Government policies on resource management and improvement of the livelihood of local people in the Ca River Basin, Vietnam

This paper is one of a series of REPSI “working papers” that seeks to illuminate the cutting-edge issues, challenges, and opportunities of natural resource management in the region’s uplands.

From July 1999 to October 2000, the Upland Group of the Hanoi Agricultural University (HAU), in collaboration with the Institute of and supported by the Resources Policy Support Geography, Copenhagen University (IGUC) Initiative (REPSI) project of the World Resources Institute and Danida, carried out literature studies and field surveys of the impact of government policies on local peoples’ livelihood and land use changes in the south-west mountain area of Nghe An Prov-ince. GIS and remote sensing was used to further investigate trends in forest cover and land use. The research was carried out in the four upland communes of Anh Son, Con Cuong, Tuong Duong and Ky Son in the Ca River Basin, Nghe An Province.

The present report contains the results and recommendations from the literature and field studies; results from the remote sensing research are published separately.

To enable national policymakers and local stakeholders to review and discuss the findings and recommendations, the report was pre-sented in workshops in Tam Dao (national policymakers, 15-16 September 2000) and Vinh (local stakeholders, 25-26 October 2000). The active collaboration of stakeholders in both research and discussions added an important dimension to the work.

This executive summary presents the main findings from the research and a summary of recommendations for forest and land resource management based on the research and the discussions at the two workshops.