FGM Workshop Background Paper - REDD - VietNam

management boards 4,318,492 ha (33%), state enterprises 2,044,252 ha (15%),
households 3,287,070 ha (25%), people committees 2,422,485 ha (18%), other
organizations 659,935 ha (5%), military forces 243,689 ha (2%), communities
191.383 ha (1%), other economical organizations 91,537 ha (1%).
ISSUES TO BE ADDRESSED:
• Available legal documents do not explain clearly legal terms such as “forest
allocation”, “forest allocation by contract”, “forest rental”, which results in
inadequate perceptions and implementation of forest policies, particularly
between forest allocation and forest allocation for rental.
• Lack of specific regulations on classification for which kind of special-use
forests, protection forests, production forests can be allocated for rental,
which results in the fact that most of land allocated to local people is bare land
or poor natural forests. Medium and rich natural forests remain managed by
state companies.
• Legal content on natural forest use and beneficiary rights have not been
transparently explained and regulated in legal documents, particularly the
relation between the government - as natural forest owner and forest
managers - as bodies authorized by the government to use the forests
through allocation and forest rental.
• Forest Protection and Development Law 2004 (Article 29, 30) defines that
forest allocated to local communities by the Government is for common
benefits of the communities regardless of forest types as special-use,
protection or production forests. However, the Land Law does not define land
allocation to local communities; Decree No. 181/2004/NĐ-CP on guidelines to
perform Land Law at Article 72 stimulating that only protection forests would
be distributed to local communities.
• According to the Land Law, forest enterprises are entitle to receive forest
rental or allocation with land use charge, but no legal document is available to
define specific price of forest rental charge.
• Slow allocation of land and forests. By 2009, only about 70% of forest land
has been distributed to different managers. The area allocation to communes’
People’ Committees reaches more than 2.4 million ha (accounting for 18% of
the total national forest area in use), without clear responsibilities.
• Land allocation and forest allocation do not link together closely (there is no
close collaboration between Agriculture and Rural Development Sector and
Natural Resources and Envrionemnt Sector).
• Forests allocated to households and communities are mainly with low
standing-tree stock with small and scattered area and bad transportation
conditions. Therefore, they are not accurate to run a good business.
• Fee of masurement, recording, and issuing land use certificate (Red Book) is
high while government budget allocated to this item is limited.
• The unclear demarcation in the field has created more difficulties to
management leading to difficulties in dealing with illegal forest land use
transformation, which results in overlapped land allocation and conflicts
among forest owners.
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