Impact of forestland allocation on land use in a mountainous province of Vietnam

In the early 1990s following the decollectivization of agriculture, the Vietnamese government distributed forest land-use rights to individual households. The new forestland policy had three related objectives: (i) the introduction of a sedentary livelihood system for those populations who had traditionally relied on shifting cultivation and regular migration; (ii) the development of the village economy through tree plantations; and (iii) the protection of forest resources. In this paper, we discuss the changes in land use that resulted from the new forestland policy and the effectiveness of the policy in achieving each of its three objectives.