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| Conservation context in Khe Tran
4.2. Government programs that affected Khe Tran village
Swidden cultivation was a major activity for local livelihoods until 1992–1993,
when most of the households were resettled as part of the government’s fixed
cultivation program. Called ‘327 Program’ (1992–1997), it was the first effort
of the GoV to develop industrial plantations and to decentralize control over and
reallocate benefit-sharing of forest resources in Vietnam (Barney 2005), in line
with the ‘Doi Moi’ economic reform (which, with six major economic changes,
helped Vietnam come out of the economic crisis in 1986). Since then most of the
Khe Tran people have concentrated more on their new agriculture and plantation
land and decreased their activity in the natural forests. In this community, there
was little land suitable for wet rice cultivation, and villagers began to cultivate
crops such as maize and peanuts, and to diversify crop production with rubber and
Acacia plantations supported by the national 327 Program.
In 2003, according to Artemiev (2003), new guidelines were formed on State
Forest Enterprises (SFE) by various government institutions (see Prime Minister
Decision 187/1999/QĐ-TTg from September 1999 and Political Bureau Resolution
28-NQ/TW of 16 June 2003 on the arrangement, renovation and development of
State Farm and Forest Enterprises), which reformed its status to
1. business SFE (forestry related business), which earns profits as its main
performance objective and receives no subsidies to cover its operating cost;
2. Protection Forest Management Board (forest protection activities), which
combines earned profits and subsidies only for cost recovery;
3. other business form (transportation, construction, wood processing,
extension services, etc.), which is similar to business SFE in its objective;
and
4. public utility State Owned Enterprises.
For more than one decade forestry activities have been implemented under a
series of national forest development programs, most recently the ‘661 Program’
and its predecessor, the 327 Program. In Phong Dien district, the 661 Program
is managed by Phong Dien Forest Enterprise and the management board of Bo
River Watershed Protection Forest (Le Trong Trai et al. 2001). The main forestry
activities focused on ‘afforesting’ bare lands and degraded areas, and establishing
forest plantations. In Khe Tran village, households were paid VND 700,000 to
VND 1 million per hectare for planting trees on land allocated for plantations
(Acacia spp.). They were then paid a further VND 450,000 for the first year and
VND 250,000 for each of the next two years under the terms of the forest protection
contract (for comparison, the average annually per capita income in Khe Tran is
VND 1,944,167). They were not allowed to cut the trees but, in places with older
trees, were allowed to collect fallen branches for firewood. In A Luoi district, for
example, households were paid VND 400 per tree for planting cinnamon trees,
which equals VND 4 million/ha (high planting density of Cinnamomum cassia is
10,000 trees/ha; Le Thanh Chien 1996).