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Forest land allocation, institutional changes and forest cover

Dr. Davide Pettenella

Dipart. Territorio e Sistemi Agro-forestali Agripolis, University of Padova, I-35020 Legnaro PD, Italy. Tel: 39 49 8272 741. Fax: 39 49 8272 772 (or 750 or 686). Email: dpettene@ux1.unipd.it.


This paper is organised in three sections: in the first one some background information on the experiences and problems of land allocation to individual households in Vietnam are briefly described. In the second section the constraints and bottlenecks of forest land allocation and its possible impacts on the local environmental and social systems are considered. On the basis of the preliminary results of two case studies, it is pointed out that the relevant role of externalities in land allocation, the transaction costs involved in the property rights reform, and some financial and institutional constraints are conditioning the efficient allocation of forest resources by market forces. Finally a list of indicators for monitoring social and environmental impacts of forest land allocation is presented.

A large part of the Vietnamese population still depends directly on the use of forest resources and the management of sloping land in mountainous areas. Their future is threatened by the continuous degradation of forest land. The poor and marginal people are particularly exposed to the negative impacts of this process.

The success of the recently introduced policy of agricultural land allocation has induced the Vietnamese Government to allocate forest lands to individual households. The aim of the forest land allocation (FLA) policy is initially to help farmers solve their food security problems. When the living conditions of farmers improve they should gradually abandon unsustainable slash and burn activities preserving and, if possible, enlarging the forest cover.

Unlike the situation of agricultural land, there are some controversial points which could make this strategy of rearranging the traditional forest land tenure system fail, with negative social and environmental impacts on mountainous areas where forest resources are mainly localised. There is a serious risk that the market will allocate resources inefficiently when the use of natural resources is causing relevant externalities, the costs of property right assignment and protection is high, and compensation measures are not provided.

This paper, which reviews the preliminary results of the FAO project "Country capacity strengthening for NFAP implementation in Vietnam" and takes into consideration some other recent experiences, tries to define the constraints and bottlenecks that the FLA process is facing, its possible impacts on the local environmental and social systems and the indicators that could be used for monitoring these impacts.


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