Comparative  Perspectives  on  Forest  Management  and  

Development  Vietnam  in  Transition  and  Lessons  from  China  

Emilie  Ellis,  Jae  Yun  Jeong  and  Margaret  Munroe  

 

Applied Research Seminar 2013 Masters in Development Studies, Sustainable Development Track

December 10, 2013  

In Partnership with Oxfam Vietnam

   

 

Table  of  Contents  

Executive  Summary  ......................................................................................................................................  1      I.  Introduction  ................................................................................................................................................  3    Mode  of  Analysis  and  Conceptual  Framework  .................................................................................................  4  

 Methodology  ........................................................................................................................................................................  6  

   II.  Forest  Management  in  Vietnam  ..........................................................................................................  7    Historical  Evolution  ...................................................................................................................................................  10  

           Implementation  of  the  Major  Forest  Policy:  The  Forest  Land  Allocation    ........................................  13  

         Case  Study:  The  Co  Tu  Ethnic  Group  in  Thua  Thien  Hue  Province  .......................................................  15      

III.  Lessons  from  China  ..............................................................................................................................  18    Historical  Evolution  of  Forest  Law  in  China  ...................................................................................................  18  

  Current National Forestry Policies and Pertinent Legislation for Forestry Governance  ......................  20            Implementation  of  Forestry  Laws  and  Policies  in  China  ...........................................................................  25              Case  Study:  Changing  Forest  Tenure  in  Yunnan  Province  ........................................................................  27      IV.  Discussion  ...............................................................................................................................................  30    V.  Conclusion  ................................................................................................................................................  34    VI.  Bibliography  ...........................................................................................................................................  36  

   

   

1  

Executive Summary Forest tenure in Vietnam has undergone vast changes from state ownership to the devolution of ownership to the local level through the involvement of non-state actors and the use of private forest management arrangements. This transformation began in 1991, with the Law on Forest Protection Development, and was solidified in the Land Law of 1993 and the process of Forest Land Allocation (FLA) that began a few years later, which shifted the ownership of almost 9 million hectares from the state to organizations, households and individuals. Throughout this process, the lives and livelihoods of local people, in particular those of ethnic minorities have changed dramatically. This study surveys the changes that have occurred in Vietnam during this period and their impacts on ethnic minority groups and compares and contrasts them to the similar trajectory of changing forest rights for ethnic minorities in China, in order to better understand what shifting forest tenure policies have meant for the livelihoods of ethnic minority communities. With regards to Vietnam, this study surveys the changes in the laws at the de jure level, and discusses how state afforestation and land allocation programs have impacted ethnic minority communities. Overall, it is found that the FLA has contributed to improving local livelihoods and household income as well as access to land for local people. There have also been positive effects for reforestation in the country. However, in terms of equity, the income from forestland has not been equally distributed to ethnic minority groups, whose local forms of community forest management have been disrupted. In addition, although the process of the FLA has provided local households with a full range of rights to the land (including the rights to transfer, exchange, lease, inherit and mortgage the land), in practice many households have not been able to exercise these rights due to a lack of technical and financial resources. Similar to Vietnam’s experience, China has also undergone immense changes in their forest management laws and policies since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. The ever-shifting reforms that transformed concentrated private ownership to collective and communal ownership from the 1950s to the end of the 1970s lead to widespread famine, and an acknowledgement of the need for more decentralized management of forestland and resources. In the 1980s, China underwent the massive project of transferring forestland use titles to individual households as either family plots or on contract via the responsibility hill system. The speedy and rather haphazard implementation of these devolution policies by local authorities led to widespread plot fragmentation, boundary disputes and unequal distribution of land in the case of many ethnic minority households who faced disadvantages in these processes. Due to the continuously schizophrenic changes to forestland management laws in the country since the 1950s, decentralization led to a period of vast deforestation, and as individuals were unsure of the time limit to their newly acquired operational and collective choice rights and were unwilling to make future investments through afforestation. This phenomenon was contained, however, in ethnic minority areas where cultural traditions of forest reverence preserved natural and old growth forests. Furthermore, the rights given to forest users in terms of tree ownership are not secure considering tree felling permits are required even for trees that users supposedly own. This has resulted in more individuals cultivating non-timber forest resources instead, which often resulted in the planting of monoculture plantations and the loss of forest biodiversity. Two case studies, of Thua Thien Hue Province in Vietnam and Yunnan Province in China are discussed in order to describe the impact changing forest policies have had on ethnic minority forest management systems in each country. The analysis of Thua Thien Hue Province

2  

focuses on the changing rights to forest and livelihoods of the Co Tu people before and after the process of FLA implementation. FLA implementation has meant an end to traditional practices such as swidden agriculture and changes to different modes of community forest management. Overall, the Co Tu people are living more sedentary lives after the implementation of the FLA, and have a heavier reliance on agriculture and forest plantations than in the past. They are cultivating land on individual plots and are guided by the state in their land management. In the Yunnan Province of China, ethnic minority groups have also experienced a loss of traditional knowledge of forest management and are making use of forest plantations to survive. Similar to the case of the Co Tu in Vietnam, the state retains a role in forestland management. Decentralization in both cases has often meant authority has shifted to local levels of government level but not necessarily to the community itself. However, a combination of a lack of clarity in forest land laws and state policies in China that recognize the autonomy of ethnic areas has allowed for some traditional practices to persevere. New modes of forest management have also evolved, as in the example of matsutake mushroom collection in this province. From this comparative study, this paper comes to two broad conclusions that should be considered as Vietnam moves forward in their forest management transition. Firstly, decentralization is not a cure-all to issues regarding local governance of natural resources. In both countries, these policies have lead to the strengthening of the power of government agencies at the expense of community authority, and have not always had desirable outcomes with regards to efficient and effective forestland allocation. Secondly, the transition to individual-based private property regimes, in both countries, has at times resulted in improved livelihoods but ethnic minority management systems also offer certain advantages. The early years of the transition in China were plagued by massive deforestation and lack of investment in future yields among individual households, but among ethnic minority communities deforestation did not occur to the extent seen in other areas of the country. Studies have also found that the type community management practiced by ethnic minorities has less transaction costs than individual and household management, and have had better results for equitable sharing of resources. Thus, a plurality of potentially efficient forest management configurations are possible, and the strengths and weaknesses of these should be taken into account before any one system is favored at the expense of another in state policies.

3  

I. Introduction Over the last two decades, forest tenure in Vietnam has undergone vast changes, with the government embracing a development strategy that seeks to provide new models for sustainable resources management through the involvement of non-state actors and the use of private forest management arrangements. Previously, the main actors in forestland management in Vietnam had been State Forest Enterprises (SFEs), which were created in the late 1970s and operated on the provincial level to direct the exploitation of forest resources. However, under this policy, forest land decreased rapidly and as a result and in keeping with the overall decentralization of land tenure that began with the Doi Moi reforms of the 1980s, the government passed a series of laws and policies in the early 1990s that created the legal framework for a diversity of stakeholders to take part in forest management, protection and exploitation. The government also began granting long-term, renewable land-use titles known to land users in an effort to increase localized ownership and stewardship of the land (Tan et al 2008). In the late 1990s, the government launched a number national afforestation programs, including Program 327, the Five Million Hectare Reforestation Program (5MHRP), and the Forestry Law Allocation, in order to protect forest resources and land, develop private use rights for individuals at the decentralize authority to a wider group of stakeholders. However, despite the good intentions of government policy in Vietnam to implicate new actors in the exploitation and care of the country’s forestland, the devolution of power away from the state has been slow and uneven. And though these new laws and programs have resulted in afforestation, it has had a minimal impact on improving the livelihoods of the ethnic minority communities who have traditionally made use of much of Vietnam’s forestlands (Clement and Amezaga 2009 and Bojo 2011). In some cases, the land reallocation process has resulted in conflicts over land traditionally held by minority groups (Bojo 2011), though a thorough analysis of these conflicts is beyond the scope of this paper. The FLA has also tended to disrupt local customary land management practices instead of working in tandem with them (Tan et al 2008). The primary aim of this paper is to gain a better understanding of how government forest policies and their implementation in Vietnam and China have evolved over time and what these changes have meant for forest users in general and particularly in the case of ethnic minorities in the two countries. We are interested in exploring three questions: how have forest laws changed historically in these two countries? What has this meant for individual rights to forestland and resources? And in what ways have ethnic minority management systems changed in response to these forest law reforms? In order to answer these questions, part one will outline the current situation of forest management policies and programs in Vietnam, and will look at in particular the case of the Co Tu ethnic minority group of central Vietnam as a means to outline some of the key challenges of the incomplete transition of property rights and the hybrid management regime that has been a result of the country’s devolution policies. Part two will focus on how forest laws have evolved over time in the People’s Republic of China and will focus on the implementation of reforms undertaken in the 1980s and 1990s, which devolved authority to local government and collectives and moved towards giving individuals and households more user rights. China was chosen due to the historical similarities of their centralization and decentralization processes through history as well as the fact that these reforms have been underway for a decade longer than in Vietnam, which may prove useful in drawing lessons from both the successes and failures of these similar reforms. A case study of the mushroom trade among ethnic minority groups in the Yunnan province will be instructive in exhibiting what these reforms have meant for the forest management systems of ethnic minority groups in China. In analyzing forest

4  

management in both Vietnam and China, Schlager and Ostrom’s (1992) “bundle of rights” approach will be utilized, where the distinction between operational rights (access and withdrawal) and collective choice rights (managerial, exclusionary and alienation) will be made as a framework for comparing the predominant forest management regimes. The distinction between possession and property will also aid in the study of the interactions between the individual-centered private property regime that both governments are currently promoting and the possession-based community management systems practiced among ethnic minorities in the two countries. Finally, the experiences of the two countries will be compared and contrasted along the lines of major themes in the discussion section.

A. Mode of Analysis and Conceptual Framework:

In order to gain a clear understanding of how the configuration of different property rights regimes in Vietnam and China are structured at different institutional levels and how these configurations impact sustainable development outcomes, our research project will adopt the Demsetzian view of property as a “bundle of rights,” and discuss the different sources of authority over this bundle of rights. This view is particularly useful in the case of Vietnam and China because it can help distinguish between the level of control various actors in each context have historically exercised over forest resources, how their rights are changing, and how the rights that they have may impact their incentives to sustainably manage the land.

The paper ‘Property Rights Regimes and Natural Resources: A Conceptual Analysis,’ by Schlager and Ostrom (1992), will inform our understanding of the configuration of the different property rights regimes in Vietnam and China. In this paper, Schlager and Ostrom discuss five different rights to property: access, withdrawal, management, exclusion and alienation. Access (the right to enter a defined physical property) and withdrawal (the right to obtain the products of a resource) are “operational rights,” as opposed to “collective choice rights,” meaning that individuals or groups that have access and withdrawal rights may or may not be able to participate in the definition of future rights. Management (the right to regulate internal use patterns and transform the resource), exclusion (the right to determine who will have an access right and how that right may be transferred) and alienation (the right to sell or lease management or exclusion rights) are collective choice rights, and authorize its holders to devise operational-level withdrawal rights governing the use of a resource. Furthermore, rights may be de jure, meaning that their authority originates in written law, or de facto, meaning that their authority originates from among the resource users. The table below distinguishes the different components of Schlager and Ostrom’s ‘bundle of rights,’ their classification as operational or collective choice, and their source of authority.

Access: the right to enter a defined physical property

Operational rights Actors with these rights may or may not be able to participate in the definition of future rights.

May be de facto or de jure.

Possession Associated with traditional, ethnic minority systems of management and logics that value economic,

Withdrawal: the right to obtain the products of a resource

5  

Management: the right to regulate internal use patterns and transform the resource. Authorizes holders to devise withdrawal rights.

Collective choice rights Actors with these rights can decide who has operational rights. Those with alienation rights can further decide on who has management or exclusion rights.

May be de facto or de jure.

ecological and social considerations more or less equally.

Exclusion: the right to determine who will have an access right and how that right may be transferred.

Alienation: the right to sell or lease management or exclusion rights

Property Includes the right to use resources for collateral in addition to leasing and selling them. Engenders capitalistic logics that privilege economic over social and ecological considerations.

In order to analyze the differences and similarities in the forest tenure regimes in China and Vietnam, we plan to examine which of the rights identified by Schlager and Ostrom are granted to state actors and local actors, and through what kinds of authority. This examination will help us to better understand the reasons for the outcomes of government policies (originating from de jure authority), and how they might interact with local, traditional modes of resource management (originating from de facto authority). This is a particularly important question in the context of the devolution of forest policies that is occurring in both China and in Vietnam. Bromley (1992) discusses how the development of the modern nation state following World War II created property rights based on de jure authority which disrupted traditional village-level forest resource management systems in many countries. This disruption and the resultant unclear property rights created situations of open access to forests when states were unable to effectively replace common property regimes based on de facto authority, and resulted in resource degradation. This is the case in both China and Vietnam, where predominately state regimes replaced common property regimes for forest management in the 1950s and the 1970s respectively. Modern devolution policies entail a shift of authority from the state back towards the community. However, in both China and Vietnam, the devolution process was incomplete. It has not resulted in alignment of state systems based on de jure authority with systems based on de facto authority, nor of a transfer of the complete bundle of rights to local communities. The rights to and authority over the forest resources are thus uncertain and inconsistent in many areas. Without clear property

6  

rights, incentives for sustainable land use are lacking, and local communities' livelihoods and natural environment suffer.

Policies to complete the devolution of authority to traditional communities and align de facto rights with de jure rights may have much to offer in this situation. Authors such as McKean (2000) detail how the common property systems practiced by these communities can be particularly appropriate for forest resource management. She describes how forests are common pool resources that are rivalrous, subtractable, and nonexcludable. Common property arrangements address these issues because they implicate a larger range of local actors in finding and enforcing cooperative solutions for sustainable resource use. By comparing configurations of rights and authority in Vietnam and China, our analysis will thus be able to identify examples of where community resource systems have been disrupted or have thrived and test the hypothesis that they may offer a solution to sustainable forest management.

The configuration of rights approach also helps to better contextualize the problem of indigenous property rights within the transition that both China and Vietnam are undergoing from highly centralized, communist governments to socialist systems with market capitalist characteristics. Numerous authors have distinguished between communist and capitalist systems of property rights through discussion of the different economic rationales and incentives that are inherent in the transition from possession-based regimes (associated with communism) to property-based regimes (associated with capitalism). Communities and individuals that have possession rights have a more or less complete bundle of the rights that Schlager and Ostrom outline in their article. Property rights, on the other hand, are de jure rights that include the right to lease the land, use it as collateral to obtain credit, and to sell the land (Seppacher 2008). In capitalist property rights regimes, ecological and social dimensions of resource management are deemphasized in a hierarchy of constraints that gives precedence to increasing economic outputs and economic efficiency. This configuration of rights can often lead to the over-use of resources as actors pursue their self-interest. In possession-based regimes, economic activities are “not separate from social activities or their cultural, symbolic or religious dimensions” (Van Griethuysen 2006: 25). Possession-based regimes do not guarantee the sustainable use of resources, but the more or less equal valuation of economic, ecological and social considerations is more compatible with social fairness and ecological sustainability. Indigenous resource management typically involves the institutions of possession. The transition that both Vietnam and China are undergoing as they move towards capitalist property regimes, therefore, entails a natural move away from traditional modes of resource management. An examination of the configuration of rights over forest resources in Vietnam and China, therefore, implicitly entails a conceptualization of rights based on possession and property.

B. Methodology:

The first step of our analysis will look at the original policy documents and laws regarding forest management in both China and Vietnam, focusing mainly on the most recent changes to the laws since decollectivization in the 1980s for China and the 1990s in Vietnam. This analysis will provide an overarching view of forest management at the national level. In order to analyze how these national policies are interpreted at the local level, policy documents, evaluations and academic literature will be reviewed. This will allow us to better understand how policy is translated to implementation. Case studies from the two countries will be used to illustrate the differences between the de jure policy framework at the national level and

7  

how local power structures elicit the de facto reality. Cases of specific interactions between these policies and ethnic minority communities will be highlighted to show both the challenges and successes of new forest laws in China, which can be highly instructive for how Vietnam can formulate future policy and devise their own local institutions based on their specific context.

II. Forest Management in Vietnam After independence in 1946, forest management in Vietnam has been transformed along similar lines to the land reforms and land laws in the country. Forest tenure has undergone vast changes from state ownership to the devolution of ownership to include non-state actors and local entities. During the 1990s, the Law on Forest Protection and Development in 1991 and the Land Law in 1993 led to a shift in the management of forests and the allocation of forestland to households and the transformation of land use in the mountains as well as an increase in forest area. According to the 1993 Land Law in Vietnam, forestland is defined as ‘land used for forestry purposes including land with natural forest, land under afforestation and land planned for forestry purposes’ (Article 43). The devolution of forest management in Vietnam is still underway, and has provided people with more use and management rights (Sam and Trung, 2001), however, this has not always led to positive outcomes for ethnic minority communities in the country. In this chapter, the general evolution of forest laws, policies and programs will be analyzed, particularly how this process of forest management reform has influenced local livelihoods in general and specifically among ethnic minorities.

A. Historical Evolution of the Legal Framework of Forest Management

When Vietnam attained its independence from France in 1954, all land, including forestland, was nationalized as state property and placed directly under the ownership of the socialist state. Article 12 of the 1959 Constitution articulated the state’s ownership as including: “all mineral resources and water, and forest, underdeveloped land, and other resources defined by law as belonging to the state, are the property of the entire people” (Nguyen 2009). After the reunification in 1975, the state established the Ministry of Forest to manage forest resources at the national level as well as the Department of Forestry to deal with forest issues at the provincial level (Tan et al. 2008). In the same period, State Forest Enterprises (SFEs) were created as a state organization directly under the Ministry of Forestry. SFEs were in charge of forest exploitation and plantation at the provincial and district levels (Nguyen 2009). Under the forest management of the state and SFEs, nevertheless, the area of forestland decreased rapidly. With the decrease in agricultural production under collective farming that began in the early 1980s, the command of cooperatives began to weaken in regards to both agricultural land but also forestland areas (Phuc, Nghi, and Zagt 2013). In order to deal with the issue of deforestation in particular, the government adopted Resolution 184/HDBT in 1982, which rearranged the SFEs toward a considerable reduction of number and their functions (Nguyen 2009). Despite a significant success of the economic reform, called “Doi moi” in reducing the role of the central government and to increasing the role of local authorities and various entities as well as the overall decentralization of land tenure system in the 1980s, forest management under the state was still prevalent by the end of the late 1980s (Phuc, Nghi, and Zagt 2013).

8  

In the early 1990s, the government stepped forward to create the legal framework for forest management that involved various stakeholders-organizations and individuals- by passing a series of laws and policies (Clement and Amezaga 2009). In 1993 the government passed the land law, which delineated the different types of land including forestland. This law specified a bundle of rights, which was associated with land given to land recipients: the right to exchange, transfer, inherit, mortgage, and lease (Tuan, 2006). To be specific, the state provided the land recipients these rights for 20 years for annual croplands and 50 years or more for forestlands. Even though land recipients took over the five use rights, the state still retained the management right of forestland (Phuc, Nghi, and Zagt 2013). At that time, all expanded rights were allowed only for local individuals not for the local community. Ethnic minority individuals were allocated with forestland; however, ethnic minorities as a group in forest area were still not recognized as a forest manager. Therefore, this allocation did not match their traditional methods of forest use. Following the Land Law of 1993, the government issued Decree 02 in 1994 to provide for the long-term allocation of forestland to individual households. Under this policy, the distributed land was mainly production forestland. Conversely, Decree 01 in 1995 granted the sub-contracting of land in special use and protection forests. Forestland was firstly granted to SFEs and Management Boards (MBs) and then they made a contract with local households for forest protection and planting. SFEs and MBs provided forest protection or tree planting fees to local people after signing contracts with them (Phuc, Nghi, and Zagt 2013). While these policies have contributed to improving forest conservation, the benefits have been unfairly distributed. Particularly, in mountain areas where most ethnic minority groups reside, the implementation of these policies were slower and thus their tenure rights remained limited and insecure (Erni 2012). Beginning in the 2000s, forest management in Vietnam took initial steps towards including household groups as well as whole communities as official forest managers (Phuc, Nghi, and Zagt 2013). The key elements of this legislation are the 2003 Land Law and the 2004 Forest Protection and Development Law, which is based on the 1991 Act of Forest Protection and Development. The Land Law in 2003 classifies forest as agricultural land, divided into three main types: production forest, protection forest, and special use forest. The 2004 Forest Protection and Development Law outlaws unplanned timber logging and still stresses the state ownership for natural forest and plantations established under the state budget (ibid). Under the 2004 Forest Protection and Development Law, the state tried to devolve management power to seven so-called forest user groups: SFEs, MBs, other economic entities, other organizations, the army, households, and communities. The most conspicuous advancement of the 2004 Forest Protection and Development Law was to consider local communities as a legal entity for receiving forestland; however, the area allocated to them was still very small (ibid). Moreover, although the recent forest law embraces local forest users as rights holders and respects local customary practices and culture, there is a considerable disparity between the de jure policies and its de facto implementation. In terms of the 2005 revised Civil Code, which still does not consider local communities as legal entities, there is a contradiction between this Code and the 2004 FPDL. Thus, the present and future challenge for the forest land allocation program is how local communities can have more forest area to support their livelihoods as well as how their customary law can be harmonized with statutory law (Erni 2012).    

9  

Map 1: Ethnic Minority Areas in Vietnam

(Source: IKAP Network for Capacity Building in MMSEA, 2005)

10  

B. Major State Afforestation Programs

Even though national afforestation programs were initiated in northern Vietnam in the mid 1950s, the afforestation efforts have been reinforced in particular since the 1990s’ national forest land allocation with three major national programs: the Program 327, the Five Million Hectare Reforestation Program (5MHRP), and the allocation of property rights for forestry land to households and communities (FLA). This section discusses the three programs.

Program 327 (1993-1998)

In the late 1980s, the uplands in Vietnam suffered from a high proportion of barren lands, which consisted of 34.5 % of the total land area of the country (Nguyen 2009). In order to green and effectively utilize this barren land, Decision No 327 (also known as program 327), was established under the Chairman of the Minister Council (Prime Minister) on the 15th of September, 1992. This program was implemented nationwide with the purpose of protecting the environment and encouraging the practices of fixed agriculture and sedentarization (Sam et al. 2007). Article 2 of the Decision No 327 specified the SFEs as the key actors in the program while Article 3 limited local people’s rights in the production area. In practice, SFEs made contracts with individuals and households for forest plantations and protection in barren land and forestlands. In return for these contracts, SFEs provided plantation and protection fees to the households (approximately three dollars per hectare per year for forest protection) as well as a framework for land allocation to swidden households for stabilizing their livelihood (5,000 m2 of land for home gardens) (Nguyen 2009). In this line of law, ethnic minority communities were banned from using their traditional cultivation methods; as a result, they had to practice swidden cultivation illegally or were highly restricted from cultivating and collecting natural resources to support their livelihood. Program 327 lasted from 1993 to 1998. During its first period of implementation, from 1993 to 1994, it focused on protecting existing forests in critical watershed and swidden areas, and on re-greening barren land in the mountainous and midland regions (Nguyen 2009). In 1994 in particular, the program was amended to narrow down its focus to forest protection in crucial areas where local farmers practiced slash and burn cultivation, mostly in the Northern and Central Highlands (Sam et al. 2007). From 1995 to 1996, as a result, the revised program maintained its emphasis on protection forest and special use forest as well as on certain types of forest activities promoting fixed cultivation and settlements, and on greening barren land and hills in mountainous and midland areas (ibid). During the last phase in 1997 and 1998, this program narrowed down its focus once more towards protecting forests through natural regeneration and establishing new plantations in special-use forests (Nguyen 2009). The primary aim of this program was to develop forest plantations and protection, and it was not particularly concerned with improving local livelihoods (Sikor 1995). Program 327 was substituted by the Five Million Hectare Reforestation Program (5MHRP) in 1998 which followed the objectives of program 327: protecting existing protected and special-use forests, and rehabilitating special-use forests with natural regeneration and new forest plantation (Sam et al. 2007) Five Million Hectare Reforestation Program (1998-2010) or Program 661

The Vietnamese government introduced the National Five Million Hectare Reforestation Program (5MHRP) in July 1998 based on Resolution No. 08/1997/QH10 of the National Assembly and Decision No. 661/QD-TTg of the Prime Minister. This program was also referred to as Program 661 since the government issued Decision 661 on the 5 Million

11  

Hectare Reforestation Program (Nguyen 2009). The 5MHRP continued the objectives of program 327 and further solidified the objectives to reforest and rehabilitate five million hectares of forest by the year 2010 (Sam et al. 2007). Its target was to increase forest coverage to up to 43% of the country, produce raw material, create employment, particularly in upland areas, and finally to reduce poverty (Nguyen 2009). The 5MHRP was implemented in early 1999 with the aim of establishing a formal partnership between the Government of Vietnam and interested donors, NGOs and International Organizations for a shared sector support program for the 5MHRP. One of the contributions of this program was to bring in international cooperation in forestry: since 2007, programs of the UNDP, FAO, the governments of Sweden, Germany, Japan, Holland, Finland, and NGOs such as WWF, CARE, Oxfam and other various donors have participated and supported the 5 MHRP (ibid). In contrast to Program 327, which limited the local people to passive participants, 5MHRP furthered the local people’s capacity in forest plantation and protection (Decision 661: Article 2). In addition, this program involved local people in a framework for the allocation and contracting of forestland. Nevertheless, there were still some limitations in the 5MHRP to the allocation of forestland planned for the establishment of special-use forests and protection forests since these forestlands are allocated to state actors. Similar to Program 327, these state organizations contracted with local people for planting and protecting the protection forest. The local people in a contract were entitled to specific use rights to protected forests, for instance rights to collect fuel wood, rights to harvest thinning products, etc. (Thuan 2006) Conversely, many ethnic minorities did not have opportunity to access forest resources; as a result, they could not attain substantial benefits from tree planting and forest protection (ibid). The 5 MHRP has contributed to reforestation; forest cover has increased from 33.2% in 1999 to 35.8% in 2003 (Nguyen 2009). The area of protection forestry land also increased from 5.7 million ha in 1999 to 9.5 million ha in 2005 (Clement and Amezaga 2009). However, despite these successes, the targets were not reached: during the six years between 1998 and 2003, 1,196,594 ha of protection and special use forests were planted which equaled only 49.7% of the area planned for that period and 516,629 ha of production forest were planted which constituted only 22.2% of the planned area. (Sam et al. 2007). Even though the area of protection forest did not meet the target, this increase in protection forestland has had negative impacts on local people’s livelihood and local production since it caused a reduction in the area of land for cultivation, grazing, and timber exploitation and expanded the area under state control (Clement and Amezaga 2009). The government contributed the largest share of funding to implementing the 5MHRP, during the period between 1998 and 2003, since state funds accounted for 63.5% of the total budget: 2,444 billion VND of a total budget of 3,848 billion VND (Sam et al. 2007). However, the state budget did not provide enough funding to the 5MHRP, since the program only had 68% of the required annual funds (ibid). Moreover, the 5MHRP investment funds have been allocated mostly to protection forest still under state ownership (Clement and Amezaga 2009). Thus, most local farmers had little chance to borrow loans for production forest and encountered difficulties in accessing loans with annual preferential interest rates of 5.4% because of insufficient revenues to make this a financially viable option (Sam et al. 2007). Ohlsson et al. (2005) points out that this program had little impact on increasing the income of the poor; as a result, considerable poverty reduction in the uplands was not achieved (Sam et al. 2007). For the local forest owners, even though they were able to attain some benefits

12  

from forestry programs, the incentive was not enough to attract them to forest protection and rehabilitation activities because of insufficient incentives (ibid). Forestry Land Allocation (FLA)

In 1993, the Vietnamese government initiated the Forest Land Allocation (FLA) program, under which the State has allocated land use rights over almost 9 million ha of state forestland to organizations, households and individuals for a term of 50 years of use. As a result, local people could possess the formal rights to use forestland (Bayrak 2010). In this sense, the FLA attempted to give an opportunity to local people to increase their income through investment returns on the land allocated to them (Phuc, Nghi, and Zagt 2013). Devolving rights to local people was expected to bridge the gap between customary and statutory rights, to enhance tenure security, and to harmonize relations between government and local resource users (Tuan 2006). In practice, however, these opportunities are unequally distributed in favor of people with strong financial and political capital and labor resources (Phuc, Nghi, and Zagt 2013). The main objectives of the FLA were reforestation and fixed cultivation; thus the state outlawed shifting cultivation and strongly encouraged local people to adopt more fixed and sustainable land-use practices (Clement and Amezaga 2009). The FLA has facilitated the rapid expansion of forest plantations through smallholder investment in land obtained under it (Phuc, Nghi, and Zagt 2013). Other objectives were conservation and biodiversity in forestland, which still sustained the state as the main actor in FLA. The state sometimes paid for protecting forests and provided subsidies for free planting to local farmers while allowing forest land-use rights. (Bayrak 2010) However, in reality, the FLA has evoked local land conflicts between weaker groups and SFEs or local legal producers. Moreover, this program was extremely costly and the quality of afforestation was not clearly demonstrated, although it has contributed to the re-greening of degraded lands (Phuc, Nghi, and Zagt 2013). Lastly, the state allowed land transactions in the FLA, thus a land market was established in the upland areas. Though many households benefited from these land transactions, local marginalized ethnic groups became more vulnerable due to losing access to the land and forest resources (ibid). The Forest Land Allocation has been revised further through Decree 181 in 2004, Decree 135 in 2005, and Decree 23 in 2006 in order to solve the problems: conflicts between local people and SFEs, prevalent poverty reduction, and transaction costs (ibid). The more recent implementation of the FLA will be discussed in the next section. All different forms of forest management in Vietnam are categorized in the Table 1 below. It should be clarified that Community Forest Management is not discussed in this report since it is a sort of pilot program supported by international organizations such as GTZ (German Society for International Cooperation).

13  

Table 1. Types of Forest Management in Vietnam

Types of Forest Management After Forest Reforms in the 1990s

State-Based Management • National Level: State Forest Enterprises (SFEs)-Management • Local Level: Management Board(MB)-Forest Management

Community Forest Management • Post-Forest Allocation Management • Sustainable Forest Management

Household-Based Management • Forest Recipients’ Self-Management in Allocated Region • SFEs-Households Partnership

Ethnic Minority Management (Traditional Forest Management)

C. Implementation of the Major Forest Policy: The Forest Land Allocation

The Recent State of Implementation

The Vietnamese government began issuing Land Use Certificates (LUCs) in 1993, which were a basic instrument for forest allocation. However, on the ground level, the FLA has been implemented at a very slow pace. By 2010, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE) had issued about 1.8 million Land Use Certificates (LUCs) to recognized users' rights to land. To be specific, most LUCs were granted to households whereas fewer LUCs were granted to organizations with larger areas for management. Among 8,843,000 ha or 69.4% of the total area targeted for issuing LUCs, each household received an area of 3 ha while LUCs issued to organizations average 930 ha (Phuc, Nghi, and Zagt 2013). The FLA, with the primary objective to shift the ownership in ineffectively managed forestlands from state entities to local households or groups, was slowly implemented in practice. According to the government data (FSSP 2010), during 2005-2009, the land area allocated and leased to different user groups increased by only about 1.2% or 134,000 ha. Even though the area managed by SFEs decreased by 16% in this process, state actors, such as MBs and SFEs, local households still have a right to manage all special use and protection forest, and most of the natural forest on production forest land. Due to this state’s intentions and locales’ limited management capacities, many MBs and SFEs contract part of this land with local households for protection purposes. These contracts last for one year with the possibility to renew periodically. Local households received forest protection payments in return for forest protection (Phuc, Nghi, and Zagt 2013). According to the national statistics in 2009 (FSSP 2010), 86% of the area under the contracting arrangement was protection forest and the remaining area of 14% was special use and production forest. This focus on protection forest demonstrates that local households still were limited in participating in protecting natural forestland as well as utilizing natural forest resources (Phuc, Nghi, and Zagt 2013).

14  

Impacts on Local Livelihood

The impacts of the FLA on local livelihoods can be assessed through three indicators: 1) individual and household benefits, including: household income derived from the distributed land, access to land, and property rights to land and forest; 2) equity, including income and land distribution among different households and ethnic groups; 3) the exercise of the bundle of rights (Phuc, Nghi, and Zagt 2013). First of all, the FLA has contributed to improving local livelihoods and household income as well as access to land for local people. For instance, household income derived from the forest was six times higher than the former household without access to land (Phuc, Nghi, and Zagt 2013). Moreover, in the Central Highland region, the implementation of the FLA has provided economic benefits to local people through access to timber and investment in land (Nguyen 2009). However, there was still low income derived from forestland for marginalized ethnic groups. Secondly, in terms of equity, the income derived from forestland has not been equally distributed among different groups of households. That is because forestlands were still distributed in favor of SFEs, other state actors, or rich local individuals (Phuc, Nghi, and Zagt 2013). While most of the high quality special use and protection forest was under control of state entities, local households tended to receive land with poor quality or non-existent forest (ibid). Furthermore, the FLA caused unequal distribution of forestland and resources even among villagers within a village, and among different villages (Thanh and Sikor 2006). Clement and Amezaga (2009) argue that the political and economic elements have played a crucial role in providing particular financial and bureaucratic incentives of forest land allocation for special elites or local groups. For the last indicator of exercising rights to land, the FLA provides local households with five rights to land (right to transfer, exchange, lease, inheritance and mortgage); however in practice, many households could not exercise these rights due to the lack of technical and financial resources (Phuc, Nghi, and Zagt 2013). The legal changes were hardly reflected in actual property rights and forest use practices and the local elites and local landowners were dominant in decision-making on local forest issues (ibid). As a result, the attempt to devolve forestland rights could not provide an advantage for local households and marginalized ethnic groups without enough legal and funding capacity. Impacts on Forest Resource Use Even though the FLA contributed to the allocation of forest product land and the provision of various use rights for local people, it has had different impacts on between agricultural and timber endowments (Sikor 2006). Recipients' return on agricultural land has increased much more than on forestland since they could earn more benefits directly from their agricultural production. However, forestland recipients have put fewer resources into timber investment or production because timber cutting is not strictly regulated by the state (ibid). People from the households, which do not have allocated lands or enough timber to use in their allocated lands are permitted to cut timber in other households' lands. Though timber collection is managed under local authorities, the forests are perceived by local people to belong to the community or local people with free-access right for everyone (Erni 2012). Similarly, when it comes to Non-Timber Forest Product (NTFP), the customary law is still dominant in forest livelihood. As a result, most local people consider NTFP as free resources to collect without

15  

any restrictions. It is also hard to protect the borders of the forest plots allocated to household groups. People who live in forest area without allocated land can enter forestry areas and other households’ owned place in forest in order to collect NTFP (ibid).

D. Case Study: The Co Tu Ethnic Group in Thua Thien Hue Province

The situation of the Co Tu ethnic group in the central Vietnamese province of Thua Thien Hue illustrates some of the challenges in forest management that have emerged as the bundle of rights allocated to the communities has changed over the years. In this province, as elsewhere in Vietnam, the rights to forestland underwent major transformations over the years that have fundamentally affected the communities’ economic status, ways of life and their relationship to their natural environment. Traditionally, the people of the Co Tu ethnic minority made their living primarily through swidden agricultural practices, which included both rotational cultivation (where the community stayed in one place but changed the location of crops each year) and pioneer cultivation (where the community migrated to different plots). These practices were supplemented with income from other land use systems, including rice paddies and the collection of NTFPs (Houben 2012). Within the community, the village patriarch had the primary responsibility for allocating forestland meant for exploitation to traditional clans within the village, who would then be able to regulate its exchange, inheritance and transfer. Land that was not meant for exploitation was classified into one of two other categories, ghost forests and spirit forests, which had spiritual significance, and water protection forests. These three types of forest were communally owned and the cutting of timber was only allowed on a limited level and only within the water protection forests. The traditional management of the forest, therefore, consisted of a system which regulated resource extraction, enforcing these rules through community member participation. In 1968, the Co Tu were resettled in Thua Thien Hue Province as a part of the government’s sedentarization policy, and their livelihood practices and modes of forest management began to change (Thang, Dung and Hoang 2013). Because of sedentarization policies, pioneer swidden agriculture was no longer possible (Houben 2012). Then, with reunification of the country in 1975, the state began to play a direct role in forest management through the establishment of SFEs and state ownership of the land. Within the villages, the village headman, a political figure who had a role within the government, was given the power to liaise with the SFEs, sharing some of the responsibilities that had previously belonged to the village patriarch (Bayrak, Tu and Burgers 2013). In this context, the state claimed the de jure rights to access, withdrawal, management, exclusion and alienation. The local communities continued to operate in some cases under their customary modes of management, practicing rotational swidden agriculture and collecting NTFPs in some areas under a regime of open access and thus maintaining their de facto rights of access and withdrawal. The property rights regime from the period of 1975 to the implementation of the FLA was thus largely a hybrid regime where de jure and de facto rights were often in conflict with one another (Thang, Shivakote and Inoue 2010). Under this regime, the country experienced deforestation, due to a number of factors which included logging by SFEs and insecure property rights (Houben 2012). In the 1990s and the 2000s, the regime changed again as the state implemented devolution of forest management. The devolution process has focused on the issuance of LUCs to local people, in particular to households and individuals. During the same period, in 1997, the state

16  

declared a ban on the practice of swidden agriculture, a policy that supported further sedentarization of the Co Tu population and shifts in their livelihood strategies, which changed to focus even more on rice cultivation. A number of case studies in the Nam Dong district of Thua Thien Hue province, where the Co To people are concentrated, illustrate the impacts of devolution. The process of land allcoationbegan in the province in 1995, when the government initiated project VIE/020/ITA. Thuong Lo commune in Nam Dong district was chosen as a pilot commune for the FLA implementation and in subsequent years, land allocation was expanded to other nearby communes in the district (Tuan 2006). When the change in policy was first implemented in the district in the 1990s, local farmers who were given the rights to the land were given small financial incentives for protecting the forests on their land (Houben 2012 and Bayrak, Tu and Burgers 2013). The land issued to households and individuals was largely production and protection forest. In addition to the land allocation, in 1994, the Khe Tre SFE, the main SFE in the area, began contracting out the protection of forestland to local communities and households in an effort to implicate them in better resources management. These were short-term contracts, which ignored local people's customary practices and resulted in continued deforestation. The FLA thus entailed increased participation of the local people in officially-sanctioned forest management. It bestowed the de jure rights of access, withdrawal, management, exclusion and limited rights to alienation upon communities, households and individuals for 50 years (Thang, Shivakote and Inoue 2010). Throughout this process, the state has preferred to transfer the de jure rights of the LUCs to households over communities, and has kept a prominent role in forest management (Thuan 2006). The majority of the LUCs that were initially issued were for forest plantation land and were issued to households as a part of rural development programs that provided them with advice on what to plant and instructions on how to manage the land and use fertilizers. Households involved in forest plantation production that have been issued LUCs may use their LUCs to obtain loans to invest in the land (Houben 2012). Since 2000, the province instituted a trial of distributing natural forest land to community groups in Thuong Lo commune, and in 2003, it took a part of the land previously managed by Khe Tre SFE and reallocated it to the communities (Thuan 2006). These developments have returned some of the de jure rights to the forests to the hands of communities. However, the state continues to exercise control over the land allocated to communities. For instance, in order to cut trees for timber, communities must receive permission from the commune level. Rangers from the district Forest Protection Unit (FPU) patrol the land and regulate the rules regarding the use of natural forest (Houben 2012). Overall, although the FLA is meant to devolve rights to the local level, in practice it has resulted in a tightening of government control over forestland and only limited increase in de jure rights for traditional communities who would practice their customary law. Thuan (2006: 191) writes, "The State perceives the FLA as decentralization in forest management. However, the powers of control of exploitation of forest resources, in fact, must conform to policies and guidelines made by the central government, although this power is often exercised by local government and government agencies." Under decentralization, the customary modes of forest management of the communities have in some cases been further deteriorated by the FLA implementation. As regards customary tenure arrangements, numerous authors (Thuan 2006, Bayrak, Tu and Burgers 2013) have noted that the FLA policy has tended to weaken the status of the village patriarch and imbue more powers in the station of the village headman. Additionally, although Bayrak, Tu and Burgers (2013) remark that it is difficult to establish a causal link between the deterioration

17  

of traditional forest classification systems and government policies of forest classification, in their survey of villagers in Thuong Long Commune, they note that some of their informants remarked declining beliefs in the categorizations of ghosts forests and spirit forests in recent years. They add that the central government's efforts to impose its own categories of forest on local contexts may be one factor in this decline. On the other hand, Thuan (2006) writes about one village where the classification system is intact and villagers speak of their preference for the customary system.    Overall, the implementation of forest allocation in Thua Thien Hue province has entailed the continuance of trends in policy that have integrated state interests and directives into forest management and resulted in changes to local traditions and livelihood strategies. The Co Tu people in the province's Nam Dong District continue to operate some of their traditional, communal management of natural forest resources in some areas, but in other areas SFEs still hold the main authority over the forest. Currently, there is a lack of economically attractive livelihood strategies for the group. Most people nowadays have abandoned swidden agriculture and instead practice rice cultivation. Forest resources make up only a small part of people's incomes. Thang, Shivakoti and Inoue (2010) note a dramatic decline in the forest dependency of the local people, from 18.17% to 7.06% over the course of the implementation of the FLA. Competition for land has risen over the years as well. Members of the majority Kihn group have bought up land from the Co Tu to grow coffee, and the designation of conservation and protection forest in the area also restricted the land that the Co Tu had available for farming and forestry, as the group was resettled near a state conservation forest (Houben 2012). In addition, ethnic minority communities have tended to receive less valuable, more degraded land in the process of forest allocation, and due to the low quality of the land they have had limited incentive to invest in it. Although credit is available for some people with LUCs, because trees take a number of years to mature before they can be harvested for income, the credit is often not enough to hold poor farmers over until these ventures can be profitable (Thang, Dung and Hoang 2013, Thuan 2006). There have also been some conflicts over land boundaries as they have been redrawn in the context of the FLA. Still, some positive trends have emerged in the past ten years. The flow of information on forest conservation and the correct use of fertilizers in forest plantations that resulted from afforestry programs of the FLA has helped increase the environmental knowledge of the local people. There have been increases in forest cover in Vietnam overall during the implementation of the FLA, although due to the increase in forest plantations, there has also been a loss of biodiversity (Houben 2012). In Houben's (2012) study of two villages in Nam Dong District, most farmers interviewed thought that although livelihoods were still difficult, they had improved since FLA, and they liked the security that they felt the LUCs gave to them. The mixture of successes and failures of the FLA would indicate that there is room for improvement of the policies. One way that this improvement may occur is if the state continues to make efforts to ensure that communities that wish to continue using their customary modes of management to exploit the forest are assured both their de jure and their de facto forest rights. If communities are given good land, as well as support for investing in the land and in designing environmentally-conscious modes of forest management, they may be able to employ and enhance their traditional environmental knowledge to make improvements to the environment and to their own economic status. The question of the harmonization of state policies and laws with local practices thus retains its importance in present day Vietnam, and is a relevant point of entry for discussing the trajectory of forest

18  

rights in China, whose experience may provide valuable lessons for Vietnam in their future pursuit of forest management devolution.

III. Lessons from China With the more recent forest management reforms and the devolution process underway in Vietnam, the case of China may be instructive since historical collectivization trends and devolution are in ways similar, though they occurred on a very different time scale. In order to provide the reader with an understanding of the context of present-day forest management policies in China and to draw lessons from this, it is necessary to be familiarized with the historical evolution of the laws and the rights given to individuals and collectives through history from the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Forestry laws in the 1980s began the process of decentralizing the authority of collective use rights to local government authorities, and provided expanded collective choice and operational rights to individual households and communities. Ethnic minority communities have been directly affected by these legal changes, however, often in unexpected ways. China grants ethnic minority areas in the country their own rights to govern their forests through socially and context appropriate means by law. The fairly ambiguous forestry laws in China prove to be useful in this sense, enabling translation in area specific contexts. However, the introduction of more individual household focused laws and their implementation has had mixed (and often negative) consequences for ethnic minority communities. The traditional management practices that these groups have sustainably used for generations have at times come under threat.

A. Historical Evolution of Forest Law in China

The People’s Republic of China has undergone some of the most radical transformations in forestry laws in the world since it’s founding in 1949, which has had drastic effects on the rights of individual farmers and communities across the country. Prior to the founding of the People’s Republic of China in October 1949, forests1 were primarily privately owned by rural families, mostly wealthy landlords and peasants as well as slave owners (Liu 2001). The remainder of forests was owned either by particular forest groups, a village or a cluster of villages or was owned by the state. 1950 marked the beginning of a massive Land Reform Campaign (1950-1952), where all rural households were given equal forest resources through the confiscation of forestland from landlords and rich peasants (where only a small portion of land was nationalized), creating a “peasant land ownership system” (Li and Zhu 2007). This campaign was nationwide, excluding Tibet and some of the border areas in the Yunnan province where minority groups resided and where confiscated forests were designated as common property of the village or community (Liu 2001 241). Under this system the new landowners were allowed to freely manage, sell and lease their land, and it allowed regional people’s governments to implement rules while taking into consideration local circumstances. From 1956 to Late-1970s: The Abolishment of Private Ownership and Centralization via the Commune System

                                                                                                               1  Forests in China are defined as “land having more than or equal to 20% tree canopy cover” (Miao & West 2004 in Xu & Melick, 2007).

19  

However, this private ownership of land did not last long, and in 1956, the country transitioned to a collective ownership system (following the Soviet Union’s example), similar to the nationalization of land in Vietnam in 1959. All land (including forestland) would be under the ownership of cooperatives, where each member would be allowed to keep no more than 5% of the village average land holdings per capita as private plots. Individuals were only permitted to own sporadically grown trees, whereas the rest would be collectively managed (Li and Zhu 2007). Under this commune system, there was an integration of use rights to land and land ownership, however, there was an informal split in tree ownership and land ownership, and forest management became more centralized at the advanced cooperative level (Liu 2001). This system virtually abolished private property, and farmers worked together on land and received wages based on the time spent in the field. Thus, individuals had access rights to forestland in a sense, but had no withdrawal or collective choice rights as management was done at higher levels of government, which had the authority to dictate the allocation of all rights to property under law. In 1958, with the formation of people’s communes that incorporated several advanced cooperatives, decision-making was further centralized (ibid). Due to massive agricultural failure and famine under the commune system of management during the Great Leap Forward from 1951 to 1961, reforms were made to arable land and forestland policies. The 1962 Revised Regulations on Rural People’s Commune designated production teams the right to manage and operate forestland and ownership of collectively owned forestland, which formed the beginning of subsequent devolution campaigns (Li and Zhu 2007). These production teams were given de jure collective choice rights at a lower level of governance, but few changes were made to individual operational rights from the previous period. Production team management and collective ownership of forestland persisted until the early 1980s. This regulation allowed individual households to own scattered fruit and non-timber trees that were collectivized during the commune era, where the owner was given ownership rights to these forest resources, thus allowing for limited operational rights (particularly withdrawal rights) they did not formerly have. However, this policy was once again reversed during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and these resources were re-collectivized (Liu 2001). This inevitably also meant the retraction of these short-lived operational rights from individual users. 1980s-Present: Devolution and the Strengthening of Private User Rights Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, forests were categorized and administered in two broad categories: state-owned forests and collective forests2, which persists to the present day, though the latter has been separated into several categories of non-state management (Liu and Edmunds 2003). The early 1980s marked a turning point in China’s forestland policy, where there devolution of forest management was adopted. In March 1981, the Central Committee passed the Decision on Several Issues of Forest Development, which required that part of the collective forestland (wastelands and degraded lands) be designated as “private mountains” or “family plots” (ziliushan) to farmer households for a long term (which was unspecified) and it also introduced the production responsibility systems, one form of which was the contracting of collective forests to farmer households as “responsibility hills” (zerenshan) (Li and Zhu 2007: 11). Under the responsibility hill system, the terms of benefit sharing between the collective owner and the

                                                                                                               2  Collective forests account for 64% of all forests in the heavily forested regions of the southwest and 92% of all of the forests in the south (Liu & Edmunds, 2003, 28).

20  

individual user vary among collectives as defined by their contracts, and subsequently the levels of operational rights varied (Liu 2001). Forestlands remain under the ownership of the collective, but use rights and the ownership rights to forest resources under designated or contracted forestland have become more privatized. The granting of both operational rights and collective choice rights for forest resources to individual households by collectives were the primary revision in this reform period. Collectives distributed family plots to individual households under the condition that these households would plant trees, and in return the household would enjoy forestland use rights and would own the trees they planted (i.e. access and withdrawal rights to these resources), though the land was still owned by the collective (Liu and Edmunds 2003). Households were also allowed to choose the species of trees that they planted and make some management decisions as well as harvest non-timber products, though the transfer of the use rights that they enjoyed was not permitted until the early 1990s, when transfer (i.e. alienation rights granted) became permissible in the form of leases3 (ibid, 30). By 1984, more than 31.3 million hectares (more than 1% of China’s forestland) was distributed to 57 million households (ibid). The tenure structure and management arrangements that were the result of these forestry reforms apply broadly to non-state forests, however, there is considerable variability in how these policies are interpreted and enforced, particularly in ethnic minority areas, where “traditional systems have persisted and where central government policy is not so vigorously communicated or pursued” (Liu 2001: 247). The topic of governance in ethnically autonomous areas in China will be discussed in some detail due to its pertinence regarding how laws and policies during the 1980s reform period were translated to these geographical regions. More generally, the incredibly rapid reversal in ownership and user rights to forestland and forest resources is often cited by authors (see Liu 2001; Demurger et al 2008; World Bank 2010) as the major cause for rural people’s complete lack of trust in the security of any operational rights that they might enjoy at a given moment, which resulted in the unsustainable use of resources and an overall reluctance to invest in afforestation. Also, due to land and forest policies during the collectivization period (1958 to 1982), both the quantity and quality of forest resources drastically decreased and was further exacerbated with the transition from the planned system of management to the market economy (Demurger et al. 2008). In the following section we will look more closely at the relevant laws that have shaped the current structure of forest governance in China at a national level in order to delineate the “bundle of rights” held by state, collective, and individual actors.

B. Current National Forestry Policies and Pertinent Legislation for Forestry Governance

Ethnic Autonomous Areas: Rights of Local Government Entities and Forestry Laws In order to understand the rights and responsibilities of government institutions (at the national, regional and local levels) with regards to forest law in China and its effects on ethnic minority communities, it is important to outline how China’s Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law grants power to self-governing organs in ethnically autonomous areas in the country. The People’s Republic of China began to introduce the system of regional autonomy in minority areas directly after it was founded in 1949, and by 1952 there was a Program for the Implementation of Regional Ethnic Autonomy with clear provisions for the establishment

                                                                                                               3  The Revised Forest Law of China legalized these transactions in 1998, however timber management remained heavily restricted (ibid).

21  

of these areas and its institutionalization. On May 31, 1984, at the Second Meeting of the Sixth National People’s Congress, the Law on Regional Ethnic Autonomy (LREA) was adopted (NPC “cecc”). By the end of 2008, China had a total of 155 Ethnic Autonomous Areas (EAAs), divided into five autonomous regions, thirty autonomous prefectures and 120 autonomous counties, which according to the national census in 2000, of the 55 ethnic minorities recognized by the government, 44 had their own EAAs, accounting for 71% of the total population of ethnic minorities (NPC 2009). Though these ethnic autonomous areas are under the unified leadership of the state, they are granted regional autonomy to exercise self-government at the regional, prefecture, and county levels in areas where various ethnic minorities live. People’s congresses and people’s governments of autonomous areas are organs of self-government that function at the local level and are responsible for implementing state laws and policies in a way that suits local conditions. With regards to officials in charge of self-governing organs, those living in these areas have the rights to vote and stand for election. These organs are also given the right to manage their own affairs, formulate regulations in light of the particular political, economic and cultural characteristics of the ethnic group(s) in the areas concerned, and arrange, manage, and develop economically, as well as manage their local finances (ibid). This said, these institutions of self government are to place the interests of the state as a whole above all else and must fulfill the tasks assigned by the state institutions at higher levels (Article 7, LREA). LREA does respect the freedom of EAAs to preserve their own folkways and customs (Article 10) and “in accordance with legal stipulations, autonomous agencies in ethnic autonomous areas shall define the ownership of, and the right to use, the pastures and forests within the areas” (Article 27). Thus, these autonomous agencies have the right to grant both operational and collective choice rights to various actors, while still following guiding laws provided by the state. Also under Article 27, the autonomous agencies are required to protect, develop and encourage the planting of trees and grass, and it further prohibits the destruction of forests by any means and particularly in the case of reclaiming the land for agricultural purposes. In Article 28, the law stipulates that autonomous agencies are given the right to manage and protect natural resources, however, they are to give priority to the national exploitation and utilization of the natural resources that are developed by local authorities. Therefore, though autonomous agencies seem to have the authority to designate operational and collective choice rights, this authority may be usurped by the state at any given time. Regional autonomous areas are to also be compensated by the state if they contribute to the country’s ecological balance and environmental conservation goals (Article 66). Thus, though autonomous agencies are given the right to manage and self-govern their forests and other natural resources, these rights are also confined by national laws that define the use of these resources, and national needs are given priority to local needs for resource exploitation and use, which in a sense undermines authority of these autonomous bodies.Map 2: Ethnic Minority Areas in China (MSD 2013).

22  

Map 2: Ethnic Minority Areas in China (MSD 2013).

23  

National Legal and Policy Framework for Forest Management There are a number of laws that are relevant in order to discern the rights and responsibilities of actors when it comes to forestland and forest resources in China, of which we will focus on those pertinent to collectively owned non-state forests after the 1981 forest devolution reforms since they are the most current and are those that affect ethnic minority communities. The Decision on Several Issues of Forest Development (1981), as already mentioned, institutionalized the system of family plots and the household responsibility system for collective non-state forestland. It is clear that on family plots though the land is still owned by the collective, households who have use rights own the forest resources on the forestland and the ownership of these resources are inheritable (Li and Zhu 2007). However, under the responsibility hill system, it is not specified who owns the trees, which is problematic for user incentives to plant trees. Forestland users (whether it be for private hills or responsibility hills) are required to apply for a felling permit from the local government, regardless of the ownership of trees, which also limits the withdrawal rights of forest managers and users under this system. The State Council’s Notice on Implementing Forest Production Responsibility System (1981) allowed for the contracting of already forested land (as opposed to wastelands) to households for five to twenty years, where users receive a share of the trees harvested (ibid). The No. 1 Document of 1984 formally ratified the separation between land use rights and land ownership, where collectively owned land would be contracted out for a period of 15 years (which may be prolonged under certain circumstances) and promulgated the policy that “whoever plants the tree, owns the tree”, while also permitting inheritance of the trees planted (ibid). However, as Li and Zhu (2007) note, these ownership rights are meaningless if they are subject to felling permit restrictions (12). The Rural Land Contracting Law (RLCL) promulgated in 2002 defines farmers’ land rights as “contracting and operating rights” to all categories of forestland, which is given to individual rural households for a term of 30 years or longer depending on the situation (Li and Zhu 2007: 13). Forestry Law of the People’s Republic of China The Forestry Law of the People’s Republic of China was adopted in 1984 and later amended in 1998. It is particularly important as it is the first law that legalized the individual operational and collective choice rights for individual households and required the issuance of forest rights certificates to affirm these rights to forestland and resources (Li and Zhu 2007). Under the law’s general provisions it states in Article 3 that “forest resources belong to state ownership, excluding those specified under law belonging to collective ownership”, however, legitimate rights and the interests of the owners and users of forests4, woods and forest lands are protected by law. The state protects the rights for forest farmers in general from the infringement of others and prohibits the illegal collection of fees and fines (Article 7). However, under Article 9, the state, provincial governments and autonomous regions specifically give “more independent power and economic benefits to forestry production and construction of nationality autonomous localities than to other general areas” with regards to developing forests, allocating timber and the use of forest funds according to state provisions                                                                                                                4  Forests are classified into five categories including: timber forests, economic forests, fuel forests, and special-purpose forests. Timber forests are those whose main aim is for the provision of timber production, economic forests are woods for the production of fruits, edible oils and drinks, etc., fuel forests have the main aim of providing wood for fuel, and special-purpose forests include those forests for national defense, environmental protection and scientific experiments (NPC Article 4, Forestry Law).  

24  

of power to autonomous agencies (NPC “Forestry Law”). According to the law the Department of Forestry under the State Council is in charge of forestry at the national level and the departments of forestry of local governments at or above the county level are responsible for forestry work in their respective areas, where at the local level, personnel are to be assigned for forestry work. Therefore, the departments of forestry at all levels are responsible for administering the laws regarding the protection, utilization and renewal of forest resources. The Forestry Law also states that timber, economic and fuel forests use rights may be transferred according law and state-owned and collective-owned barren hills and wastelands that are suitable for afforestation may be contracted out to individuals and collectives for the purpose of afforestation (Article 15 and 26, respectively). The woods that are planted by a unit of collective ownership will belong to the said unit and the trees planted by inhabitants at the front and back of their farm houses, on plots of land for their personal needs belong to these individuals and they are able to fell trees that they own (Article 27). However, one needs to obtain a felling permit if they wish to fell trees from the departments of forestry at the county level or the village or township people’s governments (Article 32). Meaning, as stated before, withdrawal rights for timber is insecure for individual households. The final provision of the Forestry Law gives ethnic autonomous areas the right to “formulate flexible or supplementary provisions” that may be submitted to the standing committee of the provincial or autonomous regional people’s congress or the standing committee of the National People’s Congress (Article 48). Changes to Collective Management Rights and Decision Making Processes The Property Law (2007) defines collective ownership as joint ownership by all members of the community, thus every member has an indivisible share of ownership to an unidentified area of land located somewhere within the community (Li and Zhu 2007). It defines property ownership as “the right to possess, use, benefit from and dispose of a property” (ibid, 16). But since the law does not specify the control rights of this land it could be interpreted as all member of the community have rights, all the member households, a group of administrative elites of the community or even the government. These legal ambiguities have led to the abuse of ownership rights, where in some cases farmers are unaware of other members of the community selling off the ownership rights to forestlands or in some cases the local government has ownership control and not the individual members. This is particularly problematic because the law does not identify a particular entity responsible for the collective ownership of the land, making lower levels (villages) subject to the decisions of upper-level collective or government agencies (ibid, 14). Collective management has become progressively more inclusive of the input of individual members when it comes to forest management and distribution decisions since the 1960s and 70s, which are now discussed in open forums and sometimes through a voting process (Liu and Edmunds 2003). In some areas collective forests were distributed to individual households in the form of monetary shares rather than given to them as plots, which allows villagers some input in management decisions through village trustee boards (ibid). In other areas some elements of indigenous management of collective forests have been preserved in ethnic minority areas (Liu 2001). The Guidelines on Fully Promoting Collective Forest Tenure System Reform, which was promoted by the Central Committee of the Communist Part of China and the State Council in June 2008, has introduced further reforms to collective forest owners (World Bank 2010). The reform encourages collective forest owners to reassess

25  

and reallocate their forest use rights (based on a majority vote either by village assembly or by committee or village representatives) to individual households, to private contractors, or to retain collective management either at the village level or at the level of collectives (ibid, 23). This maintains the collective ownership of land but allows users to transfer their longer-term use rights to the forestland and forest resources (the right to transfer or mortgage are included, thus their alienation and exclusion rights). This has been seen as a major step toward the privatization of ownership of forestland allocated to households, and for ethnic minority areas where there has been a long history of community forest management, this reform actually restores some of the choices for land management back to the community (ibid). However, despite this devolution of decision-making authority to lower levels of governance, decisions made at the community level are still strongly influenced by local government actors and forest authorities.

C. Implementation of Forestry Laws and Policies in China

Effects of Implementation on Ethnic Minority Communities The implementation of the forest policy reforms during the 1980s had profound affects on both collectives and individual households in non-state forest areas of the country, particularly due to the way devolution processes have unfolded in what was a fairly short time span. They further found that progress was greatest where policy was adapted to local circumstances, “where social capital has been strong, including good relationships built between farmers and local officials, and where the state has helped to improve local technical expertise and marketing conditions” (Liu and Edmunds, 2003: 21). Besides the expansion of local management authority, the there has also been more space for individual households, shareholders and administrative villages to make decisions for forestland and resource use, as they now have nearly complete operational rights and collective choice rights when it comes to non-timber resources. This has opened up the opportunity for households to experiment with different types of forest management systems, creating new informal shareholding systems to counter the fragmentation of plots that came with these reforms, as well as new capacities and willingness to work with government officials in receiving training and other support (ibid, 2007). These new forms of forest management are categorized in the Table 1 below, of which we will focus on ethnic minority management systems. Unfortunately, despite the expanded rights given to local government actors, villages and households with regards to forest management, the implementation process has not been unproblematic. In many instances, the process of distributing forest plots to households in the early 1980s was very disorganized; boundaries were arbitrarily drawn by untrained administrators leading to fragmentation and slowed the transition to local forest management. Liu and Edmunds (2004) describe how government officials and untrained secondary school graduates were rounded up to work on the distribution of family plots and responsibility hills, without prior experience or expertise and often were encouraged to finish the distribution in a matter of months. These officials also at times did not do field checks before drawing boundaries on maps for these plots (resulting in numerous boundary disputes) and which also resulted in the fragmentation of plots that seriously limited the benefits of households from forestry reforms. Often better-connected households that had ties to the township, county and provincial governments, as well as local officials themselves tended to take advantage of their circumstances by acquiring better forestland, many times at the expense of minority ethnic

26  

groups (Liu and Edmunds 2003). These ethnic minorities faced a further disadvantage due to their relative lack of formal education, particularly when negotiating contracts as it contributed to the information asymmetries that gave their negotiating partners an advantage (ibid). In a more general sense, decentralization policies contributed to the emancipation of local authorities but have not necessarily been empowering for ethnic minority communities (Xu and Salas 2003).

Table2. Types of Forest Management in China

Types of Forest Management After Forest Reforms in the 1980s

Household-Based Management • Family Plots (ziliushan) • Responsibility hill (zerenshan) • Bamboo forests (in Suining, Hunan)

Collective Management • Modified collective management • Shareholding systems

Self-Initiated Shareholding Systems • Farmer-farmer collaborations • Company-village partnerships

Ethnic Minority Management Systems (Liu and Edmunds 2004, 23)

As has been mentioned, ethnic minority communities are often those that live in and around forest areas in China, who have for generations, lived off of the timber, fuel wood, and non-timber forest products (nuts, fruits, wild vegetables, bamboo shoots, mushrooms, medicinal plants, etc.) (Liu and Edmunds 2003). There has been a degree of tolerance for the forest management systems practiced by ethnic minority communities in China during the collective era. After the passing of forest reforms, which allowed for individual use of forests, there was widespread deforestation because, as some authors have posited (Yu et al. 2010; Albers et al. 1998; Xu and Melick 2007), many households feared that their rights would be arbitrarily taken way due to the continuously changing policy environment in the past. But in ethnic minority communities, the introduction of household-based forest management did not result in significant deforestation, principally due to the cultural and religious significance of forests to these communities and the positive role of their leaders (Liu and Edmunds, 2004, 48). Liu and Edmunds (2003) describe how Miao traditional leaders have wielded considerable authority in the Guizhou Province, and until recently, some ethnic groups have been allowed to continue swidden agricultural systems in mixed forest/farm landscapes. In Datu Village in Libo County, little forest guarding is necessary in the local Miao community due to strong cultural norms to preserve the forests, essentially eliminating the most costly issue for household management systems since decentralization. However, recent decentralization policies have actually threatened minority management systems that survived the era of heavy centralization (ibid).

27  

Resulting Changes in Forest Cover and Volume The transition to individual user rights and devolution in China during the 1980s had profound effects on forest cover and volume across the country. The provincial-level statistics reported that there were high rates of forest felling in non-state forests, which as mentioned above, was argued to be the result of insecure tenure rights and a general unease that forest user rights would change in the future (Albers et al. 1998). This also led to unwillingness to invest in tree planting since households did not fully trust in their user and management rights. There was also a noticeable increase in the use of forestland for cash forests and fuel wood forests as opposed to timber forests, which allowed households to get around timber felling restrictions and met their income needs (ibid, 24). More recently, the government’s forest management strategy has shifted towards conservation and afforestation projects, and between 1980 and 1993, both the state forest farms and collectives have managed to increase forest area through afforestation projects at an annual rate of 1.5 million hectares (Albers et al. 1998). However, though there has been substantial reforestation (8.2% increase in national forest cover between 1980 and 1988), there has also been irreversible damage to natural and old growth forests5, which have been replaced by monoculture tree plantations (ibid). This was not true for areas under ethnic minority forest management systems, where it is customary to use a wide range of agroforestry systems, where the biodiversity in these forests was preserved, and allowed for the sustainable cultivation of various timber and non-timber forest products such as tea, rattan, fir, etc. (Xu and Melick 2008).

D. Case Study: Changing Forest Tenure in Yunnan Province

The case of forest tenure in China’s southern province of Yunnan represents a pertinent example of how state policies have interacted with ethnic minorities’ customary management of forests. The province has a long history of management of forest products by its 25 minority groups, which comprise 31% of the population (Xu and Ribot 2004). The ownership and use of forest land and forest products in Yunnan is a hybrid system, in some cases reflecting the differing state policies that have evolved over the years, and in other cases making use of customary and community management practices that have evolved among the province’s minority groups. This section will discuss the effects of China’s forestry policies on the customary practices in Yunnan province. It will be shown that the state’s policies have allowed for some customary management practices to take place, but that the two sources of authority over forest resources, state and customary, do not always operate in tandem. Furthermore, decentralization of forest land over the last thirty years has had mixed results for the environment and for people’s livelihoods, and, similar to Vietnam, has not increased the control of ethnic minorities over forest lands and resources. In Yunnan, forestry policies implemented by the state have left varying levels of authority to ethnic minority groups using customary practices to manage their land during different historical periods. Prior to the rise of the Communist Party in 1949, for instance, forestry laws as applied in Yunnan were less concerned with control over natural resources than they were with exerting power over boundary areas of the province where ethnic minorities resided. Although a 1932 forestry law established different classifications of state forest land (state, common and private), therefore, it was in the interest of the state not to intervene in the

                                                                                                               5  Within 15 years of the forest reforms, China transformed at least 30% of its forest from old growth and natural forests to monoculture plantations (Albers et al., 1998).

28  

management practices of the groups living on the border and the law was not strictly enforced (Xu and Ribot 2004). Ethnic groups in Yunnan thus were able to practice their traditional modes of forest management largely undisturbed. Among the Hani people in southern Yunnan, for instance, the traditional village chief worked with clan leaders and headmen to decide on forest resource boundaries and choose sites for swidden agriculture practices. The group had detailed regulations and a “complex system of sanctions for infractions” (Jianchu et al 1999: 125). Systems of forest management among ethnic minorities existed for timber products and for non-timber products such as medicinal herbs, agroforestry products, and mushrooms. With the establishment of the Peoples’ Commune in 1958, state and collective ownership replaced private and customary management, and a period of ever-shifting forest tenure arrangements commenced as the state and the province centralized and decentralized ownership and access over forestland and trees numerous times. In 1961, a few years after the institution of communal farming, the Yunnan provincial government introduced forest regulations that stipulated that tenure arrangements should pay more attention to the management of customary ethnic areas. However, this policy went largely unimplemented and customary institutions were further disturbed by the cultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s (Xu and Ribot 2004). During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1977), the focus of local Forestry Bureaus in Yunnan on political issues caused a lack of attention to the monitoring of forest use, and the local people, in an effort to meet state grain quotas, cleared forestland for swidden agriculture. During the initial period of the Household Responsibility System (HRS), the redrawing of forest and agricultural land boundaries in the favor of agricultural land caused further clearing of land for agricultural purposes (Jianchu et al. 1999). The state attempted to deal with the trends of deforestation in the province through the implementation of decentralization policies in the 1984 Forest Law, but still maintained control over logging activities in the province through quotas on logging and the issuance of timber permits (Xu and Ribot 2004). While the state issued forest certificates to some communities in the 1980s, this was an uneven effort and overall the de jure rights to forest managed by ethnic minorities were not assured (Xu and Ribot 2004). The system of family plots and responsibility hills was implemented in the province with mixed success. On the positive side, the auctioning of wastelands as family plots increased forest cover to an extent: by the end of 1997, 413,547 hectares of land in Yunnan had been afforested, 53.2% for which the rights had been auctioned to households. However, family plots have overall not met their objectives, partially because the boundaries for the hills are unclear and conflicting and this makes it difficult for households to effectively manage the land. Shared responsibility hills actually resulted in an increased level of deforestation and a decrease in forest resources because people were more concerned with exploiting forest resources to assure their household food security than with following the contracted rules stipulated by the state. (Baohua 2006). In addition, land auctioned off as wastelands was often actually in use by ethnic minority groups as grazing land or land for gathering fuel and NTFPs, and so its auctioning deprived these groups of a part of their livelihood. In 1998, the state issued a logging ban on natural forests following severe flooding in the country that was related to deforestation (Amend et al 2009). Overall, household-based forestry and decentralization have increased the operating costs for forestry, because of a lack of tenure security, frequently shifting policies, a lack of effective financial and technical support from the state, and the allocation of forestry land based on principles of equality rather than management efficiency (Baohua 2006). The types of forest

29  

tenure in the province currently include state-owned forests, household-owned forests, and community-owned forests that are run by the different systems of management described in the previous section. There has been an increase over the years in the amount of forest land that is being used for monoculture-based production of timber and other commercial forest products (Xu and Ribot 2004). Decentralization in Yunnan province has generally induced some changes that were meant to give local communities and households more rights, but in the end it has been incomplete, and the central government still exercises much control over forest resource management. Baohua (2006) describes how centralized forestry bureaus in the province operate with an incomplete understanding of local conditions and tend to emphasize ecological concerns more than community welfare. Still, because of the ambiguity of the current legal framework and the relative autonomy of ethnic groups, some customary traditions have persisted and new forms of customary tenure have emerged in some areas of the province. The example of village-level management of the collection of the matsutake mushroom illustrates one case. The practice of collecting these mushrooms has grown in recent years in response to the decrease in income from forestry activities in the Himalayan foothills of northwest Yunnan Province following the logging ban, and due to a rise in the demand for the product, which is exported to Japan (Hubert et al 2010). Collection of the mushrooms is concentrated in a number of autonomous prefectures, including Diqing Autonomous Prefecture and Dali Autonomous Prefecture in Yunnan and Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan (Yeh 2000, Jun and Weyerhaeuser n.d.). In Diqing Prefecture, income from mushroom collection has increased from 50% to 80% of household income in recent years, and overall household income has increased, which underlines the importance of the product for the livelihood of local people (Yeh 2000). The majority of the collection of the mushrooms in the prefecture occurs in the collective forest. Jun and Weyerhaeuser (n.d.) remark that most villagers involved in harvesting the mushrooms have a good understanding of their access rights to collective forest resources. Prior to the development of the industry, access to non-timber forest products including matsusake mushrooms was unrestricted. However, in recent years some communities have been able to develop new customary laws to govern the harvest of the mushroom. They have done so under the rubrique of xiangguimingue, or village compacts, which are instruments promoted as a model of self-governance in the post-Mao era, and which have no legal scope in the official court system (Yeh 2000). An example of the kind of arrangement that these compacts entail can be found in Jidia village, where a set of regulations has been created. These regulations stipulate that only members of the village may harvest in the collective forest, though outsiders who are originally from the village may access the mushrooms for a fee. The harvesting of the mushrooms is further restricted based on the size of the mushrooms in order to prevent harvesting of immature plants, by stipulations that the mushrooms must be harvested only three days out of the week, and by specifications about the procedure and tools that must be used to harvest them sustainably. Forests are patrolled by male household members on days when mushroom harvesting is prohibited, and the villagers meet periodically to reassess harvesting practices and deal with cases of broken rules (Jun and Weyerhaeuser n.d.). Overall, there have been success and failures for local management of the mushrooms. The local institutions being developed such as the system in Jidia village have, as Xu and Ribot (2004: 161) remark, “turned an open access system into one of collective management based

30  

on sound institutional arrangements.” This has provided residents of Diqing Autonomous Prefecture with an important source of income. There are also reasons to believe that the system of common property management being practiced in some communities may have particular advantages over household management of the mushrooms, which is also practiced in Yunnan. One study of the mushroom harvesting in communities in Yunnan, for instance, compared household management with community management of the mushrooms. It found that individually managed mushroom resources made more money for each individual household and helped engender improved resource management because there was less competition for each plot of mushrooms. However, common property was found to result in a more equal distribution of benefits from the forest resources, and in reduced transaction costs for forest management in large forest areas with uneven distribution of resources. Villagers surveyed in Jidia village, furthermore, expressed preference for the common property regime (Yang et al, 2009). Despite these benefits, inter-village conflicts in areas managed by ethnic minority communities have occurred over the boundaries of harvesting areas. One conflict over the traditional boundaries occurred in between Renhe and Linjue village beginning in 1997. Much of this dispute was tied to differing claims about boundaries that had been redrawn during reforms in 1962 and 1983. Villagers from Renhe village appealed to the local courts for access to area claimed by Linju village; they won access rights although the conception of the boundaries offered by Linju prevailed. However, despite the court decision, conflicts over the border areas continued, because the local authorities lack power and don’t have the institutional capacity to enforce the decision. Because no documents exist that officially establish the correct boundaries, conflicts over the land in these two villages have become a “war of competing social memories” (Yeh 2000: 275).  The changing de jure and de facto rights among ethnic minorities in Yunnan province underline some of the challenges faced by China today in instituting a system of forest tenure that supports sustainable forest management and works in tandem with traditional forms of forest management. Because of the ever-shifting policies of the province and the state, simple questions like boundaries between villages in forest tenure are brought to light in land conflicts, highlighting the fact that assuring a bundle of rights over forest property is not a simple task. Overall, despite the fact that there are some legal mechanisms in place for the empowerment of ethnic minorities in the province, the state policies have tended to disrupt local forms of tenure, creating a sometimes conflicting system of de jure and de facto rights. As a result, there has been a decrease observed in the knowledge of minority groups of their traditional modes of management (Baohua 2006). As the case of the Matsutake mushroom illustrates, however, this does not mean that new systems cannot be developed. Communities that share a history and a culture are likely to be able to work collaboratively on sustainable resource management if the supporting institutional structure is put in place.

IV. Discussion In order to facilitate a comparison between forestland management transformations in Vietnam and China, we will highlight a number of overarching themes from both cases, specifically: rights and institutional regimes, decentralization processes, the rate of change of reforms and their timelines, property versus possession and finally, outcomes.

31  

Who Has the Forest Rights: State Regimes, Community Management and Ethnic Minorities With regards to the rights given to various actors including the state, collectives, households and individuals at the de jure level, there are some important similarities between Vietnam and China. To begin with, over the years, both countries have moved from more centralized (either state or collective usage rights) towards individual rights as they have transitioned to a more market-oriented economy. In Vietnam, this is a recent change that has happened since the 1990s with the revision of the Land Laws and the implementation of the FLA. In China, this policy began in the 1980s with the Decision on Several Issues of Forest Development and the establishment of the system of family plots and responsibility hills. Both of the countries have experimented with the contracting of forestland to households, shifting the rights to access and withdrawal of forest resources on the de jure level away from the state while still maintaining some management rights. In Vietnam, this happened through contracts with SFEs, while in China this occurred through the use of responsibility hills. Both China and Vietnam also differentiate between protected and productive areas of forestland. Though forestland users now have expanded rights to exploit specific forest resources, in both countries these liberties are tempered by the requirement of state approval (via permits) for tree felling. There are also a few broad differences in forest rights at the de jure level. For instance, in Vietnam all the land is owned by the state, whereas in China a differentiation is made between state-owned land (not necessarily used for productive purposes) and collective land, which is used for productive purposes. In Vietnam there is also no clear demarcation between forestland ownership rights and forestland resource rights as is the case in China. This differentiation makes the issue of rights more complicated in China and often not particularly clear, as in the case of tree ownership under the responsibility hill system. Collective ownership and ethnic minority rights in China and Vietnam are also approached in a somewhat different fashion in the law. In China, collective ownership is considered joint ownership among all members of the community, where in theory each member has an indivisible share of ownership to an unidentified area of land located in the community (Li and Zhu 2007). Collective ownership issues are becoming less problematic in recent years, where in some areas monetary shares instead of plots are becoming more common. In China, the state has also historically allowed some ethnic minority communities to practice autonomy over their land through its system of Autonomous Areas, meaning that in these areas, traditional systems of collective ownership are sanctioned to a certain degree under the law. In Vietnam, on the other hand, collective ownership by minority groups has only recently been recognized under law, and there is little legal status for ethnic minority rights to forest. The traditional communities in Vietnam and in China, as illustrated by the examples of the Co Tu in Vietnam and numerous communities in China, have a history of managing their land based on common property regimes that specify what sections of a forest are accessible to community members, who may access these resources and under what conditions. These systems establish forms of monitoring in order to enforce these rules. In both China and in Vietnam, it was found that these systems offer particular advantages, in reducing transaction costs and improving equality in access to forest resources. In both countries, too, local systems of de jure management have often operated in disharmony with state policies. In Vietnam, the institution of SFEs has played a role in disturbing local rights to access, withdrawal and management, and state policies such as the banning of swidden agriculture have ended longstanding traditional practices. In China, a similar trend occurred with the

32  

nationalization of forestland during communism and through more recent policies such as the ban on logging. Interestingly, in both countries, traditional communities have been allowed the rights to access and withdrawal of NTFPs with relative ease. In Vietnam, there are official limits on the collection of certain products, but these limitations have not been strictly enforced. In China, flexibility and ambiguity in the law has allowed for the development of new systems of tenure, as in the case of the matsutake mushroom. Decentralization Decentralization is also a salient topic in forest management in Vietnam and in China. In some ways the outcomes of this process in each country have been similar. The process of devolution has been incomplete in China, and as a result state forestry bureaus maintain control over the forest and govern from afar. In Vietnam, the central government also continues to exercise power over forest resources through its directives to local governments. The process of devolution in both countries has also not been particularly inclusive of ethnic minority community actors, for instance when the initial parceling of land was carried out. This is exemplified in the way in which in China the initial parceling off of land by local authorities was done haphazardly, where barriers were drawn often arbitrarily, leading to plot fragmentation and frequent boundary disputes (Liu and Edmunds, 2004). The evidence reviewed in the Vietnam case studies indicated that boundary disputes, or uncertainty and conflict in the right to exclusion from forest land, is a problem that it shares with China also as a result of decentralization. Despite the fact that some of the initial parceling was not particularly participatory in either the Vietnamese or Chinese case, some local people were included in the decision making boards in Vietnam (though the majority of the delegates were state representatives). In China collectives were given expanded decision-making powers in the form of collectives being able to now allocate plots to households via the responsibility hill system, where management decisions have become more inclusive. There are now voting processes and village trustee boards that decide on allocation and forestland issues as well as in some cases individually owned monetary shares instead of unspecified plots, allowing individuals to have more control over their shares. The expansion of individual decision-making authority over plots for which they have user rights has also allowed for a system of management experimentation and more willingness to receive training and support from government extension departments. However, the expanded authority given to local authorities and the new decision making rights for individual households has not necessarily translated to positive outcomes for ethnic minority communities, in some cases it has even threatened the forest management systems they have in place (Liu and Edmunds, 2004). The Rate of Policy Change Both Vietnam and China have undergone extraordinary changes to their forestland management policies and laws in recent years. In China this process began a full decade before Vietnam, allowing us to draw lessons from China’s experience with decentralization and rights individualization. A noteworthy topic in these changes is the rate at which they were made in the China and Vietnam cases. Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, forestland and resource rights have changed repeatedly, from the hands of the wealthy elite to individual households in the early 1950s, from these households to collectives, then from collectives to ever more centralized and larger communes, back to community collectives and finally to individual households in the 1980s, all in the span of forty years. Understandably, this speedy rate of change has resulted in individuals distrusting

33  

the permanence of their forestland and resource user rights, leading to widespread deforestation, a lack of investment in afforestation among individuals, and the loss of old growth and natural forests (Albers et al 1998). In Vietnam, laws and regulations regarding forestland management and oanwrship have been defined and revised in more than 100 laws and regulations (Clement and Amezaga 2009). As mentioned above, the rate of change of forestland management policies in Vietnam has occurred on a very different timeline to China, particularly in that devolution only began in 1991 and land has only been given to communities starting in 2004, whereas China has a long history of collective management. More specifically, the Law on Forest Protection and Development defined forestry land classification and the rules to protect forest only in 1991 and 2004 (Clement and Amezaga 2009). Forestry land use rights began to be allocated to individuals through the 1993 Land Law as well as to communities through the 2004 Forest Protection and Development Law (Phuc, Nghi, and Zagt 2013). Thus, both Vietnam and China have seen high rates of change with regards to their forest laws in the past 40 years, but Vietnam has only recently begun devolution policies and the transition to individual user rights to forestland, whereas China underwent this change some thirty years ago. Property And Possession Another important theme that arose from our case studies was the erosion of traditional knowledge about forest management over the course of the imposition of state policies. This trend has occurred in both China and in Vietnam, where ethnic minority groups have integrated the use of swidden agriculture systems, agroforestry and the collection of NTFPs into their livelihood strategies for generations. In the case of the Co Tu in Vietnam, this is evident in the changes that occurred with the imposition of state policies that favored the village chief over the traditional village patriarch as the main player in the allocation of land, and in the possible link between the imposition of the different legal categories of forest and the declining belief in the traditional classifications of ghost forests and spirit forests. In China, a similar trend occurred as the state sought to exercise control over natural resources. Years of changing policies prior to decentralization and the continued state control of forest management under decentralization has led to a loss of traditional knowledge. Concurrently, as China and Vietnam have shifted away from communist, state regimes to regimes focused on individual and household property, there has been a proliferation of capitalistic forest ventures, as demonstrated by the increase in forest plantations. These plantations encourage monocropping, and are associated with a decrease in biodiversity. In Vietnam, the bestowing of credit upon communities has supported this transition, as farmers have been able to use the money from these loans to buy chemical inputs for their land. Still, our study found that the bestowing of individual property rights does not necessarily translate into unsustainable or undesirable forms of environmental management. In Vietnam, state technical assistance to farmers issued LUCs, which resulted in an increase in local knowledge about conservation. In China, forest plots of individuals managing matsutake mushrooms were more sustainably managed than community forests, although community forestry offered the advantage of more equal benefit sharing and lower transaction costs. From our case studies, it can be concluded that the transition towards the institution of individual property in forestry in China and Vietnam offers both advantages and disadvantages for the sustainable management of forests by ethnic minorities. There is perhaps less room for the application of traditional knowledge to forestry practices, but there is reason to believe that management under a property based regime can be sustainable if communities are offered support in cultivating knowledge about their environment and if policies are flexible enough to allow some of the more traditional systems to persist and adapt.

34  

Outcomes for Deforestation and Livelihoods Overall, over the course of the implementation of the FLA in Vietnam and decentralization in China, it can be said that there has been a gradual improvement in the level of forest cover in both countries, though it has been below expectations. In Vietnam, the country has experienced an increase in forest cover from 27.8% in 1990 to 38% in the late 2000s (Clement and Amazaga 2009). In China, forest cover has also increased, although, as noted previously, the country has experienced a loss of biodiversity. Different land policies do seem to make a difference where afforestation is concerned. Neither China nor Vietnam, for instance, has had much success with the contracting of land from state forests to individual households. In China, the auctioning of wastelands experienced some success, but ultimately operated below expectations. In Vietnam, technical assistance through afforestation programs has contributed to higher forest cover, while assistance is somewhat lacking in China. In both countries, insecure tenure and unclear boundaries have tended to have a negative effect on forest resources. Ethnic communities' modes of livelihood have experienced change in China and in Vietnam as well. In both countries, there is an increased reliance on sedentary agricultural activities. Our case study of Vietnam demonstrated how ethnic minorities have a decreased dependence on forest products as a result of changing livelihood strategies. In China, due to the ban on logging in Yunnan, communities had to find new sources of income, one of which was the hunting of matsutake mushrooms. Changes in land tenure have become challenges for ethnic minority communities in both case study examples, as minority communities have been allocated poorer quality land in Vietnam and in China they were pushed off of land during the wasteland auctions. The cumulative effect of changes in forest policies in both case study countries points to a combination of both opportunities and challenges for ethnic minority communities in Vietnam and China.

V. Conclusion Forest tenure in both Vietnam and in China has seen great changes over the course of the last sixty years. The two countries have followed similar tracks in many respects, moving from systems of mixed private and communal forest ownership to centralized state ownership and finally to decentralization and household level ownership. Throughout these similar historical tracks, ethnic minorities have continued to practice their traditional forms of customary forest management, although in both the case of China and the case of Vietnam, the continuously changing policy reforms and the recent change to more individual-based forest land and resource user rights has disrupted these traditional systems for forest management. In both China and Vietnam, deforestation has also occurred partially as a result of a general mistrust in the permanence of recent household user rights, which has simultaneously, lead to a decrease in long-term investment in the lands acquired. In recent years, the government of Vietnam has moved towards providing legal mechanisms for communities to gain official control over their land, approving communal ownership as a valid form of forest property, which reflects a wider recognition that local communities may have a role to play in forest management. In China, the central role of the community has been long recognized in the management of forests, particularly the right for autonomous areas to self-govern via context specific mechanisms. However, in both these cases, the central government still retains a considerable amount of power, as inevitably national laws take precedence over local-level interpretations, effectively curtailing the power granted to these local institutions through the devolution reforms.

35  

There are a number of general lessons that may be drawn from the case of China to inform future policy in Vietnam, not as recommendations as such but as important issues that should be kept in mind. Firstly, decentralization is not a cure-all to issues regarding local governance of natural resources. In both countries, these policies have often lead to the strengthening of the power of government agencies at the expense of community authority structures, and have not always had desirable outcomes with regards to efficient and effective forestland allocation. In some cases, decentralization has actually been detrimental to the preservation of indigenous management systems that have been proven to be sustainable in the past. Secondly, the transition to individual-based private property regimes, in both countries, has not necessarily led to overwhelmingly positive outcomes. The early years of the transition were plagued by massive deforestation and lack of investment in future yields among individual households. Even with afforestation, natural and old growth forests were lost to monoculture plantations. It was seen in the case of China that some traditional forms of forest management systems among ethnic minority communities were more inclined to preserve these natural forests, and deforestation did not occur to the extent seen in other areas of the country. This points to the possibility that community possession-based natural resource regimes as practiced among ethnic minorities may have positive conservation outcomes not seen in individual property regimes. It is important to recognize that a diversity of methods of forest resource management are available, not just those associated with private property regimes. Thirdly, in order to improve the livelihoods of ethnic minority groups in forested areas, state policies should actively consider the differing customs and needs of these communities. In Vietnam most ethnic minorities have been marginalized and suffer from high levels of poverty. Allocating forestland and giving more rights to use forestland may not be sufficient for ethnic minorities to see real positive changes in their livelihoods. Although the China case shows that traditional forest management as practiced by ethnic minority groups has lead to higher levels of natural forest conservation, it is not clear if these communities are better off than individual households in terms of livelihoods and quality of life. Therefore, in addition to preserving the ethnic minorities’ traditional forest management systems, it is recommended that policies that aim to improve livelihoods of ethnic minorities in particular are adopted. This comparative analysis is by no means exhaustive regarding the laws or the issues faced during the implementation of forest reforms in the two countries, and though only broad conclusions may be derived from their experiences, we believe that they are important to consider in future policy reforms in both countries.

36  

VI. Bibliography

Amend, Anthony, Fang, Zhendong, Yi, Cui, and McClatchey, Will C. 2010. "Local Perceptions of Matsutake Mushroom Management in NW Yunnan, China." Biological Conservation 143: 165-172.

Albers, Heidi J., Scott D. Rozelle, and Li Guo. "China's forests under economic reform: timber supplies, environmental protection, and rural resource access." Contemporary economic policy 16, no. 1 (1998): 22-33.

Bayrak, Mucahid Mustafa, 2010. “Changing Indigenous Cultures through Forest Management - Case Study: Co Tu People in Central Vietnam”. Dissertation. International Development Studies, Utrecht University August 31.

Bayrak, Mucahid Mustafa, Tu, Tran Nam, and Burger, Paul, 2013. "Restructuring Space in the Name of Development: The Socio-Cultural Impact of the Forest Land Allocation Program on the Indigenous Co Tu People in Central Vietnam." Journal of Political Ecology 20.

Beyer, Stefanie. "Environmental law and policy in the People's Republic of China." Chinese Journal of International Law 5, no. 1 (2006): 185-211.

Bojo, J. 2011. Vietnam development report 2011  : natural resources management (No. 66634) (pp. 1–163). The World Bank.

Borrini, G., & Oviedo, G. 2004. Indigenous and Local Communities and Protected Areas: Towards Equity and Enhanced Conservation  : Guidance on Policy and Practice for Co-managed Protected Areas and Community Conserved Areas. IUCN.

Buntaine, Mark T., Renée B. Mullen, and James P. Lassoie.2007. "Human use and conservation planning in alpine areas of northwestern Yunnan, China." Environment, Development and Sustainability 9, no. 3: 305-324.

Bromley, D. W., 1992. “The Commons, Common Property, and Environmental Policy.” Environmental and Resource Economics, 2(1), pp. 1-17.

Castella, J. C., Boissau, S., Nguyen, H. T., and Novosad, P. 2006. The Impact of Forest Land Allocation on Land Use in a Mountainous Province of Viet Nam. Land Use Policy 23: 147-160.

Castro, Alfonso Peter, and Erik Nielsen, eds. 2003. Natural resource conflict management case studies: An analysis of power, participation and protected areas. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Chia, Evelyn. "State and policy interventions–effects on villager perception of responsibility and obligation–a case study from northwest Yunnan, China." (2008).

Clement, Floriane & Amezaga, Jaime. 2009. “Afforestation and Forestry Land Allocation in Northern Vietnam: Analyzing the Gap Between Policy Intentions and Outcomes.” Land Use Policy 26:458-470.

Colfer, Carol J. Pierce, Ganga Ram Dahal, and Doris Capistrano, eds. 2008. Lessons from forest decentralization: Money, justice and the quest for good governance in Asia-Pacific. Earthscan.

Dachang, Liu, 2001. "Tenure and Management of Non-State Forests in China Since 1950: A Historical Review." Environmental History 6(2): 239-263.

Démurger, Sylvie, and Weiyong Yang. 2006. "Economic changes and afforestation incentives in rural China." Environment and Development Economics 11, no. 05: 629-649.

Edmunds, David, and Eva Wollenberg. 2003. Local forest management: The impacts of devolution policies. Earthscan.

Erni, Christian. 2012. “Customary Law in Forest Resources Use and Management - A Case Study Among the Dzao and Thai People in North-West Vietnam”. Culture Identity and Resources Use Management (CIRUM).

FSSP (Forest Sector Support Programme). 2010. Viet Nam Forestry Development Strategy: Progress Report 2006-2010. Ha Noi, Viet Nam.

37  

Geslani, Cheryl. 2009. Uncovering Matsutake (Tricholoma Matsutake) Harvester Livelihood Preferences in Yunnan, China. University of Hawaii at Manoa,

Ho, Peter. 2006. "Credibility of institutions: forestry, social conflict and titling in China." Land Use Policy 23, no. 4: 588-603.

Houben, Machteld, 2012. “Effects of Forest Land Allocation on the Livelihoods of the Local Co Tu Men and Women in Central Vietnam.” Master Thesis in International Development Studies, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University.

Huber, Franz K., Robert Ineichen, Yongping Yang, and Caroline S. Weckerle.2010. "Livelihood and Conservation Aspects of Non-wood Forest Product Collection in the Shaxi Valley, Southwest China1." Economic Botany 64, no. 3: 189-204.

IIASA. 2013. “Land Cover/ Land Use Map of China: Forests.” http://www.china-food-security.org/images/maps/landuse/lu_3_m.jpg (accessed November 2, 2013).

Jianchu, Xu, Fox, Jefferson, Xing, Lu, Podger, Nancy, Leisz, Stephen, and Xihui, Ai, 1999. “Effects of Swidden Cultivation, State Policies and Customary Institutionson Land Cover in a Jun, He. 2010. "Globalized Forest Products: Commodification of Matsutake Mushroom in Tibetan Villages in Yunnan Province, Southwest China." International Forestry Review 12(1): 27-37.

Jun, He. 2006. "Globalized Forest-Products: Commodification of Matsutake Mushroom in Tibetan Villages Yunnan Province, Southwest China." In Survival of the Commons: Mounting Challenges and New Realities," the Eleventh Conference of the International Association for the Study of Common Property, Bali, Indonesia.

Jun, He, and Horst Weyerhaeuser. "Strengthening farmers access to forests for sustainable use of Non Timber Forest Products: Lessons based on community managed Matsutake mushroom and bamboo shoot collection in Yunnan province, Southwest China."

Larsen, P. B., Oviedo, G. and Van Griethuysen, 2006. “Poverty, Equity and Rights in Conservation: Technical Paper and Case Studies.” The Graduate Institute of Development Studies.

Li, Ping and Zhu, Keliang. 2007. "A legal review and analysis of China's forest tenure system with an emphasis on collective forestland." A legal review and analysis of China's forest tenure system with an emphasis on collective forestland.

Liu, Dachang. 2001. "Tenure and management of non-state forests in China since 1950: a historical review." Environmental History: 239-263.

Liu, Dachuang. 2003. “Devolution as a Means of Expanding Local Forest Management in South China.” China’s Forests: Lessons from Market Reforms, edited by Hyde, William F., Belcher, Brian, and Xu, Jintao. Washington, D.C.: Resources for the Future, 2003.

Liu, Dechang. 2008. "Policies and Programmes to Make Decentralization Effective: A Case Study from China." Lessons from Forest Decentralization: Money, Justice and the Quest for Good Governance in Asia-Pacific: 83.

Liu, Dachang, and David Edmunds. 2003. "Devolution as a Means of Expanding Local Forest Management in South China." China's forests: global lessons from market reforms: 27.

McKean, Margaret. 2000. “Common Property: What Is It, What Is It Good For, and What Makes It Work?” In Gibson, Clark, McKean, Margaret, and Ostrom, Elinor, eds., People and Forests: Communities, Institutions and Governance. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

National People's Congress (NPC). "Forestry Law of the People's Republic of China -- china.org.cn." Forestry Law of the People's Republic of China -- china.org.cn. http://www.china.org.cn/english/environment/207457.htm (accessed October 29, 2013).

National People’s Congress (NPC). "Govt. White Papers - china.org.cn." Govt. White Papers - china.org.cn. http://www.china.org.cn/government/whitepaper/2009-09/27/content_18610331.htm (accessed October 29, 2013).

38  

National People's Congress (NPC). "Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law of the People's Republic of China (Chinese and English Text)." Congressional-Executive Commission on China. http://www.cecc.gov/resources/legal-provisions/regional-ethnic-autonomy-law-of-the-peoples-republic-of-china-amended (accessed October 29, 2013).

National People’s Congress (NPC). "Regional Autonomy for Ethnic Minorities in China." Permanent Mission of the People's Republic of China to the United Nations Office at Geneva and Other International Organizations in Switzerland. http://www.china-un.ch/eng/rqrd/jblc/t187368.htm (accessed October 29, 2013).

Nepal, Sanjay K. 2002. “Profile: Involving Indigenous Peoples in Protected Area Management: Comparative Perspectives from Nepal, Thailand and China.” Environmental Management 30(6): 748-763.

Nguyen, Tien Hai. 2009. Human ecological analysis of land and forest use by the Hmong people for harmonizing with the governmental reforestation program in Vietnam. Diss. Dresden, Techn. Univ., Diss.

Melick, David, Xuefei Yang, and Jianchu Xu. 2007. "Seeing the wood for the trees: how conservation policies can place greater pressure on village forests in southwest China." Biodiversity and Conservation 16, no. 6: 1959-1971.

MSD. "Minority Supplier Development China." China's Ethnic Minority Regions. http://www.msdchina.org/userfiles/file/map-L.gif (accessed November 2, 2013).

Ohlsson, B.; Sandewall, M.; Sandewall, R. K; Nguyen Huy Phon. 2005. Government plans and farmers intentions: A study on forest land use planning in Vietnam. Ambio 34 (3): 248-255.

Phuc, Xuan, Tran Huu Nghi, and Roderick Zagt. 2013. “Forest Land Allocation in Viet Nam: Implementation Processes and Results”. Tropenbos International Viet Nam.

Poffenberger, M., 2000. Communities and Forest Management in South Asia. IUCN. Poffenberger, M., 2001. Communities and forest management in southeast Asia: a regional profile

of the Working Group on Community Involvement in Forest Management., xii + 137 pp. Prime Minister Decision No. 18/2007/QD-ttg, 5 February 2007, on Approval of the Vietnam

Forestry Development Strategy 2006-2020. Rozelle, Scott, Jikun Huang, and Vincent Benziger. 2003. "Forest exploitation and protection in

reform China: Assessing the impact of policy, tenure, and economic growth." Chapter 6: 109-134.

Sam, D. D., & Trung, L. Q. 2001. Forest Policy Trends in Vietnam (pp. 69–73). Policy Trend Report 2001: Forest Science Institute of Vietnam.

Sam, Do Dinh, Trieu Van Hung, Pham Ngoc Ma, and De Jong Wil. 2007. “How Does Vietnum Rehabilitate Its Forest?” Review of Forest Rehabilitation Projects – Lessons from the Past: Forest Science Institute of Vietnam and Center for International Forest Research.

Schlager, Edella and Ostrom, Elinor. 1992. “Property-Rights Regimes and Natural Resources: A Conceptual Analysis.” Land Economics 68(3): 249-62.

Sikor, Thomas.1995. Decree 327 and the restoration of barren land in the Vietnamese highlands. In Rambo, T.; Reed, R.; Le Trong Cuc; DiGregorio, M. (eds.): The challenges of highland development in Vietnam. Honolulu: East West Center. 143-158.

Shen, Xiaoli, Zhi Lu, Shengzhi Li, and Nyima Chen. 2012. "Tibetan sacred sites: understanding the traditional management system and its role in modern conservation." Ecology and Society 17, no. 2: 13.

Steppacher, R., 2008. “Property, Mineral Resources and Sustainable Development.” In Steiger, O., ed, Property Economics: Property Rights, Creditors’ Money and the Foundations of the Economy. Marburt: Metropolis-Verlag, pp. 323-352.

Tan, Nguyen Quang , Ngai, Nguyen Ba, Thanh, Tran Ngoc, Sunderlin, William and Yasmi, Yurdi, 2008. Forest Tenure Reform in Viet Nam: Case Studies From the Northern Upland and Central Highlands Regions. Bangkok and Washington: Regional Community Forestry

39  

Training Center for Asia and the Pacific (RECOFTC) and The Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI).

Tan, Nguyen Quang, Nguyen Ba Ngai, Tran Ngoc Thanh, W. Sunderlin, and Y. Yasmi. 2008. Forest Tenure Reform in Vietnam: Case Studies from the Northern Upland and Central Highlands Regions. (2008b): Regional Community Forestry Training Center, Bangkok and The Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), Washington DC.

Thang, Tran Nam, Dung, Ngo Tri, Hoang, Nguyen Van Hoang, 2013. “Adaptability in Agriculture and Forestry Activities in Huong Son Commune, Vietnam.” Journal of Forest and Livelihood 11(1).

Thang, Tran Nam, Shivakote, Ganesh, Inoue, Makoto, 2010. "Changes in Property Rights, Forest Use and Forest Dependency of Katu Communities in Nam Dong District, Thua Thien Hue Province, Vietnam." International Forestry Review.

Thanh, Tran Ngoc, and Thomas Sikor. 2006. “From Legal Acts to Actual Powers: Devolution and Property Rights in the Central Highlands of Vietnam.” Forest Policy and Economics 8 (4): 397–408.

Thuan, Dinh Duc. 2006. Forestry, poverty reduction and rural livelihood in Vietnam. Report for the Forestry Sector Support Program (FSSP). Hanoi: Labour and Social Affair Publishing House.

Truong, L. T., & Genotiva, O. M. 2011. Recognizing Ethnic Minority Customary Land Rights In Vietnam And The Philippines. The Center for People and Forest.

Tuan, Hoang Huy. 2006. "Decentralization and Local Politics of Forest Management in Vietnam: A Case Study of Co Tu Ethnic Community." Journal of Legal Pluralism 52.

Wang, Sen, G. Cornelis van Kooten, and Bill Wilson. 2004 "Mosaic of reform: forest policy in post-1978 China." Forest Policy and Economics 6, no. 1: 71-83.

Weckerle, Caroline S., Yongping Yang, Franz K. Huber, and Qiaohong Li. 2010. "People, money, and protected areas: the collection of the caterpillar mushroom Ophiocordyceps sinensis in the Baima Xueshan Nature Reserve, Southwest China." Biodiversity and Conservation 19, no. 9: 2685-2698.

Weyerhaeuser, Horst, Andreas Wilkes, and Fredrich Kahrl. 2005. "Local impacts and responses to regional forest conservation and rehabilitation programs in China’s northwest Yunnan province." Agricultural Systems 85, no. 3: 234-253.

Winkler, Daniel. 2008. "Yartsa Gunbu (Cordyceps sinensis) and the fungal commodification of Tibet’s rural economy." Economic Botany 62, no. 3: 291-305.

Xi, Wang. 1999. "Forest Policy, Law and Local Participation in Forest Management in China." Xu, Jianchu and Melick, David R., 2007. “Rethinking the Effectiveness of Public Protected Areas

in Southwestern Chin.” Conservation Biology 21(3): 318-328. Xu, Jianchu and Ribot, Jesse, 2004. "Decentralization and Accountability in Forest Management:

Case From Yunnan, Southwest China." European Journal of Development Research 16(1). Xu, Jianchu and Salas, Maruja. 2003. "Moving the periphery to the centre: indigenous people,

culture and knowledge in a changing Yunnan." Social Challenges for the Mekong Region. Xu, Jianchu, and Ribot, Jesse. 2004. "Decentralisation and accountability in forest management: a

case from Yunnan, Southwest China." The European Journal of Development Research 16, no. 1: 153-173.

Xu, Jianchu, Erzi T. Ma, Duojie Tashi, Yongshou Fu, Zhi Lu, and David Melick. 2005. "Integrating sacred knowledge for conservation: cultures and landscapes in southwest China." Ecology and Society 10, no. 2: 7.

Xu, Jintao, Andy White, and Uma Lele. 2008. "China’s Forest Tenure Reforms." Impacts and Implications for Choice, Conservation, and Climate Change (Washington, DC: Rights and Resources).

40  

Xu, Jintao, and Xuemei Jiang. 2009. "Collective forest tenure reform in China: outcomes and implications." Guangdong 9, no. 8.17: 88.

Xu, Jianchu, and David Melick. 2007. "Towards community-driven conservation in southwest China: Reconciling state and local perceptions."

Yeh, Emily. 2000. "Forest Claims, Conflicts and Commodification: The Political Ecology of Tibetan Mushroom Harvesting Villages in Yunnan Province, China." The China Quarterly 161: 264-278.

Yang, Xuefei, Andrew K. Skidmore, David R. Melick, Zhekun Zhou, and Jianchu Xu. 2006. "Mapping non-wood forest product (matsutake mushrooms) using logistic regression and a GIS expert system." ecological modelling 198, no. 1: 208-218.

Yang, Xuefei, Jun He, Chun Li, Jianzhong Ma, Yongping Yang, and Jianchu Xu. 2008. "Matsutake trade in Yunnan Province, China: an overview." Economic Botany 62, no. 3: 269-277.

Yin, Runsheng. 2012. "China’s Forest Tenure Reform and Institutional Change in the New Century: What Has Been Done, What Remains to Be Pursed, and How to Get It Achieved?"

Zhang, Yufu, Satoshi Tachibana, and Shin Nagata. 2006. "Impact of socio-economic factors on the changes in forest areas in China." Forest Policy and Economics 9, no. 1: 63-76.

Zheng, B. 2006. "Changes and trends in forest tenure and institutional arrangements for collective forest resources in Yunnan province, China." Understanding forest tenure in South and Southeast Asia.