| Author | Ngo Tri Dung |
| Call Number | AIT Diss no.NR-10-07 |
| Subject(s) | Community forest--Management--Vietnam--Nam Dong District
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| Note | A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Natural Resources Management, School of Environment, Resources and Development |
| Publisher | Asian Institute of Technology |
| Series Statement | Dissertation ; no. NR-10-07 |
| Abstract | Following Renovation in 1986, the allocation of forests to local communities to initiate community forest management (CFM) started lately in 1990s and rapidly developed in the 2000s. With CFM, the government expected to achieve double objectives: to prevent existing natural forest areas from degradation and improve local livelihood via sustainable uses of these allocated forests. These outcomes, however, have not been achieved so far due to insufficient investigation of local and external factors that make CFM become a sustainable self-governance system. This study tried to explore enabling conditions for the sustainability of CFM by analyzing three community groups a mountainous district of Central Vietnam. The studying conditions included status of forest condition, government forest policies, forest tenure and incentive structure of forest allocation program, and local knowledge integration in forest management. The study applied interdisciplinary methods in data collection and analysis including forest plot survey, participatory rural appraisals, and questionnaire interview on indicator species and traditional forest management system. Status of forest conditions by the time of allocation was one of the direct factors influenced local behavior towards conservation or extraction of forest resource. Results showed that forest structure and composition of allocated forests were much lower than those of referenced forest. Lower diversity of Nam Dong forest was due to either state logging activities or manual cutting by local people. State logging has also created more accessibility (i.e. road network) for local logging. Besides, farther distance from residential places could be another factor that helps to remain forest diversity of the state-managed forest in remote areas (i.e. reference forest). The sustainability of CFM was substantially shaped by the design and operation of forest allocation program. We analyzed the incentive structure of allocation program which created different forest tenure regimes and bundle of property rights. Results showed that local people had strongest incentives when participating in barren land and forest plantation allocation. In natural forest allocation, however, the incentives were not clear to either individual household or group of households. The forest protection unit (FPU) at district level has all positive incentives to conduct forest allocation while the state-forest enterprise (SFE) hesitantly participated and partially complied with allocation rules since they had to relinquish their forests for the allocation. The allocation process was predicted to continue in two trends: (1) the more active role of FPU in supporting allocation was associated with the delay of SFE in handing over natural forests to make them available for allocation process, and (2) the allocation would focus on group of households instead of individual household because the latter bear higher costs during the allocation process. From results of analyzing four main components of CFM scenario (forest status, forest policies, tenure and property rights, and local knowledge), this study proposed an approach to integrate all components in such a way to create strong incentives for sustainability of CFM through forest allocation program in Vietnam in two models. The current natural forest areas should be allocated to the villages together with clearly defined benefit sharing mechanism to maintain ecosystem services for public benefits. The barren land should be allocated to collaborative groups as basic business units since this form of organization could operate land use business at fully recognized rights and duties. These suggestions were designed from viewpoint of long-term forest preservation and optimal utilization of existing forestland areas. |
| Year | 2010 |
| Corresponding Series Added Entry | Asian Institute of Technology. Dissertation ; no. NR-10-07 |
| Type | Dissertation |
| School | School of Environment, Resources, and Development (SERD) |
| Department | Department of Development and Sustainability (DDS) |
| Academic Program/FoS | Natural Resources Management (NRM) |
| Chairperson(s) | Webb, Edward L.; |
| Examination Committee(s) | Shivakoti, Ganesh P.;Cochard, Roland; |
| Scholarship Donor(s) | MacArthur Foundation Scholarship – AIT Fellowship; |
| Degree | Thesis (Ph.D.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2010 |