Tình hình sử dụng nguồn tài nguyên số hộ gia đình nông nghiệp nông thôn gần khu bảo tồn ở Việt Nam: Chi phí xã hội của bảo tồn và tác động đối với thực thi)This article examines the use of forests in a protected area by nearby agriculturalists in central Vietnam. Research indicates that the majority of rural farmers interviewed who lived neara state designated protected area were receiving both subsistence and cash incomes from forestbased activities, primarily from the collection of forest products. However, much of the collection of forest produce was officially illegal, as it occurred in state protected forests, and interdiction efforts were on the increase. Yet, little attention has been paid in Vietnam to the need for income substitutionforhouseholdswholoseaccesstoforestproduce as a result of conservation enforcement, particularly in the case of farmers who live near, but not in, protected areas; their resources use has been ‘invisible’ due to a lack of attentionandresearchonthetopic.Thismisunderstandingof the importance of forests to rural farmers has the potential to result in households facing adverse welfare and livelihood outcomes as protected areas boundaries are tightened, and local communities face increased opportunity costs due to stricter conservation enforcement. The article concludes that substitution for loss of income due to conservation activities would best be achieved through carefully targeted interventions to specific high-impact and high-dependency households. Additionally, investments in new sources of wage labor and other low capital-input activities, rather than in agriculture, would likely be of most benefit
Trang 1R E S E A R C H
Resource Use Among Rural Agricultural Households Near
Protected Areas in Vietnam: The Social Costs of Conservation
and Implications for Enforcement
Pamela D McElwee
Received: 20 May 2008 / Accepted: 7 October 2009 / Published online: 19 November 2009
Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009
Abstract This article examines the use of forests in a
protected area by nearby agriculturalists in central Vietnam
Research indicates that the majority of rural farmers
inter-viewed who lived near a state designated protected area were
receiving both subsistence and cash incomes from
forest-based activities, primarily from the collection of forest
products However, much of the collection of forest produce
was officially illegal, as it occurred in state protected forests,
and interdiction efforts were on the increase Yet, little
attention has been paid in Vietnam to the need for income
substitution for households who lose access to forest produce
as a result of conservation enforcement, particularly in the
case of farmers who live near, but not in, protected areas;
their resources use has been ‘invisible’ due to a lack of
attention and research on the topic This misunderstanding of
the importance of forests to rural farmers has the potential to
result in households facing adverse welfare and livelihood
outcomes as protected areas boundaries are tightened, and
local communities face increased opportunity costs due to
stricter conservation enforcement The article concludes that
substitution for loss of income due to conservation activities
would best be achieved through carefully targeted
inter-ventions to specific high-impact and high-dependency
households Additionally, investments in new sources of
wage labor and other low capital-input activities, rather than
in agriculture, would likely be of most benefit
Keywords Non-timber forest products Rural
livelihoods Protected areas Poverty Vietnam
Conservation ICDPs
Introduction Forests are an essential component of livelihoods for much of the rural peasantry around the world, and research in recent years has focused on understanding and quantifying the economic contributions that forest goods, whether they be non-timber forest products (NTFPs), ‘environmental ser-vices,’ or other forms of environmental income, make to the millions of rural households who live near forests (Byron and Arnold1999; Cavendish2000; Arnold and Ruiz-Pe´rez2001; Takasaki and others2001; Coomes and others2004; Belcher
2005; Sunderlin and others2005; Vedeld and others2007) One important area of research has been to identify and classify the types of people who harvest forest produce into distinct categories by determining what they collect, how much they collect, and how dependent they are on collecting for their livelihoods, in order to help design appropriate forest management strategies (Byron and Arnold 1999; Wunder2001; Sunderlin and others2005) This identifica-tion is particularly needed when forest users may be in conflict with protected areas and conservation plans (Salaf-sky and Wollenberg 2000; Naughton-Treves and others
2005; Mulder and Coppolillo2005)
Several typologies of ‘forest users’ have been developed through case study analysis For example, Byron and Arnold (1999) compare those households for whom forest income is a choice, and those for whom it is a necessity of last resort; they distinguish between forest-dwelling peo-ples, such as hunter-gatherers, and those populations that are predominantly agricultural but who may also extract forest goods In Belcher and others (2005), the authors conclude, based on a meta-analysis of 61 case studies of NTFP harvesting from around the world, that there are five main types of users: low-income subsistence producers, supplementary NTFP users, integrated NTFP collection
P D McElwee (&)
School of Politics and Global Studies, Arizona State University,
P.O Box 873902, Tempe, AZ 85287-3902, USA
e-mail: pamela.mcelwee@asu.edu
DOI 10.1007/s00267-009-9394-5
Trang 2with farming, specialized natural NTFP collectors, and
specialized NTFP cultivators with high incomes from
valuable specialty products (Belcher and others 2005)
However, these typologies, while useful, have not yet been
linked in the literature with analysis of how different types
of forest users may come into conflict with conservation
planning (such as in protected areas development), how the
different typologies of forest users might be differentially
impacted by loss of access to resources, and how these
outcomes may influence future forest use and livelihood
strategies (Adams and others2004; Roe and Elliott 2004;
Adams and Hutton2007)
This article aims to fill this gap in the literature and
achieve two goals: first, it seeks to determine how useful
these typologies of NTFP users are, with a focus in
par-ticular on agricultural households who use wild collected
forest products to supplement farming income [these forest
extractors are classified as ‘supplementary strategy’
pro-ducers in the Belcher and others (2005) typology and
‘sedentary agriculture at the forest frontier’ in Sunderlin
and others (2005)] These links between rural farmers and
forest use are explored through a case study in Vietnam
Secondly, the article tries to determine how conservation
enforcement might impact these types of
farmers/supple-mentary NTFP users if forest use were to be restricted, such
as from creation of protected areas, and in so doing,
attempts to link the literature on NTFP use and poverty
with that of protected areas development and the social
costs of conservation (Brockington and others2006; Igoe
2006; West and others 2006; Adams and Hutton2007)
For example, while farmers are usually assumed to pose
a threat to forest protected areas because they seek land for
agricultural expansion, this is not always the case (Pichon
1996, 1997; Angelsen 1999a; Caviglia-Harris 2004; Perz
2004) Rather, in the study at hand, land expansion was of
minor importance, due to the poor quality of land under
forests and the enforcement of protected forest boundaries,
while the extraction (though illegal) of forest products was
significant This forest extraction income is often of great
significance to the household portfolio for agriculturalists,
and can be in excess of income from agriculture even if
households self-identify as solely farmers Similar results
have been reported for Zimbabwe (Cavendish2000), South
Africa (Shackleton and others2002) and India (Mahapatra
and others 2005; Straede and Treue 2006) This is in
contrast to the typology of forest farmers as people who
usually have low forest product income and dependency
(Sunderlin and others 2005) This study will show that
farmers often use a diverse variety of forest products;
despite being farmers, they often may know a number of
forest species and extract goods from a variety of
catego-ries, from timber to fuelwood to fruits to medicines Nearly
90% of farmers surveyed for this research harvested some
type of wild forest product, and the types of products harvested were diverse, as no one product dominated forest use patterns This calls into question the methodology of some of the forest user typologies noted above that focus
on only one or two kinds of NTFPs used by farmers The article provides an assessment that if forest envi-ronmental income is lost, such as by restricting access to protected areas, it may have significant livelihood impacts
on farmers While much of the literature on the links between parks and people has focused on impoverishment that can be caused by resettlement and relocation from protected areas (Geisler2003; Schmidt-Soltau2003; Broc-kington and Igoe2006; Brockington and others2006), the evidence from Vietnam suggests that even when people do not live in a protected area and are not resettled, they may lose access to income if borders are more rigorously enforced This study highlights the fact that this problem is particularly acute for people identified as farmers; they may have forest income that is more ‘invisible’ to conservation managers, because these farmers do not live directly in protected areas and may not be seen as ‘forest-dependent’ people (i.e., they are not indigenous forest dwellers) Additional attention needs to be paid to the differential costs of conservation for these different forest users; not all households in a community may be similarly affected Detailed analysis of the subsistence and cash income needs
of forest dependent households can help make estimates of the total costs of conservation explicit from the start of funding and projects, including the opportunity costs to local communities (James and others2001; Balmford and others
2000) Those who are affected may have particular needs that should be met through livelihood interventions, if possible
As an example, the analysis presented here concludes that when farmers’ forest income is lost, such as through con-servation enforcement, increased income from agriculture is not always a practicable substitution This is because agri-culture often has high capital and labor requirements and is therefore not equivalent to forest income, which usually has very low capital costs This has implications for the types of interventions that might be pursued in integrated conserva-tion and development projects (ICDPs) in rural areas (Hughes and Flintan2001; McShane and Newby2004) These points are illustrated through a case study of farmers living around a biologically significant protected area in Vietnam The protected areas system there has expanded significantly in recent years, doubling in area since the early 1990s (McElwee2002) Yet there has been surprisingly little research on how conservation policies might have an impact on local livelihoods; a recent review bemoaned the lack of detailed studies on forest use in households (Sunderlin and Ba 2005) Most studies on forestry in Vietnam confine themselves to discussing on-going devolution of some low-value forests to households
Trang 3in the form of permanent land tenure rights (Nguyen2006,
2008; Sikor and Nguyen 2007) However, very little has
been published about forest use where households do not
possess legal land tenure, as is the case with regard to land
held by the state in national parks and nature reserves This
present study tries to correct the inattention to the
impor-tance of forests under protected areas status to rural farmers
by looking at a case in lowland north central Vietnam
Research undertaken in Ha Tinh province in 2000–2001
indicates that the majority of rural rice farmers interviewed
who lived near a state-managed nature reserve were
receiving cash incomes from forest-based activities Many
households did not identify themselves as
‘forest-depen-dent’ households when asked directly, yet analysis of their
income streams revealed that a portion of the farming
community had high levels of income dependency on
forests Stricter enforcement of forest laws has meant that
the collection of most forest produce is increasingly
pre-carious for these families, and many households could face
significant and negative welfare outcomes without access
to this forest income due to a lack of equivalent
substitu-tions These dynamics need to be understood more clearly
in order to balance the competing demands for
conserva-tion and for local livelihoods
Methods
Study Area and Background
This study on the impact of a protected area on local
live-lihoods was conducted in rural areas of Ha Tinh province,
approximately 300 km south of the national capital Hanoi
(Fig.1) Ha Tinh had an estimated population of 1.29
mil-lion people at the time of the last census in 1999 (DPI Ha
Tinh2003) Ha Tinh is bounded by the South China Sea to
the east and the Annamite mountain range to the west, which
reaches heights of 2,200 m Two major nature reserves, the
Vu Quang Nature Reserve and the Ke Go Nature Reserve
(KGNR), were demarcated in the past 15 years to protect
high levels of biodiversity in the province, particularly for
mammals and birds (Dung and others 1994; Eames and
others2001; Eames1996) The KGNR was established in
1996 to protect an endemic bird area, home to two
endan-gered species of pheasant (Trai and others1999) Much of
the natural forest estate in the 35,000 ha reserve was
degraded to some degree, as prior to protected area
desig-nation the KGNR was the site of logging by four different
state owned logging companies, until the area was declared
a Watershed Protection Forest in 1990 Limited logging still
occurred up to 1996 when the area was converted to a Nature
Reserve, one of nearly 100 strictly protected areas that have
been proclaimed in Vietnam to date under a classification
known as the ‘special-use forest’ system There are currently more than 2.3 million ha of these special use forests (ICEM
2003)
According to the national Forest Resources Protection and Development Act of 1991, special-use forests under law are to have no exploitative activities within them, nor
in most cases any households resident there, and into this category fall all National Parks and Nature Reserves The strictly protected nature of special use forests was reiter-ated in a 2001 Decision of the Prime Minister, which states the activities that are to be prohibited in special use forests:
‘any activities that change the natural environment; any activities that impact the natural habitat of wild plants or animals; introduction of any animal or plant not previously present in the area; exploitation of any biological organism
or other natural resource; grazing animals; causing pollu-tion of any kind; or bringing hazardous substances or set-ting fire in the area’ (Article 13) (SRV 2001) Although these stringent laws have been only loosely enforced in the past, many priority parks are now receiving increased amounts of funding for management and enforcement (MARD2004)
As has been the case with most other protected areas, when the KGNR was demarcated the boundaries were deliberately drawn to exclude human settlements, so no households were resident within the reserve at the time of the study Approximately 40,000 people lived around the park boundaries; this area was not administrated by the KGNR and primarily existed as a buffer zone in name only The only conservation and development project in the buffer zone was a Non-Timber Forest Products Project (NTFPP) funded and sponsored by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN); otherwise, the park had no direct income benefit for households, as there were
no tourism or revenue-sharing arrangements
Unlike other parks in Vietnam, encroachment on the KGNR for agricultural land was rare due to a fairly large area of unused land in each village in the buffer zone The land in the KGNR was also considered poor for agriculture,
as the reserve was mostly sloping and not able to be irri-gated, a necessity for wet rice, the most important agri-cultural crop in the area It was also not possible to receive
a land tenure certificate for any land that was considered to
be within the boundaries of the KGNR, so there was less incentive to encroach than to improve already existing land outside the reserve
The primary uses of the KGNR forests were for the extraction of forest products like timber and NTFPs through day trips into the reserve by people in surrounding communities Around 75 rangers patrolled the KGNR’s boundaries, but at any one time less than 10 rangers would usually be stationed in one the main checkpoints into the forests, and their movements were often fairly predictable
Trang 4It used to be relatively easy for most people to extract
forest goods with little fear of getting caught if they
avoided one of the known checkpoints or worked after
dark, although at the time of the survey enforcement was
increasing due to better funding for the rangers
Survey and Qualitative Research Methods
Research took place in Cam Xuyen district of the KGNR
buffer zone from November 2000 to October 2001 Two
standardized surveys were carried out; one on fuelwood use
that interviewed 200 randomly chosen households (10 per
village in 20 randomly chosen villages in the buffer zone),
and a longer survey on income and forest product
depen-dency that interviewed 104 households, all ethnically
Vietnamese, a random sample of 20% of the households
from five primary study villages geographically located on
the border of the reserve Villages were chosen on the basis
of discussions with officials that these villages had high
levels of resource use in the KGNR; among the five chosen
three villages had better access to the KGNR and two had
poorer access (nearer the ranger checkpoints or located in
an area with steep access)
In the income survey, households were interviewed over
the course of several hours up to several days In most
cases, both husband (traditionally the household head) and
wives were interviewed together to provide the most
comprehensive recall on answers Household level
infor-mation included household size, income, migration status
and history, educational levels and landholdings
House-holds were asked to estimate in both quantity and income
their total forest products extraction in the previous twelve months, along with questions about the seasons and labor needed Income figures were derived from informant recall
on all sources of cash income and agricultural production for the household for the previous year; this is a common survey technique used in the World Bank Living Standards Surveys regularly administered in many countries Because information was collected on all agricultural production and all forest products used for the previous twelve months,
a comprehensive picture of livelihoods could be developed (for more details on the survey parameters see McElwee
2008) While recall surveys have difficulties, and do not necessarily capture trends in resource use over periods longer than a year, these are the standard by which most forest use research is conducted
This quantitative study was supplemented by qualitative interviews which were also held with village headmen and key informants, and focus groups were conducted with forest product collectors to learn more about techniques for harvesting, land use types for various forest products, changes in harvesting over time, and restrictions on har-vesting as a result of park enforcement A market survey was conducted at the main commune and one district market to assess prices of NTFPs throughout the year, and interviews were conducted both with local traders and in provincial markets dealing with forest based products Policy interviews were conducted with interviews with KGNR rangers and management board staff, as well as interviews with the head of a nearby SFE and other pro-vincial and district policymakers in the agriculture and forestry divisions
Fig 1 Map of study area
Trang 5Additionally, during the research period several trips
were made into the KGNR forest to look at forest product
collection in situ Harvesters were accompanied into the
forest as they sought out forest products to understand the
physical processes involved in forest harvesting, how
products were selected for harvest, and where and how
harvesters might encounter park enforcement personnel
Over 300 plant voucher specimens were taken to identify
the economically valuable flora of the KGNR as well
Results
Forest Use Among Farming Households
A near total (97%) of households surveyed identified
themselves primarily as rice farmers (101 households), and
half of households raised other non-rice agricultural crops
like sesame, potatoes and cassava (Household
character-istics from the survey are reported in Table1.1) At the
same time, many households used nearby forests for
sub-sistence and for income The survey identified a number of
forest products (lam san or san pham rung) used by
households, and these products were collected from
dif-ferent types of land, but primarily from the KGNR Only
6% of households surveyed reported holding land tenure
rights to privately managed forestland, and these lands
were not a major source of forest income Households
reported relatively low landholdings overall, with most
households using less than half a hectare of agricultural
land Cash incomes reported were also relatively low, at
only $325 US per household per year; this area of Vietnam
has long been identified as one of the poorer provinces of
the country
Primary Categories of Forest Products Collected
and Conservation Impact of Harvesting
Overall, forests played an important livelihood role for many
families in Cam Xuyen, as 92 of 104 households (88%)
harvested some sort of wild plant product in the previous
year Households on average collected 5.47 different wild
species They collected from ten different categories of forest goods (timber, charcoal, fuelwood, rattans/bamboos, fruits, leaves, resins/aromatics, medicinals, edible plants, and animal products) On average, households collected goods from 2.62 different categories of forest products (Table2 lists the major categories and species collected) The characteristics of collection and conservation impact of these activities are outlined by category below
Timber About a quarter of households (23) surveyed cut timber for sale from the KGNR Only 11% of households reported being able to meet all their household timber needs through home gardens and privately owned forests; others were forced to rely on freely collected wood in the KGNR or village lands, or else purchased wood, either legally or on the black market from illegal loggers On average, the daily income from logging was reported to be around 25,000– 40,000 VND2 per man ($1.75–2.75 US) Timber was not more lucrative due to the small numbers of logs that households could collect on their own; local households had no means to transport large numbers of logs out of the reserve (no surveyed household owned or had access to a car or truck), and all local logging was done by handsaws,
in contrast to nearby countries like Indonesia where even small scale logging is done with chainsaws (McCarthy
2002) However, despite the low amount of timber har-vested per household, the conservation impact of logging is likely to be high, as whole stems of valuable hardwoods were the main targets However, logging was reported by informants to be declining in importance in recent years, as timber was the primary forest product that forest rangers from the KGNR had begun to crack down on (McElwee
2004) Households could be fined up to 500,000 VND (US$ 30) and lose any timber they had cut if discovered Most logging households reported having been caught by rangers at least once in the past, although not all had been fined
Charcoal Charcoal-making was a lucrative forest-based income activity in Cam Xuyen, one that 18% of interviewed households participated in Charcoal was made with pit kilns (known as lo), dug into the earth.; once a pit was prepared, up to 500 kg of fresh roundwood were cut per firing (equivalent to around 1–2 cubic meters), which would produce around 35–50 kg of charcoal, a less than one to ten ratio for charcoal to wood [This use of open pits and freshly cut wood is inefficient when compared with
1 Households, rather than per capita, figures are used throughout this
article Statistical analysis in regressions on various socio-economic
variables showed no significant relationship between number of
household members and quantity of forest products collected or
income from forests, indicating that households are an appropriate
unit of measurement for this study All major income surveys in
Vietnam (such as the Vietnam Living Standards Survey, the
Agricultural Census, the Multi-purpose Household Survey, and the
Population Census) used by both the General Statistical Office and by
donors such as the World Bank use households as the unit of analysis,
which is followed here, as economic decision-making is usually
collective within the household. 2 In 2001, the exchange rate was 14,500 VND to 1 USD.
Trang 6other techniques for making charcoal (Bhattarai 1998)].
Survey results revealed that individual households made on
average 1 metric ton of charcoal a year, and if multiplied
by the average number of charcoal making households
surrounding the KGNR, approximately 1,000 tons of
charcoal were being produced per year from the reserve
Households either transported their charcoal themselves to
the district market or sold it to traders who came to
vil-lages These traders sold the charcoal at markets closer to
the sea coast, where charcoal was in demand to smoke fish
Charcoal was the only forest product for which there was
no subsistence demand
The conservation impact of charcoal making is high,
because of the large numbers of species used, the use of
stems, and the relatively low efficiency of charcoal making
There were few conservation measures taken to limit the
species used or type of forests exploited by charcoal
makers, with the exception of species that were small in
diameter but made heavy charcoal; species that fired badly
and left unburnt heartwood; or species that fired too well
and produced only crumbly small diameter charcoal
Charcoal makers relied on the sporadic monitoring of the
KGNR to enable them to use the forests there freely; no
household reported making charcoal from trees on their
private lands or gardens Rangers from the KGNR had
recently begun to confiscate charcoal found coming out of
the KGNR as well as at nearby markets during the research
period in 2001 However, punishment for making charcoal
was not as severe as that for timber, usually only the
confiscation of the charcoal and tools used to make it, and
occasionally a fine of around 20–30,000 VND ($1.50–2
US)
Fuelwood
Fuelwood was the primary forest product in Cam Xuyen
for which there was both a high subsistence demand and a
high commercial demand Nearly 100% of rural
house-holds in the study area used fuelwood as their main energy
source (less than one percent of households had electricity
or kerosene for cooking) Survey results indicate that the average fuelwood use was around 850 kg per capita per year While fuelwood harvesting was technically illegal in the KGNR, in fact removal of dry wood and branches was openly tolerated by rangers The conservation impact of fuelwood use is likely to be moderate; households were asked to identify how much of their fuelwood budget was provided by leaves, branches or cut stems and results indicated that nearly 80% of the total fuelwood use was leaves and branches only A majority of families collected some of their fuelwood from wild sources (75%), while 35% sold fuelwood at least occasionally Selling fuelwood was one of the only occupations for women in this area, requiring neither capital outlay nor any special equipment Rattans and Bamboos
Around a quarter of the households surveyed collected forest rattans A few households also grew rattans in their gardens, and this number was on the increase due to a non-timber forest products project in the buffer zone (Quang
2004) Like most activities in the KGNR, rattan collection was illegal, but still occurred rather openly and there were
no reports of conflicts with rangers The conservation impact of rattan and bamboo harvesting was likely low as both products were harvested from plants with relatively high reproduction rates and in ways not destructive to plant growth (i.e removal of one or two stems from large clumps)
Forest Fruits Wild fruits were collected from a variety of species in both open and closed forest in the villages and KGNR by 35%
of families in the survey Sixteen families reported that their children were the primary collectors Of the total number of fruit-collecting households, only eight sold collected fruit, primarily species harvested by men deeper
Table 1 Household characteristics of survey sample
Annual cash income 4,710,031 VND ($325 US) 2,945,940 VND ($203 US) Annual income including subsistence activities 6,408,938 VND ($442 US) 3,024,969 VND ($209 US) Annual reported household expenses 5,670,318 VND ($391 US) 2,722,477 VND ($188 US) Annual cash income from forest product collection 660,125 VND ($46 US) 1,022,325 VND ($71 US)
Number of forest species collected 5.47 species 7.02 species
Number of forest categories collected 2.62 categories 2.08 categories
Trang 7Table 2 Major commercial
forest products categories and
species collected by farmers in
study site, and conservation
impact of harvesting
impact of harvest
Erythrophleum fordii Oliver Lim Sindora tonkinensis A Chev Go Aglaia spectabilis (Miq.) Jain & Bennet Goi Vatica odorata (Griff.) Symington Tau Michelia mediocris Dandy Gioi Castanopsis indica Roxburgh ex Lindley Ca Oi Manglietia fordiana Oliv Vang Tam Canarium tonkinensis Engl Tram
Erythrofloeum fordii Oliv Lim Sindora tonkinensis A Chev Go Madhuca pasquieri (Dubard) H J Lam, Sen Vatica odorata (Griff.) Symington Tau Aglaia spectabilis (Miq.) Jain & Bennet Goi
Mallotus apelta Muell-Argent Ben bet
Cryptocarya impressa Miq Bai lai
Symplocos lucida (Thunb.) Sieb et Zucc Dung Castanopsis indica Roxb Gie Macaranga balansae Gagnep Hon tro
Melastoma candidum D Don Mua
Eurya cuneata Kobuski Nen tre Cratoxylon formosum (Jack.) Dyer Nganh Rhododamnia dumetorum (Poir.) Merr Sim Syzygium balsamineum (Wight) Walp Tram
Calamus dioicus Lour Mat tat
Calamus tetradactylus Hance May dang
Calamus dioicus Lour Mat tat Dendrocalamus strictus (Roxb) Nees May Dendrocalamus patellani Gamble Giang
Bambusa tuldoides Munro Hop
Rhododamnia dumetorum (Poir.) Merr Sim Ardisia incrassata Pit Nang Nephelium lappaceum L Vai rung
Trang 8Table 2 continued
impact of harvest
Artocarpus styracifolius Pierre Chay
Melastoma candidum D Don Mua
Syzygium balsamineum (Wight) Walp Tram
Imperata cylindrica (L.) P Beauv Tranh Thysanolaena maxima (Roxb.) Kuntze La dot Phrynium parviflorum Roxb La dong Licuala spp (likely L spinosa) La non
Dianella ensifolia (L.) DC Huong bai Pinus merkusii Jungh et De Vriese Nhua thong Cinnamomum parthenoxylon Meissn De
Lindera myrtle (Lour.) Merr O duoc Acorus gramineus Soland Thach xuong bo Drynaria bonii Christ Cu lan or bo cot toai
Homalomena occulta (Lou.) Schott Mon rung
Apis spp (wild honeybees) Ong rung
Macaca assamensis McClelland (Assamese macaque) Khi duoi ngan
Martes flavigula Boddaert (yellow-throated marten) Chon vang Arctonyx collaris Cuvier (badger) Chon den Melogale personata Geoffroy (large toothed ferret-badger) Chon bac ma nam Paradoxurus hermaphroditus Pallas (common palm civet) Chon voi Sus scrofa Linn (wild boar) Lon rung Cervus nippon Temminck (sika deer) Huou sao Ratufa bicolor Sparrman (black giant squirrel) Soc den Callosciurus erythraeus Pallas (brown squirrel) Soc nau Hystrix brachyura Linn (Malayan porcupine) Nhim duoi ngan Gallus gallus Linn (Red junglefowl) Ga rung Centropus bengalensis Gmelin (lesser coucal) Bim bip
Sturnus spp (starling) Chim sao Garrulax spp (laughingthrush) Khuou den Dicrurus spp (drongo) Cheo beo Physignathus cocincinus Cuvier (Indochinese water
dragon)
Ky nhong
Gekko gecko Linn (tokay) Tac ke Python reticulatus Schneider (python) Tran
Trang 9in the forest of the KGNR, like wild litchi and wild mango.
The conservation impact of this activity is low to moderate
Some households that harvested fruits said that they cut
down fruit trees in around 10% of cases to get the fruit if it
was too high up, particularly fruits like wild mango Other
respondents stated that it was foolhardy to cut trees down
just for their fruits, as the fruit often got damaged as the
trunk fell, so they used nearby vines to fashion climbing
harnesses
Leaves
In addition to leaves that were collected as fuelwood, leaves
were collected for making thatching, for making brooms, for
wrapping foods, and for making craft items like conical hats
Women dominated the collection of all these leaves, as they
were light and easy to carry, required no special equipment,
and were generally found in forest closer to villages A
majority of households (54) collected grasses and leaves and
36 households sold them commercially One product that
had only recently become economically important were
leaves used to make conical hats (Licuala spp.) (known as la
non), found primarily in the understory of secondary forest
in the KGNR The light weight of leaves meant that women
and children could readily be collectors and little equipment
or specialized knowledge were needed A local woman paid
a harvester 30,000 VND (approximately $2 USD) for 1,000
leaves, an above-average wage for a day’s labor at the time
Although leaf collection was technically illegal, the leaf
buyer stated that her business had not come to the attention
of the Nature Reserve authorities The leaf trader estimated
that about 5 million leaves of la non were harvested each
year from this area and sold to hat-making villages in the
north of Vietnam The conservation impact of leaf
har-vesting is likely to be low as leaf reproduction replaces those
harvested
Aromatics and Oils
In the past there was a significant trade in essential oils
from two forest tree species, de oil (Cinnamomum
par-thenoxylon Meissn.), and dau oil (Vernicia montana Lour.)
However, due to a lack of buyers, these oils were no longer
important economically at the time of the survey These
activities had once had a high conservation impact, similar
to charcoal, as many stems would be cut for small amounts
of essential oils, but no households were doing this at the
time of the survey
Medicinal Plants
Less than 15% of the families surveyed collected medicinal
plants, and only 7 households sold medicinal plants The
low incomes were attributed to the small number of eco-nomically valuable species and a lack of knowledge among collectors about where medicinal plants could be found The conservation impact is likely to be moderate for medicinal plant harvesting; some medicines were made from leaves and bark that could be harvested sustainably, while for some medicines the whole plant or roots were needed
Edible Plants Edible plants were a small category of subsistence forest goods Eight families in the survey reported having col-lected foods for themselves or for their livestock from forests within the past 12 months Additionally, a majority
of households let their large animals graze freely for fodder
in KGNR lands for several months out of the year, although
it was not possible to accurately estimate the amount of fodder consumed Grazing likely had a moderate to high conservation impact, as animals left to graze can alter forest composition and hinder new growth, but grazing did not take place year round and was confined to areas of the KGNR close to villages, as households did not want to risk losing animals if they were left to graze farther afield Forest Animals
Despite many news reports about high levels of poaching
in Vietnam, only 3 out of 104 families admitted to hunting
It is likely this figure was underreported, however, as punishment for hunting was increasingly severe, and could include jail time (unlike most other forest collection activities that warranted only a modest monetary fine) The few local people who continued to hunt usually did so only
in conjunction with another activity, such as cutting timber,
as respondents said there was rarely enough wildlife available to make hunting worthwhile on its own
Role of Protected Areas Resources in Local Livelihoods
Around the KGNR, all sources of forest-based cash income added up to on average 660,125 VND ($46 US) a year per household averaged across the sample (see McElwee2008
for a breakdown of this data) Forest income contributed on average 22% of household cash income for the sample, and more than half the households surveyed (57%) obtained some sort of forest income However, the mean gross or net forest income is not however always the best indication of how important forests are to overall household livelihoods
In some cases, households may have a low total forest income, but if that income is their only source of liveli-hood, they can be considered highly dependent on forests
Trang 10and would face considerable deprivation if this income
stream were to be cut off (Mamo and others2007) The
survey revealed that 43% of households in Cam Xuyen
were not income dependent on forests, as they received no
cash income from this sector (although some received
subsistence contributions) A quarter of households had
low dependency (1–25% of their cash income came from
the forest sector) and 16% of households had moderate
dependency (26–49% of income came from forests) An
additional 15% of surveyed households could be
consid-ered highly dependent (over 50% of their income from
forests)
This group of households with high dependency
accounted for some, though not all, of the households with
the greatest conservation impact For example, of the 16
high dependency households, 11 were charcoal makers and
8 were timber harvesters While this accounts for 58% of
charcoal-producing households, it is only 35% of the
tim-bering households, indicating high dependency households
are not necessarily the best or only targets for conservation
enforcement
What is particularly interesting is that these highly
dependent households were not the poorest households
overall; absolute levels of income were not significant in
identifying who used forest products and who did not (see
Table3, line 1), nor were household expenses (line 2) But
close analysis suggests that the high dependency
house-holds were in fact different than the househouse-holds with no to
low dependency on the forest This is because the highly
dependent households used their forest income to smooth
gaps in income from other sectors These dependent
households tended to be doing worse in terms of on and
off-farm income; they had significantly lower levels of
both total agricultural income as well as relative
agricultural income (the percentage of total household income from agriculture), as well as total livestock income (Table3, lines 3–6)
A lack of access to off-farm employment income was also very significantly correlated to forest dependency, as those with no dependency on forests had on average more than 30 times the income from wage labor as high dependency households Those households with sources of wage or business income (n = 50) had on average only 284,890 VND ($20 US) in income from forest produce, while those households with no alterative employment (n = 54) had income from forests averaging 1,007,565 VND ($69 US) (P = 0.000) The differences in the means between the two groups’ total household cash income was also highly significant: 6,102,530 VND/year ($421 US) for those with wage income, and 3,420,681 VND ($236 US)/ year for those without (P = 0.000)
Forests as Seasonal Safety-Nets Additionally, forests were not only important in terms of supplementing overall income to households, they were also important in terms of when that income was supplied,
a finding noted elsewhere (Pattanayak and Sills 2001; de Merode and others2004) In Cam Xuyen, households had excess labor in September and October before the winter rice was planted, in January and February before harvest, and in mid-summer between the two rice seasons Thus these were the times when most households were free to collect forest products (see Table 4) Forest products were usually not collected by households that had labor con-straints during the agricultural season, implying that agri-cultural production may serve as a natural check on forest product collection for farmers
Table 3 Comparison of households at varying dependency levels on forest income
Household socioeconomic
characteristics
Not dependent HH (n = 45)
Low–mid dependency HH (n = 43)
High dependency HH (n = 16)
v2 P
Total household cash income 5,432,578 4,473,687 3,313,044 5.048 080
Absolute agricultural cash income 1,350,800 1,296,897 424,856 11.665 003**
Absolute livestock cash income 1,441,111 1,082,558 609,375 9.812 007**
Total household landholdings, in sao 14.29 18.72 9.84 8.766 012* Total HH agricultural landholdings,
in sao
1 sao = 500 m 2
* Significant at P \ 0.05; ** highly significant at P \ 0.01