Participation in and Benefits of Community Forest Management: Learning from Cases in Thua Thien Hue Province, Vietnam

Abstract

This study aims to explore local participation in relation to benefits in community forest management (CFM) in Thua Thien Hue province, central Vietnam, and to clarify the potential and challenges of sustainable forest management. Focusing on structural perspectives, the actor’s perspective, benefit flows, and benefit sharing in communities, this study examines the factors that shape the possibilities and constraints of local participation and benefits under models of forest management by household groups and by village communities. The findings reveal a gap between participation and benefit policies and CFM practices. CFM is an initiative approach that includes secure and substantial property rights, and the advantage of developing local institutional arrangements. It has encouraged local people to participate in forest protection and management activities, as well as improved opportunities for communities to benefit from forest resources. Moreover, creating timber benefit-sharing mechanisms based on certain numbers of trees in each diameter class has advantages over a system based on timber reserves. However, the overall benefits of CFM are still not considered to be significant by local communities. Transparency, effective participation, and accountability in terms of good internal governance were found to be weak. Additionally, it is challenging to motivate villager participation in forest protection and development activities because of the poor quality of allocated forest areas and the high percentage of poor households in communities. Communities lacked assistance and support from relevant stakeholders and thus had little power to solve critical situations such as treating violators, covering the costs of forest management and protection activities, and building forest enrichment and livelihood models. Therefore, to achieve a sustainable CFM model, an integrated approach is needed that considers whether a community forest reflects community values and produces benefits. key words community forest management, participation, structure perspective, actor’s perspective, benefit flow, benefit sharing, Vietnam