoi, August 2012.

4. Centre for Rural Development in Central Vietnam, 2013. Land and forest allocation in Vietnam: Policy and Reality. Workshop Proceeding, Hue, June 2013.

5. Hoang Thanh Tam, Pham Ngoc Dung, Nguyen Tan Sinh et al., 2012. Research report on assessment of the current local situation in Thua Thien Hue and Quang Nam. Center for Development of Community Initiative and Environment (C&E), Hanoi, June 2012.

6. Forestry Department of Thua Thien Hue, 2007, Assessment report for the natural forest beneficiaries, 7. Forestry Protection Department of Thua Thien Hue, 2012, Report on results of the implementation of Project 430 on forest allocation, forest lease and forest recovery of Thua Thien Hue 8. Carbon reserves Project and conservation of biodiversity in Thua Thien Hue Forest, 2012, Report on the situation assessment of forest allocation based on communities in the Nam Dong and A Luoi district.

9. Thua Thien Hue Provincial People’s Council, 2010. Resolution No. 8i/2010/NQ-HDND dated 02 June 2010 on amendment to the Plan of forest protection and development of Thua Thien Hue province in the period 2009 -2020.

10. Thua Thien Hue Provincial People’s Committee, 2010. Decision No. 1347/QĐ-UBND dated 23 July 2010 on the approval of the Plan of forest protection and development of Thua Thien Hue province in the period 2009 -2020.

11. Nguyen Trong, 2010. “Review of 10 years of forest allocation to communities with the participation of the people in the province of Thua Thien Hue”, Presentation at the Workshop on natural forest management: the rights-based approach, Hue city, August 2010.

12. Quang Nam People’s Committee, 2003, Decision No. 3508/QĐ-UBND, dated 26 August 2003 on approving of forestry land allocation project in the province 13. Quang Nam People’s Committee, 2003&2005, Decision No. 112/2003/QĐ-UB dated 23 October 2003 and Decision No. 05/QĐ-UBND dated 25 January 2005 on issuance the regulations of the rights to benefit, responsibilities of community and village’s people when being allocated forest and forestland by the State to manage, protect, regenerate, plant forest.

14. Quang Nam People’s Committee, 2005. Announcement No.224/TB-UB dated 13 July 2005 on land and forest allocation for residential communities and residential land and production land allocation under Decision No. 134/2004/QĐ-TTg dated 20 July 2004 of the Prime Minister.

15. Quang Nam People’s Committee, 2005. Announcement No. 331/TB-UBND dated 03 October 2005 on the conclusion of Quang Nam People’s Committee on the working session with Department of Natural Resources and Environment on the work of land and forest allocation to the community.

16. Quang Nam Provincial People’s Committee, 2006. Notice No. 05/TB-UBND dated 05 January 2006 on the PPC’s conclusions in the Mountainous Region Conference on 27 December 2005.

17. Quang Nam Provincial People’s Committee, 2006. Notice No. 670/TB-UBND dated 24 October 2006 on the PPC’s conclusions in the Conference on Forestry Land Allocation

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to residential communities in the province.

18. Quang Nam Department of Finance, 2007. Document No. 916/STC-NS on 11 July/2007 by the Department of Finance on the use of budget funds to support forest management after LFA to residential communities in the province in the 2007 budget.

19. Department of Natural Resources and Environment of Quang Nam, 2009. Report No. 363/BC-STNMT dated 27 August 2009 on the implementation of forestry land allocation to communities in the province of Quang Nam. 20. Quang Nam Provincial People’s Committee, 2010. Notice No. 122/TB-UBND dated 28 April 2010 on the conclusion of Deputy Chairman of PPC. Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Quang in the Summary Conference on the allocation of forestry land to communities in the province.

21. Quang Nam Provincial People’s Committee, 2013. Final Report of Project No. 43/BC-UBND dated 04 April 2013 on cadastral mapping using aerial photography, cadastral documentation and issuance of certificates of land use rights towards forestry land.

22. The legal documents of the central government and provinces on LFA which have been evaluated in this study.

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INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR OFFICIALS Full name of person interviewed: ...........................................................................

Position: ....................…………..Office: ..................................................................

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1. Do you know the law and public policies relating to the use/ ownership of community land?

If yes, mention the name of the law and that policy (please write the name and number of the document): 2. What legal documents does your province promulgate about land and forest allocation for the community? When? Name the issued documents: 3. What legal documents does your province implement about land and forest allocation for the community? (You can list the available number of laws / relevant documents in another form or checklist) If implemented already, when?

If not, why? Please give comments for each document 4. What documents do you think people may be aware of?

If they are aware, please explain how? (Radio, newspapers, village meetings, training, other) If they aren’t, why?

5. Which agencies are involved in implementing the legal documents? Please list the name of the agencies.

6. Do you take part in the training activities for land and forest allocation?

Trained ☐ Not trained ☐ Please specify

Course

Duration

Location

Organizer

If not, why?

Do you know any others who take part in the training activities for land and forest allocation? Please specify their names and their work offices.

7. Do you know any training and communication materials related to the LFA given to people attending the course?

If yes, please mention the name of the materials: Which forms of the following communications were implemented?

- Leaflets - Pictures - Pano, posters - Books / documents - Other What is the most effective means of communication? Please specify in order of priority.

8. What do you think of the rights of people who are allocated forest and land?

Please list those rights.

Do you think there should be additional rights?

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9.What do you think of the obligations of people who are allocated forest and land?

Please list the obligations.

Do you think there should be additional obligations?

10. Do you think that people are interested in and support these policies and legal documents?

Yes ☐ No ☐ If yes, why do they care?

If they don’t, why?

11. As the one who implements the legal documents on LFA for the community, do you find any difficulties? Any advantages? Is there any shortcoming in the implementation process?

12. In the process of LFA to communities, do local people get involved?

If yes, who usually participates? List: Do the poor people, women and ethnic minorities participate? How do they participate?

What are their opinions? (Specific example) Are their opinions recognized?

Yes ☐ No ☐ 13. Is there any violation in the LFA process?

If yes please list the violations: What are the penalties for these violations?

14.What changes and amendments should be in the legal documents to make them appropriate to the local situation? (Are proposals and recommendations related to the implementation of current policies on the LFA to the community) 15. Do you think that LFA activities so far have had a bad influence on the forest?

Better ☐ Remained ☐ Wosre ☐ 16. Do you think the LFA activities may change the local people’s life?

Better ☐ Stay the same ☐ Worse ☐ 17. Do you think the concern of authorities is enough?

Very good ☐ The same ☐ Not good ☐ If yes, how?

If not, why?

18. Do you know any priorities or policies to help ethnic people in the LFA process? Please specify.

Thank you very much!

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