Viet Nam

Expansion of coffee monocultures on the slopes of the Srepok River Basin in Viet Nam has resulted in severe land degradation. As part of the Working Landscapes programme, we have been supporting coffee agroforestry to restore these lands and increase smallholders’ resilience.

What have we learned?

• Women in communities of ethnic minorities can play a key role in restoring degraded lands through agroforestry, based on their experience with planting and caring for trees in home gardens.
• Mindsets and approaches within government agencies can be influenced by actively engaging government officials from the very start of interventions.
• To upscale sustainable coffee agroforestry, it is necessary to further increase the economic attractiveness of agroforestry, e.g., through the national Payments for Forest Environmental Services (PFES) programme.

As part of a multi-country review of community forest rights, Tropenbos Viet Nam conducted a review of community forest allocation in Viet Nam, to assess its outcomes and understand the conditions for success. In this policy brief we summarize some of the main outcomes of the review, and the consequent recommendations for CSOs. 

Viet Nam has converted a large area of natural forest to the development of hydropower and promoted the forest replantation programme to compensate the loss of natural forest. However, by 2013, only 3,7% of the converted forest areas had been subject to replantation. Therefore, the research aims to review the hydropower development and forest recompensing policy, and give recommendations to improve policies. Research results in the central and central-highland provinces show that the local authorities have succeeded in collecting money from hydropower companies to allocate budget to the protection forest management boards to replant new forests on their land. But this study shows that the results achieved in forest areas, forest quality, effectiveness of forest replantation and benefits of reforestation, are modest compared with expectations. One of the most important reasons affecting the results of implementation is that the policy is not yet complete. Policy is formed mainly top-down, from central government agencies to local level. 

Attention has recently been paid to how REDD+ mitigation policies are integrated into other sectoral policies, particularly those dealing with climate adaptation at the national level. But there is less understanding of how subnational policy and local projects are able to incorporate attention to adaptation; therefore, we use a case study in Vietnam to discuss how REDD+ projects and policies address both concerns of mitigation and adaptation together at subnational levels. Through stakeholder interviews, focus groups, and household surveys in three provinces of Vietnam with REDD+ activities, our research sought to understand if REDD+ policies and projects on the ground acknowledge that climate change is likely to impact forests and forest users; if this knowledge is built into REDD+ policy and activities; how households in forested areas subject to REDD+ policy are vulnerable to climate change; and how REDD+ activities can help or hinder needed adaptations. Our findings indicate that there continues to be a lack of coordination between mitigation and adaptation policies in Vietnam, particularly with regard to REDD+. Policies for forest-based climate mitigation at the national and subnational level, as well as site-based projects, have paid little attention to the adaptation needs of local communities, many of whom are already suffering from noticeable weather changes in their localities, and there is insufficient discussion of how REDD+ activities could facilitate increased resilience. While there were some implicit and coincidental adaptation benefits of some REDD+ activities, most studied projects and policies did not explicitly target their activities to focus on adaptation or resilience, and in at least one case, negative livelihood impacts that have increased household vulnerability to climate change were documented. Key barriers to integration were identified, such as sectoral specialization; a lack of attention in REDD+ projects to livelihoods; and inadequate support for ecosystem-based adaptation.