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In order to meet the immediate demand for timber, a planned “Timber advance” has been made by the community. In the first 10 years, the village gets an advance to
exploit a maximum of 50m3 of timberyear by carefully selected cutting to meet the actual demand of the community. Three years after being allocated natural forest,
Thuy Thuong Yen village began to get benefits from the natural forest as long as the forest was well protected and developed. The Provincial People’s Committee has
allowed the village to harvest 92m3 of timber in advance in 2002 and 2003. This is the first achievement when applying benefit sharing mechanisms based on forest growth
and a “Timber advance.”
Extension and Training in Community Forestry:
The Extension and Training Support Project Helvetas Vietnam for Forestry and Agriculture in the Uplands ETSP has recently initiated a Training of Trainers
TOT cycle including participants from the three partner provinces of Dak Nong, Hoa Binh and Thua Thien Hue. Two of three consecutive training modules have been
successfully implemented to date. Participants are actively carrying out pilot CFM schemes in their provinces as the training cycle includes both theoretical training and
practical implementation in the field. Intensive exchange and reflection among participants has provided some preliminary conclusions and has pointed out the most
pressing shortcomings.
Participants of the TOT training confirmed the suitability of the CFM methodology presented and re-emphasized previous positive experiences with this methodology.
Likewise, the proposed technical procedures were determined to be adequate for working with farmers at village level. The main difficulty that gave rise to many
discussions is the complex and confusing situation concerning benefit-sharing.
Given the pilot character of the CFM introduction process, coordination among stakeholders from different state agencies was not always easy, as clear mandates
and respective responsibilities have yet to be defined. In this situation, the proposal of a simple administrative framework and procedures required for the effective
implementation and monitoring of CFM could greatly facilitate spreading the concept of CFM in Vietnam.
Another topic brought forward by the TOT participants is the current situation in which local communities are not allowed to claim compensation and issue fines when
detecting violation cases in their communal forests. This results in low incentives for local villagers to become actively involved in forest protection. Discussion with policy
makers could lead to a situation in which local communities are granted the right to claim direct compensation and therefore properly enforce their defined forest protection
and development regulations.
5. Lessons Learned
Many achievements have been made in the development of community forestry in Vietnam in the fields of policy, modalities, implementation methods and actual results.
Despite such achievements, several constraints remain. Lessons learned from community forestry development are outlined below.
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Policy and mechanisms: To develop CF, it is necessary to have a legal
framework stipulating that the community is a legal subject in forestland management and utilization. Furthermore, a sufficient system of policy should
be developed to encourage communities to uphold available internal competence and make full use of external support to community
management. Since 1991, after 15 years of research, testing, summary and reviews, Vietnam basically has an explicit legal framework and a policy
system under the process of finalization to serve as a fundamental premise for community forestry development.
• Setting of forest and forestland use entitlement:
The former LUPLA process Land use planning and forestry land allocation, has been revised
to involve three components in LUP and LA. LUP deals with what forest land is allocated for which purposes and how will it be managed and the LA
process is used to answer the question of who.
- LUP at commune and village level: The objective of land use planning
LUP also known as the land use planning process is to answer the questions
“What” forest and land would be allocated,
“Where,” and for
“Which” purposes.
- The objective of forest management planning is to answer the question:
“How” would the forest be managed by a community? The forest
management plan consists of three main pieces: 1 management objectives; 2 management methodology; and 3 time. Of these three
the management objectives MO are seen to be the most important.
- The forestry land allocation LA process is used to answer the question
of
“Who” meaning what target groups are to be allocated forestland.
If forest and forestland allocated are to have a chance of being used effectively, then LA must be based on LUP as well as management plans MO.
The process of LUP-MO-LA
that is used to answer the questions of : WHAT,
WHERE, HOW, and
WHO is being piloted with the aim of dealing with shortcomings
in the current LUPLA processes and to increase forest and forest land area used and managed well in accordance with the LA process.
• Subsistence community forestry and community forestry for
commercial purposes: Due to community diversity, there is not any one
community forestry model available, and thus different models of community forestry are required for the various conditions. Two models of community
forestry are set up in Vietnam at the moment - subsistence community forestry and community forestry for commercial purposes.
- Subsistence community forestry focuses on the allocation of fragmented
areas of natural forest and tracts of denuded forestland to local communities for sustainable management and rehabilitation. Forest
products can be used for subsistence purposes, and for local and regional markets. No taxes or land rent have to be paid. Benefit sharing between
individual households, villages, and communes will be decided by the communities involved. Central and provincial governments will provide
guidance on technical, organizational and financial aspects of subsistence
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community forestry. Legislation presently under preparation will focus on community forestry for subsistence
- Community forestry for commercial purposes is expected to become
increasingly important in the future. As economic diversification continues in rural areas, it is expected that on the one hand fewer and fewer farm
households will be interested in being directly involved in forestry. On the other hand, commune administrations will, as a result of
decentralization and public administrative reforms, be further strengthened and will - in forest areas - increasingly be able to provide
professional forest management practices. It is foreseen that in several years communes will create Commune Forest Enterprises, or even
Commune Association Forest Enterprises owned by several neighboring communes, which will manage larger forest areas allocated to local
communities and individual households in an economically profitable and sustainable way. If and when such features of commercial community
forestry emerge, the government is likely to apply a set of rules and regulations similar to those for private and state-owned forest companies.
• Participation and cooperation of stakeholders in CF development:
Collaboration amongst the six target groups mentioned earlier and in annex 2 is important to promote the participation of communities in forest
management.
• Method of forest resources statistics:
The method of producing forest resources statistics is one of the challenges of community forestry
development. Forest resource statistics form the basis for forest and land allocation and contracts for forest utilization contracted allocation to
communities. Identifying the rate of enjoying benefits from forests and evaluating the results of forest management will be conducted based on the
results of forest resource statistics. Experience shows that forest resource statistics should be carried out by communities using the simplest methods.
One good example is a case of Song Da Social Forestry Project where local residents did forest resources statistics through the simple and
straightforward method of counting the number of trees.
• Development of pilot community forestry models and promotion by
Government and local forestry projects and programs: Most of the
community forestry achievements gained to date result from pilot activities by international projects and programs. Such success is limited to a small
scale and publicizing the results is also limited. Experience shows that in areas where collaboration amongst governmental and local forestry projects
and programs and international projects and programs is encouraged, community forestry development could be more widespread and stable.
Development of human resources and community organization: It can be seen in Thuy Yen Thuong commune Thua Thien Hue and also in other
places that additional important factors for successful community forestry include the points below:
- A qualified and strong community leader is needed for the forests to be
protected from encroachment, and to motivate the villagers;
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The allocated forest should provide an opportunity to generate employment and income for villagers;
- The village’s political system should be adequate and strong enough to
promote cooperation and good governance; and -
Villagers should be fully aware of the importance of forest protection and management.
6. Challenges and Recommendations
