RAINERSCHWARZMEIER, FRANZHEIDHUES
University of Hohenheim, Institute of Agricultural Economics and Social Sciences in the Tropics and Subtropics (490a), Germany
In the early 1990s Thailand launched an ambiguous, widely criticised ‘Forest Pro-gram’ to protect its heavily degraded forests in which community forestry should be given a more prominent role. Community based approaches have shown their poten-tial to manage forest resources in a sustainable way particularly where the resource degradation is rooted in the loss of enforceable management and use rights of local communities.
However as these community forestry schemes are placed in a triangle with state dominated, mainly top down approaches on one side and forest management schemes only regulated by marked mechanism on the other, there is a strong need to overcome continuous pressure from both ends and permanent adjustments are necessary prereq-uisites to secure functioning community forest schemes.
With this background the paper analyses whether and how community forest ap-proaches are able to overcome restrictions and contribute to the sustainable manage-ment of forest resources as well as reducing rural poverty. The research assesses general aspects of forest- people-relationship and the evolution of the community for-est movement in Northeast Thailand. It evaluates in a case study the socio-economic importance of community forestry for rural households /villages.
Even though many cases suggests that there are local approaches in communal re-source management looking back on a long history, their sustainability and applicabil-ity to changing socio-economic and political environments seems to be limited. The adjustment processes are exacerbated by the lack of enforceable formal rights of local communities to forests and forest products. The paper presents evidence that villages with community forests have developed a wide array of income-generating activities with a good balance between forest dependent and non-forest dependent activities.
The use of forest products tends to be on the decline for households with access to secure and attractive non-farming income alternatives. A successful community for-est management concept needs to provide for alternative employment opportunities and an economically attractive use of community forests for local communities. Pre-conditions are secure communal and private land use rights as well as regulations that allow for sustainable community forest management measures including moderate logging activities.
Contact Address: Rainer Schwarzmeier, University of Hohenheim, Institute of Agricultural Eco-nomics and Social Sciences in the Tropics and Subtropics (490a), 70593 Stuttgart, Germany, e-mail:
Session 1: Institutional and Policy Challenges
Keywords: Communal resource management, community forestry, local responses, Thailand
Subsession 1c: Institutions in Natural Resource Management — Oral Presentations
Forest Devolution in Dak Lak, Vietnam — Processes of Differentiation in Forest Benefits among Local Households
TANQUANGNGUYEN Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, PLR/ WISOLA, Germany
In Vietnam, the upland and the low land regions have long been characterised by not only the differences in topographic conditions but also the differences in state policies.
Over the last decade, while the agricultural land tenure has been among the major con-cerns of the lowlands, forest land tenure has been in the centre of interest for upland region policy. Among various efforts being taken with regard to the upland develop-ment, forest devolution policy has been tried in different places. While how far forest devolution policy has contributed to the development process in the uplands is yet to be answered, an important question that arises is what effects the implementation of forest devolution policy has on the differentiation in the upland rural area. Put it dif-ferently, it is important to know if the implementation of this policy at the local level contributed to widen the (existing) differentiation among local households or whether it reduced this differentiation.
This paper subjects this question to empirical research on the effects of forest devo-lution in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. In this paper, I discuss the major processes through which forest endowments and entitlements were differentiated or undifferen-tiated among local households. I also discuss the connection between differentiation in benefits from forest devolution among local households and the process of agrarian change. Findings from the paper are interesting. Empirical analysis shows that there existed processes that widened the differentiation in benefits from forest devolution at the same time with those that alleviated this differentiation. More interestingly, it is shown that the processes of benefit differentiation were not fixed but changing through different stages of time, instead. Furthermore, the paper shows that political power had various effects on the household’s derivation of benefits from devolved for-est. Forest devolution programme accentuated an interesting relationship between the state and households with political power through which both parties tried to pursue their long term goals.
Keywords: Differentiation, forest devolution, forest endowments, forest entitlements, Vietnam
Contact Address: Tan Quang Nguyen, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, PLR/ WISOLA, Luisenstrße 56, 10117 Berlin, Germany, e-mail:[email protected]
Session 1: Institutional and Policy Challenges