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Abstract:
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"Since late 1990s, policy reforms in Dak Lak province, Central Highlands of Vietnam, have attempted to devolve responsibility of forest conservation to local communities. The reforms were based on the assumption that by transferring the ownership of forests to local communities would protect the allocated forest against unauthorized use and improve their livelihoods from forest based activities. Local communities are entitled to collect timber and non timber forest products and to use limited area of forest land for cultivation.
"This paper undertakes a commodity chain analysis to contrast the decision by local communities to convert areas within devolved forests into cropping land, to detail how forest devolution shaped the benefits derived by local people and how these benefits were distributed along the commodity chain. The study also provides full account mechanisms that various actors along the commodity chain use to access, maintain, and control of natural resources. It emphasizes on the role of market in providing cash income for rural (poor) people. In addition, the paper brings attention to the important linkages between forest management and agricultural production. For upland farmers in Vietnam, it would be difficult to separate these two as they are integrated parts of their livelihoods."
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