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Master Program in Development Studies

Faculty of Social Science, Chiang Mai University

Discourse of Vietnam Forest Land Policy and Local Livelihood Strategy:

A Case Study of Shifting Cultivation

By

Hoang Hao Tra My

560435804

Submitted To

Professor Dr. Anan Ganjanapan

Associate Professor Dr. Jamaree Chiangthong

Assistant Professor Dr. Chusak Wittayaphak

Assistant Professor Dr. Pinkaew Luangaramsri

Dr. Mukdawan Sakboon

This Term Paper is a Partial Fulfillment for

A Course on Development Theories

First Semester of 2013

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Discourse of Vietnam Forest Land Policy and Local Livelihood Strategy:

A Case Study of Shifting Cultivation

1. Introduction

The land is a key factor of the manufacturing process, both a material condition

and a domain of labor in the agro-forestry. The forest is also another important element

on the land background. It has economical as well as aesthetic and emotional value (“the

cradle of humankind”), it is also the lungs of the planet and the habitat for many species.

In recent years, decentralization of natural resources management, such as forest and land

management has become a global trend (Yasmi and Guernier, 2008), and forest resources

have changed, both quantitatively and qualitatively, due to unreasonable policies of

forestry land use and other factors.

Vietnam has gone through various land policy reforms during the past five to six

decades, the outcome of a dynamic interaction between the state and communities in

trying to (re)negotiate the meaning of „land‟, „land use‟, „land access‟, „resource control‟,

and „farm and forest productivity and sustainability‟. These negotiations, from the period

of revolutionary collectivization campaign onwards, were not smooth but marked by

conflict between key actors, the state and the peasantry (Kerkvlie, 2005; Saturnino,

2008). As a result, forest land has become the subject of major land policy reforms

beginning with the 1993 Land Law.

Moreover, in many upland areas of Vietnam, most ethnic minorities‟ relationship

with their land and resources is deeply intertwined with their customs, culture, and

political practices; it is the expression of their social wholeness. In their view, living,

working and nurturing the land with full control and tenurial security is a key to

wholesome living and surviving as a people (Luong Thi Truong and Orlando M. G.).

Shifting cultivation is one of their traditional cultivating methods that has been much

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blamed for forest reduction and soil degradation; it is also commonly denigrated as

backward, wasteful, and destructive, not as a sustainable cultivation system. This

assessment has been criticized as inaccurate and unfair (Tran Duc Vien and collaborators,

2007), since it results to insufficient land for the ethnic minorities in mountainous areas,

leaving them unable to equally access the natural resources.

Deforestation can be said to result from many causes including the rapid

development of infrastructure and, in particular, road construction, from the management

of Forest Land Allocation, in which state policies regulate forests and forest products as

„national assets‟ owned by the state (Tran Duc Vien, 2002), and also from the change of

land use (Yurdi, Kelley and Enters, 2011). It is not clear, however, whether shifting

cultivation is indeed a cause of deforestation, taken into account that it exists for a long

time, supporting indigenous people to live harmoniously with the nature and the forest.

Therefore, in this paper I would like to clarify the controversies arising due to the

Forestry Land Policy in Vietnam, blaming shifting cultivation as a deforestation cause. I

will comment on the dominating discourse about shifting cultivation used by the Vietnam

Forest Land policy. I will also use the concept of access to land, to illustrate some

relevant problems in the Vietnam case. And then, I will point out that shifting cultivation

may indeed be a case of sustainable cultivation, highly important to local communities as

a livelihood strategy by using concept of knowledge space and negotiating livelihood

strategies.

2. Discourse of Shifting Cultivation and Conflict of Access to Land

2.1.Discourse of Shifting Cultivation

The phrase „Sustainable Development‟ has been discussed since the 1980s,

widespread in the reports of international consultancies and the agencies that employed

them by the end of this decade (Rich, 1991). It has been looked at in a variety of ways.

No two individuals or agencies understand it similarly. Vietnam Forest policy, for

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example, looks at it as turning nature into capital. This is what Escobar, 1995 claimed in

the chapter named “Power and Visibility: Tale of peasants, Women and the

Environment”. The government‟s chosen policy is to establish national parks or protected

areas and then declare them as the best way to conserve nature and natural resources,

punishing anyone collecting forest products.

The government and other powerful agencies have their own particular worldview,

and through the use of language they create a negative image of shifting cultivation in

order to serve their dominating purposes. As Mills, 2003 pointed out from in his chapter

“Discourse” about Foucault view‟s, the distinction between true and false is a power

relation: the ones who are being regarded as “experts” have the right to the truth, whereas

the rest who possess no power are denied this right. In the case at hand, the government

claims that shifting cultivation causes deforestation, therefore it should be banned; the

local communities who have no power are being disregarded when declaring shifting

cultivation as their traditional culture that has been implemented sustainably for a long

time. As Foucault pointed out, the combination between power and knowledge shapes the

truth. The language chosen by the government influences the thinking of citizens in order

to adopt the government worldview (Mills, 2003).

The Government has the power and therefore entertains only the knowledge and

ideas of its choice. Through the use of language it shapes the thought of citizens to smear

shifting cultivation as a detrimental practice. This is a case of power trumping indigenous

knowledge.

According to Tran Duc Vien (2002), Vietnam Forest Land policy points out five

main targets in which the third and fourth ones are “sedentarize shifting cultivators” and

"prevent shifting cultivation”. This is a policy that looks at shifting cultivation as a

detrimental practice which should be banned around the country. It is a case where the

goals of forest land management does not adhere to local people‟s livelihoods

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In addition, it is not only the policy toward shifting cultivation but also the policy

in land tenure and land security. In Vietnam, forest land is managed by the state and by

industrial-agricultural-forestry enterprise associations. State policies regulate forests and

their products as „national assets‟, owned by the state. Therefore, local people do not

have rights to manage and use either forestland or forest products (Luong Thi Truong and

Orlando M. G). Moreover, the broader legal framework of Vietnam‟s land legislation

does not pay explicit attention to ethnic minorities‟ particular relationship to land. The

general land policy is to allocate agricultural and forest land to individuals and

organizations for long-term use. There is still a lot of confusion among many ethnic

minorities about land certificates and what they are, since much of their traditional land

was never officially allocated to them. In some cases, minorities have unwittingly sold

their land-use rights to speculators (McElwee, 2004).

We can imagine the situation of local people with no land security. They have no

rights to access their land and they cannot control it. They are the ones to suffer the most

from the problems that arise.

Government statistics claims that anywhere from 25 percent to 75 percent of the

deforestation in Vietnam was due to swiddening (Hoang Xuan Ty, 1994 cited in

McElwee, 2004). Therefore, the government established national parks for conservation

purposes. This may sound as a benign task but is frequently done at the expense of forest-

dwelling communities who are forced to vacate their lands in the name of conservation.

Falling back on familiar critiques of swidden agriculture and unsustainable practices, the

Department of Foresty tries to have these people resettled outside of the park boundaries,

disregarding the fact that they have occupied these lands for centuries and made use of

them in sustainable ways (Ducan b, 2004). They remove all local users from potential

parks, claiming as reforestation area the place where people use for shifting cultivation

(Anan, 2008), in order to attract greater international funding through the park rankings

of the International Union for Conservation of Nature

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Apart from these policies, Vietnam also has the Forest Land Allocation (FLA)

policy that creates many conflicts regarding the use of land. The first thing is the total

swidden area mountainous areas decreased after FLA. The decrease in swidden area was

accompanied by the shortening of the fallow period and a decrease in swidden fields and

the associated decreased rice production has led to food insecurity in mountainous areas.

Another thing is that the local people cannot access these programs because of

insufficient forestry land. Only households who have been allocated a sufficient land area

without any ownership dispute can participate in this kind of programs such as project

327, project 661, material forestation project etc. However, the forest land is always in

disput. Therefore, in many instances, local communities and indigenous peoples suffer

the most when such conflicts play out (Yurdi, Kelley, and Enters, 2011).

In addition, some academics argue that commercial agriculture is more advanced

than shifting cultivation simply because it is based on scientific knowledge. This idea can

be seen as a form of monopolization of knowledge because it excludes other kinds of

knowledge (Anan, 2008). Under the influence of such discourse, in an effort to integrate

local people into the market economy, swiddeners and forest-dwelling foragers are

encouraged to become cash-crop producers growing rubber, coffee, or tee for national

and regional markets (Ducan a, 2004). The Government aims to modernize indigenous

minorities, to carry them from their „tradition-bound‟ local worlds into national and

regional networks. Swiddeners have even been regarded as not only unproductive farmers

but as a threat to biodiversity and the ecosystem. Groups that prefer to maintain a

swidden based subsistence economy are frowned upon, and the government seeks to

replace their productive systems with plantations or wet rice agriculture, or utilize the

natural resources of the area for mining or timber extraction.

On the other hand, officials close their eyes to the intensive large-scale agriculture

that takes place in the area (Anan, 2008). This can be called the stigmatization of shifting

cultivation versus cash agriculture by blaming the former as the main cause of forest

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destruction. The government‟s aim is to promote cash agriculture in the highlands,

therefore prohibiting what they call “slash-and-burn cultivation” there (Anan and

Mahawitthayalai 2004, cited in Anan, 2008). But it may well be a fact that the high lands

are often not suitable for permanent cultivation, no matter the inputs the state provides

(McElwee, 2004), much better suited for the traditional shifting cultivation, which, in the

eyes of the government, does not produce ample economic profit.

The issue of shifting cultivation has been controversial up to now. The

government has formed an image about its consequences without thoroughly researching

it. They want to transform swidden land to cash agriculture because of the perceived

economic benefits. In this way, they disregard the livelihood of local people and whether

they can adopt to the new kind of cultivation, or whether the mountainous characteristics

can be used for crop agriculture. The controversy is still going on.

2.2.Conflict Pertaining to Land Access

The term access is frequently used by property and natural resource analysts

without adequate definition. In this paper I will use a concept of access as distinct from

property; we may define the former as: “the ability to derive benefits from things”, and

the later as: “the right to benefit from things”. Following this definition, access is more

akin to “a bundle of powers or abilities” than to property's notion of a “bundle of rights”.

It includes a wider range of social relationships that constrain or enable benefits from

resource use than property relations alone (Ribot and Peluso, 2003).

In the case of shifting cultivation, local people cannot access the land because

they have no power acknowledged by the government policy. Guha and Marinez-Alier

argue in Poverty and Environment: A Critique of the Conventional Wisdom that some

structures impoverish people by denying them the choice to exploit natural resources or

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accessing them. The controversy and conflict arises because legal access clashes with the

traditional customs in land tenure security (Anan, 2000)

When the land law was revised in 1993, it was believed that issuing longer-term

lease rights for households to use forest land would result in gains in productivity. This

has not proved to be the case, however, the changes in land tenure, particularly in upland

areas, continue to be plagued with problems, such as land consolidation into fewer and

fewer households, unequal access to land for minorities, and some violent conflicts over

disputed lands (ADB, 2000, cited in McElwee, 2004).

Although the government has in place a forest land management policy, conflicts

still occur. There are many problems for forest land use conflicts; one of them is

problems with inappropriate land use planning-social conflicts (Nguyen The Chien,

2011). The Government has livelihood support programs for local communities, however

the local people cannot access to these program because of insufficient forestry land.

In addition, no land tenure reform has been implemented in the highlands. The

government simply allows commercial agriculture to occur in the highlands and at the

same time tries to exclude or take away land from shifting cultivation. There is clearly a

competition for forest lands. As a result, ethnic people have been marginalized and

displaced. What is happening in the highland can be seen as a problem of tenure

insecurity.

As I pointed out before, the Government puts up effort into transforming shifting

cultivation to cash agriculture, or prevent it by the use of conservation areas. Local

people cannot raise their voice to protect themselves and have no legal rights and

certificates to access their land. This causes many conflicts. People cannot leave their

traditional cultivation, and cash agriculture may be difficult to adapt to slop environment

as some scientists demonstrated (Tran Duc Vien, 2005). The real impacts on the ground

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in terms of equity, democracy, poverty reduction and resource conservation have been

questioned. It may be doubted whether forest land governance promotes equity and

democratic land management at the local level.

Yet there are two key issues with current land policy from the perspective of

ethnic minority people living in remote areas: First, much of the land important to them

has been classified as forestland, even though they have used it for cultivation and

livestock husbandry for a long time. This has caused severe economic hardship to ethnic

minorities and has led to serious conflicts between forest protection officers and local

villagers. Vietnam‟s land legislation is thus in stark contrast with the recognition of

indigenous notions of landownership in the Philippines‟ IPRA (Luong Thi Truong and

Orlando M. G.), declaring that land is a key resource for IPs‟ economic and cultural

development. Second, Vietnam‟s land legislation continues to ignore the role of

communities in land governance, which is of particular concern in many ethnic minority

villages. Although the 2004 revised Land Law allows land allocation to communities,

they still do not possess any formal governance powers over land. They can receive

collective land certificates, but they cannot make decisions about the use and assignment

of land within communities. This runs directly counter to the customary role of

community-based institutions in land governance, a tradition to many ethnic minority

villages.

3. Multiplicity of Shifting Cultivation as Knowledge Space

In this past, I will use concept of multiplicity and knowledge space to demonstrate

the important role of shifting cultivation not only in their livelihood but also in forest and

biodiversity. Multiplicity means multiple scales, multiplicity of issues which is the issue

of livelihood, knowledge, culture and so on. Shifting cultivation is not only a means for

survival, it also carries many more meanings. Space, according to Henry Lefebvre,

referring to physical, mental and social space, is a social product. The concept of

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knowledge space was first introduced to social sciences by Turnbull in 1997. He began

by recognizing that knowledge production is a social activity as well as a social history of

space (Anan, 2008). Concept space means how the same concept can be applicable to

different situation and it include both the places of knowledge and of power production in

the sense that they are contested spaces associated with complex social relations (Anan,

2008).

In Vietnam there are two main types of shifting cultivation: pioneer shifting

cultivation, making full use of soil fertility and then abandoning the land without further

use, and rotational shifting cultivation, with a fallowing period of usually 10-15 years,

depending on the conditions (Do Dinh Sam, 1994). The former is mainly practiced by the

H‟Mong people living in high altitudes. To practice this type of shifting cultivation, the

people usually have to travel a great distance (about 70-80 km), even moving to another

province or to wherever accessible forests are available. For example, the H‟Mong in

Talacao, Tua Chua district (Lai Chau province) have moved an entire hamlet 70 km to its

present location. Most of the ethnic groups practice rotational shifting cultivation.

Moreover, there is a diversity of shifting patterns as adaptive strategies. People

do not use the fields only for producing rice. For example, they mix into the shifting

fields different kinds of agricultural crops. They grow vegetables to sell to the market as

well as subsistence crops. They use their knowledge variably, applying it to new

situations to maintain their livelihood, still protecting the forest.

As a matter of fact, the issue of shifting cultivation is quite complex. It is not a

modern issue: native dwellers in tropical rainforests have used variations of this system

for hundreds if not thousands of years. A goal of today's rotational farmers is to assure

that cultivation will be as sustainable as that used by the native forest dwellers (Brady,

1996). Permanent rice fields exist in the lowlands, but in the highlands people move

around. A particular piece of land may be an agricultural field, and in the future in

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becomes again forest (Anan, 2008). Agricultural fields are used to grow commercial

crops as well as subsistence crops. This has been the traditional cultivation for a long

time. Moreover, shifting cultivation plays an important role in the livelihood of peoples.

Since the implementation of the ban on shifting cultivation, the government only allows

people to practice it under 25 degrees of sloping lands. When this type of land is used for

crops, it loses its fertility. Therefore, some people in some studied sites changed from

upland rice and cassava cultivation to cash crops such as Acacia sp., cinnamon or Rubber

trees (Hong,T.T.T and L.V.An, 2009).

It can be said that the ethnic minorities‟ relationship with their land and resources

is deeply intertwined with their customs, culture, and political practices; it is the

expression of their social wholeness (Tran Duc Vien, 2005). Each area has its own kind

of shifting cultivation. Shifting culvation in Viet Nam has a little bit different with

shifting cultivation in Thailand, and in Vietnam, the North‟s kind will differentiate with

the South‟s kind of shifting cultivation because each area has their own space and culture.

It means that their knowledge will be change to adapt to this environment.

The last but most important, people can negotiate by generate new knowledge

space to prove that local communities do not destroy forest with no reason, in addition,

Shifting Cultivation also converse forest and maintain their livelihood.

4. Negotiating Livelihood Strategy of Shifting Cultivation as a Sustainable

Development System

Swiddeners should use their knowledge to protect their traditional cultivation, as

well as their livelihood, from the impact of Forest Land policy and its discourse on

shifting cultivation. Local people have their own livelihood strategies through which they

perceive and learn the environment, ecology and society; these are improved by the inter-

relationships between humans, and between humans and nature. Therefore, the meaning

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of livelihood is regulated by the activities, the assets and the access that jointly define the

living.

Most ethnic minorities in Vietnam such as the Vietnamese-Thai, Tay, Nung,

Hmong, Muong and Dao have a special relationship with the land, the elements of nature

and the animals. This relationship goes beyond mere economic interests to cultural and

spiritual connections to the places they have inhabited for generations. They have been

transmitted and nurtured from generation to generation; ethnic minorities still believe that

“land is sacred and land is life”. The expression of this sacredness is the worship of

deities and spirits within the land and its resources that provide the essence of their

existence.

The question here is that without land security and ownership, local people cannot

live sustainably. Their relationship with their land and resources is deeply intertwined

with their customs, culture, and political practices. In their view, living, working and

nurturing the land with full control and tenurial security is a key to living fully and

surviving as a people (Luong Thi Truong and Orlando M. G). Sustainable livelihood

security which refers to secure ownership and the rights to access to resources and

income-earning activities, including reserves and assets to offset risk, ease shocks and

meet contingencies. A household can have their own secure livelihood whenever they

have their own ownership and they can control their land.

Livelihoods can be conceptualized as negotiate space used by local people to gain

power to manage and control natural resources. They can struggle to get power and the

rights to control their land, in this case they can use their multiplicity of knowledge in

natural resources management. They can maintain both conservation and livelihood with

their knowledge space.

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Although multiple of negotiation forms have already used, there haven‟t benefited

in some contexts due to the term of social life is dominated by development policy which

expresses the relationship between the economic, political, cultural and social dimensions.

Therefore, to construct better livelihoods, people could have a choice of the assets and

resources they have access to, for after that they have a choice of strategies. (DFID, 2001).

For instance, the emphasis on this spatial dimension of knowledge opens up the

possibility of seeing knowledge more clearly as practices by knowledge producers. The

practices, especially through social strategies of negotiation, allow knowledge producers

to create spaces that can generate new knowledge from heterogeneous and isolated

knowledge (Turnbull 1997: 553). They can regenerate their knowledge and negotiate for

their livelihood strategies. They have to negotiate for better livelihood strategies under a

new situation and the concept of knowledge space can help them better understand how

they may negotiate and the concept of knowledge space is also useful for understanding

the multiplicity of shifting cultivation (Anan, 2008).

I believe that knowledge space should be seen as a strategic package of

contestation and negotiation. They do not alone. It is based on a kind of multiple

reasoning or mixing of different kinds of knowledge. They have to negotiate with

different kinds of knowledge situated in a variety of places. Through their engagement in

social forestry, people can generate different kinds of knowledge space in the community

forestry movement in order to negotiate with the government.

In addition, in order to negotiate for their livelihood strategies, they have to

extend their networks and their social capital. According to DFID, 2001, a livelihood of

each household depends on five types of capital: natural capital, human capital, financial

capital, physical capital and social capital. They have to strengthen their capital if they

want to negotiate with the Government. What capital they have and whether it is

sustainable or not? Because the state and other powerful agencies with their own

interests, approaches, language and styles generate discourse and meaning in

development which is intended at serving their purpose of power, so that the Government

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cannot see the potential in their strategies, how can they believe it. It means that they

have to combine indigenous knowledge with scientific knowledge to reveal their belief in

front of Government (Hirsch and Wyatt, 2004). In addition, in the pressure of global

market, it is no doubt that the Government want to transform form swidden land to cash

agriculture. Therefore, as with all types of farming, the diverse methods of swidden

agriculture have to be shaped by the natural and socio-economic conditions of a given

region in order to generate new knowledge to adapt to the new situation (Tran Duc Vien

and collaborators, 2007).

Put it in another word, shifting cultivation have to demonstrate their sustainable in

economic, social, and environment perspective. In economic perspective, shifting

cultivation provide food and livelihood for local people. In terms of social perspective,

shifting cultivation can be seen as a traditional cultivation system, associated with the

people from generation to generation. Shifting cultivation can be seen as an age-old

outcome of history, and is linked with the cultural and spiritual life of a number of ethnic

groups. For example, for the ethnic groups in the Central Highlands the rice harvesting

time (from slash-and-burn areas) is celebrated as a festival in the community. People

customarily make offerings and worship before bringing in the crops, and in many places

there is a habit of making ceremonies to welcome the rice from the field. With regards to

environmental perspective, rotation cultivation maintains the quality of land and

regenerates the forest. Local People usually associate development and conservation with

making money. Thus, conservation is also linked to the negotiation for livelihood

resources in the forest.

To sum up, local people can negotiate for their livelihood strategies and struggle

to get access to resources by apply knowledge space flexible.

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5. Conclusion

The government discourse claims that swidden farming was an excellent form of

agriculture for Vietnam‟s uplands when population density was low and forest cover was

high, however, today, the growing population pressure in the uplands and with the

reduction of forest cover have gradually reduced fallow periods from 15-20 years to only

4-5 years. Loss of forest and soil fertility, along with erosion--factors that rapidly reduce

crop productivity--are inevitable consequences of swidden agriculture when the fallow

period is so reduced (to only two or three years in some localities). Thus the government

discourse claims. Swidden farmers find it difficult, day by day, to meet their families‟

food requirements, yet many must continue this practice in order to survive. It is no doubt

that there are outside reason for this consequence (Tran Duc Vien and collaborators,

2007).

There is a fact that the government policy puts conservation perspective in the

top and claims shifting cultivation is a detrimental practice, but it overlooks other aspect

of shifting cultivation as a form of culture, traditional knowledge and mountainous

people livelihood strategy. It has been used as a sustainable traditional system in the past.

My opinion is that the government policy unconsciously puts pressure on this kind of

cultivation due to commercial market. The state uses its power to decide what is right and

what is wrong.

Thus, it creates many problems to local society and government. In my opinion,

the land tenure insecurity creates a lot of impacts to traditional cultivation, land rights,

and resources. The local people cannot legally access their resources and land, they have

to do it through ways that are deemed “illegal”. It is no doubt that there has occurred the

negotiation of local people to state and capitalists for getting their power relation by

several ways, because the land and resources is alike their life, they have used for their

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traditional cultivation. Some of them changed their livelihood to commercial crop but

they fail to do it because many problems and they just can do shifting cultivation.

In my opinion, this problem is very serious nowadays not only in Vietnam, but

also in many Southeast Asian countries. Therefore, it requires a joint effort among

stakeholders to set a better policy in which local people can raise their voice as legitimate

participators. In this situation, local people will be active to negotiate for their own

benefits as well as advance shifting cultivation as a practice which is not detrimental to

the forests.

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