Project description

Title: Environmental Protection and Management of Natural Resources in Dak Nong Province
Commissioned by: German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)
Country: Socialist Republic of Viet Nam
Lead executing agency: Provincial People’s Committee of Dak Nong (PPC)
Overall term: 2008 to 2011

Context

Dak Nong Province, located in the southern Vietnamese highlands, has approximately 480,000 inhabitants. Of the 6,500 km² surface area, around 58 percent is forested. This is above average for the central highlands, and with only 74 inhabitants/km², the population density is relatively low.

Pressure on the agricultural and forested areas increased, however, as coffee prices rose sharply in the mid-1990s. Today the Dak Lak/Dak Nong region is the most important supplier of Vietnamese coffee. Aside from growing coffee, the introduction of new crops such as rubber, pepper and cashews was promoted, leading to an intensified conversion of the existing forest areas.

Ethnic minorities in particular find it difficult to keep up with the significantly more profit-oriented new settlers. In many cases, members of these ethnic minority groups speak inadequate Vietnamese and see themselves exposed to a socio-cultural development that is in conflict with their traditional values. As a result they increasingly withdraw to marginal locations and can hardly benefit from the economic development in the province.

This affects especially the poorer groups among the minorities who, due to a lack of alternatives, continue their traditional slash-and-burn forms of cultivation. Unresolved land use rights, the weak position of minorities in official land use planning and land allocation, as well as increasing land pressure due to the price development of agro-industrial products like coffee, rubber and pepper have led to direct conflict situations, not only locally but also with the state administration.

Objective

Participation of the rural poor, especially members of ethnic minority groups, in the economic development of Dak Nong Province is improved.

Approach

The project addresses three components:

• decentralised development planning and allocation of resources
• community forest cultivation, land use planning and forest land allocation
• upland farming and value chains

Building on preliminary work for a project in the neighbouring province of Dak Lak, technical and administrative methods and planning approaches will be tested in two districts and adapted to the situation in Dak Nong Province. Upon this foundation, the project develops specific models in agriculture and forestry as well as technical and administrative guidelines and regulations for province-wide dissemination.

Results achieved so far

Decentralised Development Planning and Allocation of Funds
The introduction of participative planning methods and a needs-based approach to allocation of public funds will improve the supervision of governmental support for aiding ethnic minorities. The plan for implementing this component builds on the extensive preliminary work and experiences of the GIZ (formerly GTZ) project “Rural Development Dak Lok (RDDL)” in the neighbouring province.

Following relevant training, workers at the provincial and district levels assumed responsibility for the village and commune planning, which was carried out from February until July 2009.

Communal Forest Management, Land Use Planning and Allocation of Forest Land
A Forest Inventory Training was conducted in the pilot district Dak Song in accordance with the guidelines of the new Circular 38 in order to give an introduction to the basics of communal forest management.

The objectives of this activity included giving the partner institutions the ability to conduct forest inventories; thus the ability to collect relevant data, and to gain an improved understanding of the actual status of the forests in a project commune selected for the training.

In the second pilot district, Tuy Duc, the project supports the allocation of forest lands to a commune. In total, 1,198.5 ha of forest land were distributed to the commune in June 2009 with a temporary management plan. At the moment, the project supports the drafting of a detailed 5-year plan in cooperation with the forestry department of Tay Nguyen University. During a study trip in the neighbouring province (RDDL Project), the "new" forest owners discussed the selection of the future benefit-sharing model, which should define how the revenues from the sale of raw materials are distributed.

In another commune in Tuy Duc supported by the project’s benefit-sharing model, an analysis was conducted of lumber marketing based on a 700 m³ community forest area (1,016 ha), which was also connected with revisions to a forest management plan for period from 2010 to 2014.

The timber industry was selected as one of the value-added chains that the project will work with in the future.

Highland Agriculture and Support for selected Value-added Chains
During the planning workshop, a series of poverty-relevant value-added chains were identified, which should be supported by this project. This selection process was intensified through the use of a PACA Process (Participatory Appraisal of Competitive Advantages), including all important actors from both pilot districts as well as the province (administration offices, advocacy groups, private sector, producers and traders).

In cooperation with the poverty reduction programme, which is partnered with the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA), methods and implementation guidelines were developed, which identified poverty-relevant activities, in particular, in the area of local economic promotion (pro-poor PACA).

A documentary film was produced to accompany the process, which supported MOLISA and its provincial and district departments to independently identify, plan and implement poverty-related economic promotion activities.

The value-added chains selected during this process, sweet potato, wood processing and marketing and coffee will be supported by the project in the future in Dak Nong.

Based on these realisations, in May 2009 a strategy was developed for the next 5 years for each of the value-added chains in cooperation with all relevant departments and the private sector.