General Status of Community Forestry in Vietnam

Nguyen, Nguyen Kuester 115 VIETNAM COMMUNITY FORESTRY 2005 Nguyen Ba Ngai i , Nguyen Hong Quan ii Ernst Kuester iii

1. General Status of Community Forestry in Vietnam

Community forestry CF in Vietnam has been developing since the 1970s and has now become an effective forest management practice for development. Community forestry is a vivid reality bringing out effectiveness in mountainous forest management and community development. According to statistics from the Forest Protection Department – Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development MARD, by June 2001, 1,203 communes, 146 districts of 24 provinces were participating in the management of 2,348,288 hectares of forest and non-forested land projected for afforestation, accounting for 15.5 of the forestry land area nationwide. Forest and forested land managed and used by communities can be divided into the following types: 1 296 hectares is bare land barren land. Forests in this category are spirit forests, village watershed forests and forests providing traditional forest products to communities. 2 Forest and forestland allocated by local authorities to communities for long- term and stable management and utilization for forestry purposes, accounts for approximately 1,197,961 hectares, of which 669,750 hectares is forested land and 528,211 hectares is barren land. i Dr.Nguyen Ba Ngai, V. elnam Forestry University, Vietnam. ii Mr.Nguyen Hong Quan, Freelance Consultant. iii Mr.Ernst Kuester, Freeland Consultant. 116 VIETNAM 3 Forest and forestland 936,327 hectares contracted to communities for protection, forest zoning and afforestation by state organizations State Forest Enterprises, Special-use and Protection Forest Management Boards, Management Board of Projects 327, 661, etc.. Of the total forestland in this category, 494,292 hectares are protection forest, 39,289 hectares are special- use forest and the remaining 402,746 hectares are production forestland. 4 Forest and forestland jointly managed by community groups groups of households that consist of households and individuals in the community. They cooperate with each other to protect, support and exchange labor with one another in forestry activities as required under this diverse and flexible approach to forest management. There are no reliable statistics for the size of the forest areas and number of community groups within this category. All community managed forests are run by one of the following groups: • The village community; • Groups of households Interest household groups; or • Groups of households within belonging to a single family name. Forests managed by village communities and families are located in remote ethnic minority areas where traditional customs are practiced. In these areas production conditions as well as market and management methods are not well-developed. In the other two categories of managers, forests jointly managed by groups of households or groups of interested people or stakeholders are usually located in areas where timber production and markets are more developed for commercial purposes. Forest managers in this category are considered rather better qualified for the management of production forests and the potential for investment in these areas is high. Therefore, two distinct practices are emerging in community forestry in Vietnam: subsistence community forestry and community forestry for commercial purposes. Two systems of tenure have emerged for forest ownership by communities participating in community forestry in Vietnam, namely Community Forest Management and Community – Based Forest Management. Community Forest Management refers to community managed forests that are owned by a community or over which a community has common ownership. This system of ownership whereby the community is both manager and owner, involves communities described under type one and two described in Section 1 of this paper and groups of households or individuals as described in Type 4 in Section 1. Community-Based Forest Management refers to a model in which the community is contracted to participate in the management of forests as described in Type 3 in Section 1. The community participates in the forest management process and gets benefits as a result.

2. Legal Framework and Policy Related to Community Forestry