Vietnam has been through different land policy regimes during the past five to six decades.[1] These series of land policy changes did not occur in a vacuum. Instead, the same changes have been the outcomes of dynamic interactions between the state, community, and households in trying to (re)negotiate the very meaning of ‘land’, ‘land use’, ‘land access’, ‘resource control’, and ‘farm and forest productivity and sustainability’. The land policy reforms from the period of revolutionary collectivization campaign onwards have not happened in a smooth process, as it has been marked by conflict between key actors, especially the state and the peasantry, as brilliantly examined and explained by Benedict Kerkvliet (2005).
 
The state, community, households, and individuals have struggled to control the nature, pace, extent and direction of the series of official state-directed reforms in land policies ostensibly aimed at giving more control to the communities and private households in order to spur greater agricultural productivity (Kerkvliet, 2006). Political conflict between these actors has been one of the defining characters of the reform process that started in agricultural lands in the 1980s. Forestry land has become the subject of major land policy reform beginning with the 1993 Land Law. (This paper uses the term ‘forestry land’, following Thomas Sikor’s explanation about the term ‘forestry land’ as opposed to ‘forest land’; the former indicates the legal character of the classification, a Vietnamese convention. See Sikor, 2006: 623, fn. 3). In that year, the Forest Land Allocation Program (henceforth referred to in this paper as ‘FLAP’) got started, which officially aims at instigating productivity in agro-forestry, thereby reducing rural poverty, while at the same time putting in place appropriate institutional measures for forest sustainability. A “green book” was given to a household or community that received a forest land allocation. Ten years into its implementation, analysts concluded (and by implication, the government admitted) that the program had received relatively less enthusiastic reception from the targeted upland rural poor most of which were indigenous peoples, while the outcomes have been inegalitarian, exclusive and not truly pro-poor. Moreover, there was a significant discrepancy between what the official documents claim and the existing reality. For example, in his study of the forest land allocation process in the 1990s in northwest Vietnam, Sikor (2006) concludes that the official state policy governing forestry lands have not significantly altered actually existing social relations and land use despite the introduction of formal, official state documents demarcating boundaries and providing exclusive forest land rights to individuals and communities (see also Sikor and Tran, 2006). But the government was generally optimistic although admitting some weaknesses that call for improvement, hence the decision to push for continuity with reform. Beginning in 1999, the national government passed a series of decrees (Decree 163 in 1999; Decree 181 in 2004) including the 2003 Land Law all aimed at reforming the forest land allocation process. These decrees and the 2003 law altogether introduced significant adjustments into the program, a ‘reform of the reform’, so to speak. The “green book” was officially substituted by a “red book”. In this paper, it is useful to divide into two periods the forest land allocation process. The first period which takes its main legal mandate from the 1993 land Law started formally in 1994, and we will refer to it here as the ‘FLAP1’, or the first forest land allocation program. For this period, a ‘green book’ was issued to land recipients (green was the cover of the land certificate; it is referred to, more popularly, as the ‘green book’). The second period essentially started in 1999 beginning with Decree 163, but has been consolidated and formalized in the later passage of 2003 Land Law and Decree 181 in 2004. Moreover, a land allocation certificate with a red cover, and so referred to as the ‘red book’, was issued to land recipients. In this paper, FLAP1 is sometimes loosely referred to as the ‘green book era’, while FLAP2 is sometimes loosely labeled as the ‘red book era’. FLAP1 period is oftentimes loosely used to refer to the 1993-2003 period, while FLAP2 for the 2003-present period. And while useful a periodization, it is important to note that the dateline in this divide is not that clear-cut at all, as explained above.
 
Officially, it is hoped that FLAP2 (red book era) would result in egalitarian, pro-poor and inclusive outcomes than the previous period. However, it has been widely believed that the latter period has resulted in more of the same outcomes as in the earlier period. Author’s separate interviews with technical officials from the Forest Inventory and Planning Institute (FIPI) who have the chance of working in various parts of the country for the FLAP implementation have also confirmed this widespread belief. The general impression is that the FLAP processes have benefited the poor significantly less than targeted and had been captured by the elite in important ways and extent, with marginal impact on the plight of the upland poor. This is partly attributed by observers to the overly technical-oriented interpretation of the reform law and a non-participatory, dis-empowering, top-down policy implementation approaches employed by bureaucratic government officials.
 
However, in the Bac Lang Commune in Dinh Lap district in northeast Vietnam, near the border with China, the general pattern of inegalitarian and not truly pro-poor processes and outcomes in the Forest Land Allocation Programs well established for 15 years (from 1993 to 2006) was broken. In this poor commune beginning in late 2006, the process of the forest land (re-)allocation program has been generally participatory and empowering, resulting in egalitarian and pro-poor outcomes.
 
The real puzzle is not why so many forest land allocation initiatives in Vietnam from 1993 onwards have resulted in ‘more of the same’ processes, i.e. non-participatory, dis-empowering, top-down, as well as in outcomes that are elitist and not truly pro-poor. Various scholars have already provided most of the answers: the institutional set-up in Vietnam and the way political resources between key actors are distributed within the state and in society tend to always result in such kind of outcomes. The real puzzle therefore is how is it that this general pattern in land allocation process was broken in some instances, resulting in egalitarian, inclusive and pro-poor land (re-)allocation outcomes? How did this happen in an institutional and structural setting that is generally similar to the rest of Vietnamese upland?[2]
 
This puzzle, and the challenge of providing answer to it, is the starting point of this study looking at the land rights project by CIRUM (Culture Identity and Resource Use Management), a newly established service NGO in Vietnam with fund support from the Dutch agency, Inter-Church Organization for Development and Cooperation (ICCO). This study examines the project’s strategy based on empirical evidence and within broader conceptual contexts, with the aim of drawing up lessons that are relevant to the project and the project site – and beyond.
 
The rest of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2 will briefly discuss the Forest Land Allocation Programs in Vietnam – the very context and object of the CIRUM project that is being evaluated. It aims to put the Bac Lang Commune experience into a national perspective. Section 2 will also briefly take a look at CIRUM and its vision, mission and goals, as well as its land rights project in Bac Lang. This section will briefly discuss the strategy developed by CIRUM in its forest land allocation project. Section 3 presents and examines the project outcomes. This section will also answer the question of how have such outcomes been achieved? The section will then discuss a number of remaining gaps, or some pending, under-researched issues. Section 4 will put forward some recommendations. This section will be organized around four sub-clusters, namely, gains to consolidate and expand, shortcomings to address, challenges to confront, and further research.