Sheet n°246 - July 2006
ince the 1990s, Viet-Nam
has been implementing a
land distribution policy with
emphasis placed on the right
to private property. IRD researchers showed that the same
reform applied to different
villages has had some starkly
different effects, even in the
same relatively small geographical area, owing to a great
diversity of initial situations.
Two major effects of the policy
emerged: individual allocation
of low-lying land (1), then of
slopes, has indeed prompted
farmers to increase the productivity of rice-growing land.
It has also contributed to a
check in the process of massive deforestation. However,
these reforms have forced the
people who hitherto practised
shifting slash-and-burn cultivation to settle. Such populations are now caught in a spiral of poverty. The research
team emphasize the urgency
of coming to the aid of these
marginalized people.
©IRD/Jean-Christophe Castella
Land reforms and poverty
in the mountains of Viet-Nam
S
Ricefields in Viet-Nam
In a context of declining agricultural
productivity and food shortage, the
economic reforms undertaken at the end
of the 1980s in Viet-Nam were accompanied by a rapid transition from collective
agriculture towards small-scale family farming. The State, officially the owner of all
land, allocated to each family a right of use
on rice-growing land and then on forest
land. One of the objectives of this land
reform was to settle farmers who hitherto
still practised shifting slash-and burn culture. The State put forward their responsibility in the destruction of the forests and
the social insecurity associated with their
way of life to encourage these peasant farmers to develop crops more remunerative
and more respectful of the environment.
The reform, an instrument of agricultural
policy, also aimed for a system of regional
specialization of agriculture: the irrigated
plains and deltas being given over to
intensive rice production whereas forestry
and stock-rearing were encouraged in
mountain areas.
Since 1998, researchers on the project
‘Système Agraire de Montagnes’ (2), in
partnership with authorities in Viet-Nam
and international NGOs, have contributed
to the identification, adaptation and diffusion of productive, ecologically viable cultivation systems, and are harnessing their
efforts to understand the agricultural and
environmental dynamics involved. The
team of Jean-Christophe Castella, IRD
geographer-agronomist, has analysed the
impact of this land reform on the changes
>>
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Sheet n°246- July 2006
For futher information
CONTACTS :
CASTELLA JEAN-CHRISTOPHE,
IRD Montpellier,
UR 168 - Dynamiques environnementales entre forêt,
agriculture et biodiversité.
+33 (0)4 67 63 69 80 ;
j.castella@ird.fr;
PRESS OFFICE:
01 48 03 75 19 ;
presse@paris.ird.fr
INDIGO BASE, IRD PICTURE LIBRARY
01 48 03 78 99 ;
indigo@paris.ird.fr
and developments in land use in four
mountain villages in the province of Bac
Kan, in the North of Viet-Nam.
The farmers who have enough rice-fields
to cover their family’s needs have not
changed their production methods and try
to gain extra income by means of fruit-tree
plantations or stock-rearing. The others,
who are not self-sufficient in rice, have
been severely affected by a reform which
leaves them no alternative but to cease
abruptly the slash-and-burn culture their
short-term food security depended on.
Their forced settlement results from the
impossibility of maintaining their former
production methods owing to the sudden
restriction on their living space. These farmers react to this crisis situation by multiplying productive activities geared to
generating supplementary income.
However, this search for alternatives to
slash-and-burn techniques can prove to
be long and difficult in economic terms
and is sometimes done to the detriment of
forest resources. These farmers are then
caught in the spiral of poverty. Many of
them have joined and swelled the migratory flows heading for the mountains in the
centre of Viet-Nam. Between 1991 and
1996, 1.5 million persons have thus migrated, shifting the process of deforestation
from the North towards the South of the
country.
REFERENCES:
CASTELLA J.C., BOISSAU S.,
HAI THANH N., NOVOSAD P.,
Impact of forestland allocation on land use in a mountainous province of ViêtNam, Land Use Policy 23
(2006), 147-160.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lan
dusepol.2004.07.004
Sciences au Sud 33,
January - February 2006.
Réalités agraires au ViêtNam, p. 10 :
http://www.ird.fr/fr/actualites/j
ournal/33/sas33_recherches_10.pdf
Vidéos Canal IRD :
http://www.canal.ird.fr/canal.p
hp?url=/sommaires/thema8.h
tm
The positive effects of the land reform
on forest regeneration support the arguments in favour of individual property
rights. The transfer of responsibilities to an
individual is presumed to carry an incentive to make rational use of the land and to
protect resources seeing that he reaps the
benefit but also has to bear the possible
costs associated with degradation.
Unprecedented economic growth and a
reversal of the deforestation process have
been concomitant with this policy. In
effect, after a deforestation that was diffuse in character and difficult to control,
forest regeneration developed in the
space of a few years over large geographical areas. Nevertheless, the direct link
with the land policy has not been demonstrated and in several cases, this tendency
preceded its application. Field research
showed that the land allocation finally reinforced most of the rice farmers in the customary rights they already possessed. The
forest regeneration would in any case
have taken place owing to the combined
action of three factors: intensification of
agriculture in the low-lying rice-growing
areas, extension of land clearance up to
the limits of arable land and government
forest-planting programmes. The former
itinerant farmers, now restricted to a village territory too small for guaranteeing the
durability of slash-and-burn culture systems, destroy the local forest cover or
migrate to new pioneer fronts. The solution to an environmental problem has
contributed to the emergence of poverty. It
is now essential to come to the aid of
populations marginalized by land reform in
order to avoid local degradation of living
standards and resources, and the possible transfer of such problems to other places by migration.
(1) Valley bottoms or irrigated plains
usually developed as rice fields
(2) The project is run by the Viêt-Nam
academy of agricultural sciences
(VAAS) in partnershipwith the Institut
de recherche pour le développement
(IRD), the Centre de coopération
internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement
(CIRAD), and the International rice
research institute (IRRI). For further
information, visit the project’s Internet
site:
http://www.knowledgebank.irri.org/sa
m/home_en.html
Aude Sonneville, IRD
Translation : Nicholas Flay
KEY WORDS
LAND POLICY, LAND ALLOCATION,
DEFORESTATION, VIET-NAM.
Marie Guillaume - Signoret, coordinatrice
Délégation à l’information et à la communication
Tél. : +33(0)1 48 03 76 07 - fax : +33(0)1 40 36 24 55 - fichesactu@paris.ird.fr