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Agricultural Land Policy Discussed!

  • A workshop on “Land policy for Agriculture, Farmer and Rural Area” was co-organized by Land Science Association of Vietnam and ENABLE project on 8th May, 2009 in Hanoi with the aim of reforming for some of articles of Land Law. The Workshop has focused on (1) Planning and policy on productively agricultural land; (2) Land reclaimation, compensation and resettlement for agricultural land; (3) Market activities for agricultural land use right. According to the workshop report, in Vietnam, for the last six years (2001-2007), a total of agricultural land has been reclaimed and transferred into non-agricultural land is over 335,000 ha, meaning that 50,000 ha of agricultural land per year in everage has been lost. And 3.5 millions ha of forestry land were allocated to households and individuals, another 5 millions ha were allocated to state forest enterprises and other organizations/companies for land use and management. Obviously, forestry land allocated to state forest enterprises are huge and thus, main concern is what are criteria to access that forestry land has been used and managed by those forest enterprises are used in an effective! It is still a question?

    “Forest land and ethnic minority people” is one of issues that was raised by CIRUM at the workshop working group discussion. Based on practical research findings, it is telling that there are overlapings over forest land and some of land problems caused by the implementation of Decree 02/CP/2004 and Decree 01/CP/1995 during 1994-1995. Eg. ovelapings over boundary between households and households; the difference between land size stated from Green Book and in the field; or some of household has a lot of land, and some has a few, etc… All of these have making local people not confident to invest on the land in a sustainable way. Related to forestry land property assessment, according to some of forestry experts, only “big trees” are counted in but not and neglected from floristic composition (non-timber forest products such as herbal plants, natural dyeing plants, mushrooms,….). Current policies for forest land privatization by state forest enterprises; or calling for investment markets (outside and inside the country) in forest land; or issue of resettlement of ethnic minorities groups who are affected by hydroelectric programmes,…have been affecting long-term livelihood, indigenous culture, bio-diversity, have not been carefully analyzed for solutions yet.

    At the final, the workshop participants have proposed some of recommendations as follows: (1) increase the total area of agricultural land allocated to each household based on local context; (2) The land use certificate term should be permanent; (3) Review (delete) the result of Land Allocation programme under Degree 02/1994 and to re-allocation followed Degree 181/2004/CP by participatory approach and make use grassroot democarcy; (4) involved local people in the process of indigenous knowledge based assessment of forest land property , thus, role of local people is appreciated as equal as role of forestry experts and accordingly, final results showed by local people are as equal values as final results by forestry experts (actually, costs occurr by local people is much lower than costs spent by outside experts). (5) It is important and necessary for resettlement programme to take account into indigenous culture (belief,…), especially for the ethnic minorities; (6) Land reclaimation is to make sure for sustainable livelihood, food security and to regulate in detailed a supervising mechanism with full participation of local people, attracting supports from civil society organizations and local people as well.

    CIRUM