1.
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

2.
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

3.
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

4. 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.

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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).

10. 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).

11. 9
Map 1: Ethnic Minority Areas in Vietnam
(Source: IKAP Network for Capacity Building in MMSEA, 2005)

12. 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

13. 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

14. 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).

15. 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).

16. 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

17. 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

18. 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

19. 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

20. 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).

21. 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).

22. 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).

23. 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).

24. 22
Map 2: Ethnic Minority Areas in China (MSD 2013).

25. 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).

26. 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

27. 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

28. 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).

29. 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).

30. 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