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Biodiversity and Local Perceptions |
collected by this method with their own information on community forestry,
community-based natural resource management and land allocation.
• The Vietnamese participants in the surveys have also expressed great interest
in and enthusiasm for the set of methods, the important information it generates
and the strong relationship with local people it helps to build. Some of the
participants working in government institutions such as FIPI, Department of
Foreign Affairs, HUAF (Hue University of Agriculture and Forestry) and Tay
Nguyen University have expressed the desire to use the methods in their own
projects in other places in the province and in the rest of Vietnam, as they find
that MLA provides relevant data on local priorities related to land allocation
in the country.
More generally, in Vietnam, the government increasingly gives local people
the right to manage the forests, even if recognition of local people’s rights is still
limited, as is the consideration of local knowledge and perspectives in that rapidly
changing context. The government still makes decisions on land use planning
following a relatively rigid top-down approach. In this context, MLA provides a
relevant set of tools that can be selectively utilized in situations where stakeholders
and especially decision makers want to become better informed on the perspectives
of the local people on the important issues of forest land management, reforestation
and allocation.
The results of our survey were also used as a basis for follow-up activities
in Khe Tran, in the frame of the Future Scenario part of this SDC project (Evans,
2006). The information provided by MLA activities and the good relationship
we built with the villagers were important contributions to the success of Future
Scenario activities.
10.1.2. Main results of our surveys
The status of forest in Khe Tran has changed within the last 13 years from productive
forest to watershed protection forest, which is planned to become part of Phong
Dien Nature Reserve in 2010 because of its high biodiversity. The war, logging
activities and agricultural practices have deeply disturbed the forest landscape. In
the frame of the future reserve, local people have been banned from most of the
extractive activity in the natural forest. The government has proposed to develop
other activities to provide income to each household. In this context, rubber and
Acacia plantation programs are supposed to provide cash income to villagers.
The village is characterized by the presence of a strong minority group, the
Pahy, mixed with other groups. The villagers moved away during the war, and
they were authorized to resettle in their village only after the conflict ended. They
routinely spend a large amount of time in their gardens, rice fields and plantations.
The village is divided into two areas, the upper part, where villagers have lower
incomes and depend on home gardens and Acacia plantations for their livelihoods,
and the lower part, with a higher mean income and depending on more diversified
crop cultivation, including rubber and rice.