McElwee 2010 resource use in ha tinh

RESEARCH
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
Ó 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 Á Rural
livelihoods Á Protected areas Á Poverty Á Vietnam Á
Conservation Á 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
Arnold 1999; Cavendish 2000; Arnold and Ruiz-Pe
´
rez 2001;
Takasaki and others 2001; Coomes and others 2004; Belcher
2005; Sunderlin and others 2005; Vedeld and others 2007).
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;
Wunder 2001; Sunderlin and others 2005). 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 Coppolillo 2005).
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:
123
Environmental Management (2010) 45:113–131
DOI 10.1007/s00267-009-9394-5
with 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 others 2004; Roe and Elliott 2004;
Adams and Hutton 2007).

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 others 2006; Igoe
2006; West and others 2006; Adams and Hutton 2007).
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 (Cavendish 2000), South
Africa (Shackleton and others 2002) 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 (Geisler 2003; Schmidt-Soltau 2003; Broc-
kington and Igoe 2006; Brockington and others 2006), 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 others 2001; 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 Flintan 2001; McShane and Newby 2004).
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 (McElwee 2002). 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
114 Environmental Management (2010) 45:113–131
123
in the form of permanent land tenure rights (Nguyen 2006,
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
Tinh 2003). 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
others 2001; Eames 1996). The KGNR was established in
1996 to protect an endemic bird area, home to two endan-
gered species of pheasant (Trai and others 1999). 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
(MARD 2004).
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.
Environmental Management (2010) 45:113–131 115
123
It 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
116 Environmental Management (2010) 45:113–131
123
Additionally, 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 Table 1.
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
(Table 2 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 VND
2
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.
Environmental Management (2010) 45:113–131 117
123
other 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
Variable (n = 104) Average SD
Household size 4.8 people 1.5 people
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)
Total household landholdings 0.77 ha 0.83 ha
Household agricultural holdings 0.48 ha 0.22 ha
Number of forest species collected 5.47 species 7.02 species
Number of forest categories collected 2.62 categories 2.08 categories

118 Environmental Management (2010) 45:113–131
123
Table 2 Major commercial
forest products categories and
species collected by farmers in
study site, and conservation
impact of harvesting
Latin name Local name Relative conservation
impact of harvest
Timber High
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
Charcoal High
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
Cinnamomum spp. De
Diospyros spp. Long do
Fuelwood Low
Mallotus apelta Muell-Argent Ben bet
Litsea spp. Boi loi
Cryptocarya impressa Miq. Bai lai

Litsea spp. Bac la
Symplocos lucida (Thunb.) Sieb. et Zucc. Dung
Castanopsis indica Roxb. Gie
Macaranga balansae Gagnep. Hon tro
Psychotria rubra Poit. Lau
Melastoma candidum D. Don Mua
Memecylon edule Roxb. Moc
Eurya cuneata Kobuski Nen tre
Cratoxylon formosum (Jack.) Dyer Nganh
Rhododamnia dumetorum (Poir.) Merr. Sim
Syzygium balsamineum (Wight) Walp. Tram
Rattans and bamboos Low
Calamus dioicus Lour. Mat tat
Calamus spp. May nuoc
Calamus tetradactylus Hance May dang
Calamus rudentum Lour. Song
Areca laosensis Becc. Heo
Calamus dioicus Lour. Mat tat
Dendrocalamus strictus (Roxb) Nees May
Dendrocalamus patellani Gamble Giang
Bambusa spinosa Roxb Tre
Bambusa tuldoides Munro Hop
Fruits Moderate
Rhododamnia dumetorum (Poir.) Merr Sim
Ardisia incrassata Pit. Nang
Nephelium lappaceum L. Vai rung
Mangifera spp. Muong
Cryptocarya spp. Nhoi
Gnetum montanum Markyr Gam
Environmental Management (2010) 45:113–131 119

123
Table 2 continued
Latin name Local name Relative conservation
impact of harvest
Knema spp. No
Mangifera indica L. Xoai rung
Musa coccinea Andr Chuoi rung
Artocarpus styracifolius Pierre Chay
Averrhoa carambola L. Khe
Melastoma candidum D. Don Mua
Memecylon edule Roxb. Moc
Syzygium balsamineum (Wight) Walp. Tram
Leaves Low
Imperata cylindrica (L.) P. Beauv. Tranh
Thysanolaena maxima (Roxb.) Kuntze La dot
Phrynium parviflorum Roxb. La dong
Licuala spp. (likely L. spinosa) La non
Aromatics/oils/resins High
Dianella ensifolia (L.) DC Huong bai
Pinus merkusii Jungh. et De Vriese Nhua thong
Cinnamomum parthenoxylon Meissn. De
Vernicia montana Lour Dau
Medicinals Moderate
Lindera myrtle (Lour.) Merr. O duoc
Acorus gramineus Soland Thach xuong bo
Drynaria bonii Christ Cu lan or bo cot toai
Edible plants Moderate
Musa coccinea Andr. Chuoi rung
Homalomena occulta (Lou.) Schott Mon rung
Animals High

Apis spp. (wild honeybees) Ong rung
Manis spp. (pangolin) Trut
Macaca assamensis McClelland (Assamese macaque) Khi duoi ngan
Mustela spp. (weasel) Tay
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
Streptopelia spp. (dove) Cu
Sturnus spp. (starling) Chim sao
Garrulax spp. (laughingthrush) Khuou den
Dicrurus spp. (drongo) Cheo beo
Physignathus cocincinus Cuvier (Indochinese water
dragon)
Ky nhong
Cuora spp. (turtle) Rua may
Gekko gecko Linn. (tokay) Tac ke
Python reticulatus Schneider (python) Tran
120 Environmental Management (2010) 45:113–131
123
in 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 McElwee 2008
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
Environmental Management (2010) 45:113–131 121
123
and would face considerable deprivation if this income
stream were to be cut off (Mamo and others 2007). 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
Table 3, line 1), nor were household expenses (line 2). But

close analysis suggests that the high dependency house-
holds were in fact different than the households 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
(Table 3, 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 others 2004). 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)
v
2
P
Total household cash income 5,432,578 4,473,687 3,313,044 5.048 .080
Total HH expenses 5,977,639 5,477,916 5,323,056 .255 .880
Absolute agricultural cash income 1,350,800 1,296,897 424,856 11.665 .003**
Relative agricultural income .29 .25 .12 11.273 .004**
Absolute livestock cash income 1,441,111 1,082,558 609,375 9.812 .007**
Relative livestock income .31 .31 .19 4.444 .108
Absolute wage income 2,353,333 953,721 75,000 21.769 .000**
Relative wage income .36 .19 .01 21.520 .000**

Total household landholdings, in sao 14.29 18.72 9.84 8.766 .012*
Total HH agricultural landholdings,
in sao
8.67 10.96 8.15 7.752 .021*
1 sao = 500 m
2
* Significant at P \0.05; ** highly significant at P \0.01
122 Environmental Management (2010) 45:113–131
123
We can distinguish the difference between use of NTFPs
for overall income diversification (such as to supplement
income during seasons of low agricultural labor demand)
and for coping in case of loss of crops or other emergen-
cies; these two strategies can be classified as ex ante and ex
post respectively (Pattanayak and Sills 2001; Delacote
2007). In qualitative interviews with farmers, many indi-
cated that forest income is in Cam Xuyen is important in
both ways. For farmers with mid to higher levels of income
from agriculture, forest goods could be used to smooth
consumption in off-seasons and formed an important ex
ante livelihood strategy. For the poorest households, they
often had labor constraints that prohibited their making use
of forests on a regular basis, but rather, the poor used them
in ex post ways as a type of insurance for emergencies or
unexpected problems. Poorer households would often go
collect products at times of the year when they needed
extra cash (such as before the lunar New Year’s holidays
and the beginning of the school year for children’s school
fees), and additionally could call upon forest reserves if the
household had an unexpected emergency, such as a family

illness, for which a quick infusion of cash was needed. Few
households reported significant cash savings from year to
year; household expenses actually exceeded calculated
yearly cash income (see Table 1), indicating forests
remained an important source to call upon for cash.
Impact of Conservation Restrictions on Income
A number of households would be affected if the borders of
the KGNR were enforced according to the law and all
forest access restricted, although such impacts would not
be evenly spread among all households. Eighty-eight per-
cent of households had used some forest product in the
previous year, but not all these households used products
regularly or sold them for cash or had high dependence on
these products. Those households who exploited forest
resources for cash income (57% of the sample) would have
an income decrease if enforcement was tightened; their
NTFP income was on average 1,163,609 VND ($80 US),
which accounted for approximately 28% of these house-
holds’ income. A small subset of these households would
experience the most hardship, such as the 15% of families
in the study villages who got more than half their income
from forests.
The above figures include only cash income however;
households that sourced subsistence goods (primarily
fuelwood, for 75% of households) would have to expend
money or labor or both on substitutes, should access be
completely restricted through blanket enforcement bans. A
family of 5 used on average more than 4,000 kg of fuel-
wood a year, which would have cost over 2 million VND
($138 US) to buy at the market at the time of the survey.

Considering the average household cash income was only
4,710,000 VND ($325 US) a year, many families would
face economic hardship if they had to divert 40% of their
income to the purchase of fuelwood. Other important
subsistence goods included rattan for house construction
(used by 26% of households) and wild medicinal plants
(used by 13% of households), both of which would have to
be purchased should KGNR resources be restricted.
Discussion
Why Farmers’ Use of Protected Forests Needs
to be Better Understood
The results indicate strong links between forest use and
farmer livelihoods around the protected nature reserve of
Ke Go. A majority of households surveyed received some
form of cash income from forest based sources, and a large
Table 4 Seasonal calendar of agricultural and forest activities in Cam Xuyen
Month Rice Peanuts Cassava Potato Beans Fuelwood Timber Other NTFPs
Jan Plant Collect Collect Collect
Feb Plant Collect Collect Collect
Mar Harvest winter crop
Apr Plant spring crop Harvest Harvest Plant
May Harvest Collect
Jun Collect
July Collect
Aug Harvest spring crop Plant
Sep Harvest Collect Collect Collect
Oct Collect Collect Collect
Nov Plant winter crop
Dec Collect Collect Collect
Environmental Management (2010) 45:113–131 123

123
majority of households also relied on forests for subsis-
tence goods, namely fuelwood. A core subset of the com-
munity had strong dependency on the KGNR for much of
their income, and those households that had no other
options to access cash income (such as low levels of
livestock or no access to wage labor) were more dependent
on this forest use.
To what degree are these findings comparable across
other sites in Vietnam? Unfortunately, there are few other
studies that have quantified income from all forest products
in a single study site (see the review of studies in Sunderlin
and Ba 2005). One study on the importance of wild gath-
ered vegetables in southern and central Vietnam found that
over 90% of sampled women relied to some degree on wild
foods (Ogle and others 2003) while another study found
nearly 100% of households surveyed in a mountainous area
of north central Vietnam relied on collection of forest
products from the surrounding village forests for either
subsistence or income (Quang and Anh 2006). There are
likely many additional examples that await research, and
this article has indicated that forest research should not be
restricted only to ethnic minorities, but also extended to
lowland farmers. There are 2.3 million hectares of strictly
protected special use forest, 6 million hectares of water-
shed protection forest, and over 5 million hectares of
production forest in Vietnam (de Jong and others 2006);
there are potentially millions of people living near these
areas who may be receiving forest incomes.
Particularly for the strictly protected forest estate in

National Parks and Nature Reserves like the KGNR,
increased funding in recent years through donors and a new
Vietnam Conservation Fund is allowing these areas to be
better patrolled and protected than in the past (Hanh and
others 2002; MARD 2004; Polet and Ling 2004). Protected
areas management boards are increasingly trying to stop all
exploitation activities rather than letting it go as they had in
the past, and increasing numbers of rangers were being
hired and trained as more and more international devel-
opment aid was directed at enforcement (Hanh and others
2002). Because according to law there is to be no collection
of forest products at all—no matter the relative conserva-
tion impact—in any special use forest, it is likely that there
will be increasing pressure on households living near
protected areas in Vietnam in the future, both in the form of
relocation as well as in restricted access (McElwee 2006).
This may have serious livelihood impacts which have
been overlooked to date in Vietnam, and which this article
has sought to emphasize. Few of the country’s protected
areas have sufficient attention to or funding for livelihood
impacts from conservation and make no reference to how
households are to economically cope with restrictions on
resources (McElwee 2002); most of the additional funding
for conservation from the government is for direct
conservation management (salaries of rangers, mapping of
park resources, etc) and not for development activities for
affected populations. This problem is likely to be particu-
larly acute for farmers living around protected areas;
because many peasant households will self-identify as ‘rice
farmers’ on income and census surveys, they may be

assumed to have little or no benefit from forestry, and
many household census instruments used to gather data in
Vietnam take no note of ‘environmental income’ and thus
under-represent it. Therefore these farmers may lose access
to and use of forests as conservation laws are made
stronger and imposed in new areas, simply because these
farmers’ forest use has been ‘invisible’. Even donors and
NGOs in Vietnam focused on poverty are also often una-
ware of the possible contributions of protected forests to
farming households because so few assessment exercises
have been carried out that have tried to quantify this forest
income. As an example, the World Bank funded in 1999 a
‘participatory poverty assessment’ exercise to provide a
bottom-up look at poverty, including in the assessment the
province of Ha Tinh. There was virtually no mention of
forests contributing to livelihoods in this report, despite the
fact that more than half of the province’s land is classified
as mountainous and non-agricultural (Action Aid Vietnam
and others 1999). In another example, a report by an
international NGO on livelihoods in a neighboring district
of Ha Tinh noted that many people made a living through
exploiting ‘coal’. This was a mistranslation of the Viet-
namese word for charcoal (than), and implied that the
residents of the district were industrial miners, rather than
people dependent on forest resources (Oxfam Hong Kong
1997).
Another aspect of farmers’ forest use that has been
ignored is the strong diversity in number of species used.
While the total number of species documented to be used
by farmers in Ke Go is lower than the total number of

species collected by indigenous forest-dwellers in other
areas of the world (Prance and others 1987; Pinedo-Vas-
quez and others 1990; Phillips and others 1994; Luoga and
others
2000; Letsela and others 2003), it is higher than the
number of NTFPs collected by agricultural colonists doc-
umented for the Amazon, for example (Summers and
others 2004). This may indicate the need to distinguish in
forest use typologies, such as those of Ruiz Perez and
others (2004) and Sunderlin and others (2005) an inter-
mediate category of farmers who have relatively high
levels of income from a diverse group of NTFP products.
In fact, many studies on forest use among farmers tend to
focus on one or two products only; in the meta-analysis of
forest use done by researchers with CIFOR that forms the
basis for the articles by Ruiz Pe
´
rez and others (2004);
Belcher and others (2005) and Kusters and others (2006)
outlining typologies of forest users, one of the 61 case
124 Environmental Management (2010) 45:113–131
123
studies was conducted near the KGNR (Quang 2004).
However that CIFOR case study focused only on one
product (rattan) that was cultivated by farmers in gardens,
and ignored all other forms of wild-harvested NTFPs by
households. Thus their study may not in fact well-repre-
sentative of NTFP use in central Vietnam because it did not
assess the relative importance of all NTFPs, both wild and
cultivated, that were important to local farmers, as this

study has attempted to do.
A final point about farmers’ resource use is the strongly
seasonal nature of their exploitation, and the role of forests
as safety-nets when agriculture was unproductive or labor
supply in excess. As Byron and Arnold (1999) state ‘‘The
information available suggests that for most users, the
importance of forest products income is usually more in the
way it fills gaps and complements other income, than in its
absolute magnitude or share of overall household income.’’
(p. 792) While some studies assume a competitive labor
allocation between agriculture and forest activities (Go-
palakrishnan and others 2005), in reality, the two are often
complementary; farmers often undertake forest activities in
agricultural slack seasons. The forests of the KGNR served
as a ‘bank’ for households that they could draw on in times
of particular need as well; this was especially important as
few households reported significant cash savings from year
to year. This mirrors findings from elsewhere that highlight
the important ‘safety net’ roles forests often play (Godoy
and others 2000; McSweeney 2004; Paumgarten 2006;
Shackleton and Shackleton 2004).
The Social Costs of Conservation
There are numerous impacts from conservation enforce-
ment that have been documented elsewhere in the world
that should serve a potential source of warning to Vietnam
as it strengthens management at protected areas (Geisler
1994; Chatty and Colchester 2002; Brockington 2002; Igoe
2006; Brockington and others 2006; West and others
2006). Although much literature has focused on the poverty
implications of eviction and physical relocation away from

protected areas (Cernea and Schmidt-Soltau 2006; Broc-
kington and Igoe 2006; Schmidt-Soltau and Brockington
2007), even in places where forest users are not evicted,
there are likely to be welfare impacts from conservation
enforcement (Ghimire and Pimbert 1997; Scherl and others
2004; Adams and others 2004; Brockington and Schmidt-
Soltau 2004). The competing valuation of resources from
local areas to global scales compounds the problem; while
the benefits of strict conservation often accrue regionally or
globally, the costs are usually borne most locally in terms
of loss of access to livelihoods and incomes (Wells 1992;
Brown 1998). Furthermore, it is often the most vulnerable
or dependent households in communities that bear the
brunt of such conservation costs, which are not spread
equally (Colchester 2006).
Yet there are only a few studies that concretely address
the degree to which conservation enforcement will have
welfare impacts, who will be most affected, and how these
impacts might be avoided (Ghimire and Pimbert 1997;
Ferraro 2002; Schmidt-Soltau 2004). There is a lack of
sufficient studies on the overall costs of conservation for
local peoples, and how this might be compensated or
diminished; as Ferraro (2002) notes, ‘There is a dearth of
quantitative data on the costs borne by local residents when
protected areas are established in low-income nations’ (p.
262). For example, many estimates of how much it costs to
fund a global protected areas system include management
costs only, and not the opportunity costs to local commu-
nities, which remain unvalued, and unfunded as a conse-
quence (Balmford and others 2003; Moore and others

2004). These opportunity costs are defined by Wells (1992)
as ‘the benefits foregone as a result of lost access to the
natural resources of a protected areas. There are generally
two types of opportunity cost. First the consumptive ben-
efits foregone from potential harvests of natural prod-
ucts…Second, and potentially of much greater value, are
the economic benefits that could have been gained from
conversion of the protected areas to an alternative use—
such as agriculture, mining of hydro-electric power gen-
eration’ (pp. 241–242). James and others (2001) estimate
that the opportunity costs of global protected areas may be
as high as $5 billion a year, which is significantly more
than that $750 million spent on actual management costs
(Balmford and Whitten 2003).
The opportunity costs to local communities include both
direct losses of income as well as more indirect costs such as
loss of agricultural crops to wildlife predation from protected
species in nearby parks (Newmark and others 1994; Kide-
ghesho and others 2007). Yet there are only a handful of
studies that have tried to quantify these costs in specific
protected areas. Mishra (1997) found that livestock losses to
predation from wolves and leopards around a wildlife
sanctuary in the Indian Himalaya lead to a loss of about half
the per capita annual income (Mishra 1997). In a study of
Mantadia National Park in Madagascar, it was estimated that
households lost 18% of their total gross income from con-
servation restrictions, with a total opportunity costs of over
300,000 USD per year (Shyamsundar and Kramer 1997).
Ferraro (2002) estimates the costs of Ranomafana National
Park, also in Madagascar, to local communities was around

3% of annual income; while this amount may appear small,
he points out that households were near minimum income
requirements in the first place. Ferraro also notes that these
costs differed among households, with older households
bearing more costs as they were more dependent on tradi-
tional agricultural production restricted by the park.
Environmental Management (2010) 45:113–131 125
123
The Ke Go case study presented here shows the need for
more detailed accounting of opportunity costs due to pro-
tected areas. Particularly in circumstances where manage-
ment plans call for the curtailment of freely collected
resources, it is important to be able to know who will be
most affected, so these impacts might be ameliorated. The
evidence collected indicates that on the basis of income
alone, loss of access to the KGNR will adversely affect the
majority of the thousands of farming households living
around the reserve in some way, although the costs are not
equally distributed. The largest costs will be borne by the
15% of households who derived more than half their
income from the KGNR; these were households who could
be distinguished by their lower wage labor, livestock and
agricultural income. If we extrapolate from the survey
results to the entire KGNR buffer zone population (40,000
people), and calculate that a core of approximately 15% of
households in the KGNR buffer zone might lose in the
range of 20%–50% of their income, this would make a
conservation cost for the KGNR of almost half a million
dollars to one million dollars per year, while the proposed
management budget for the park was estimated at only

$170,000 US per year (Trai and others 1999).
Targeting of Conservation Interventions
Better income accounting of the conservation costs of
protected areas could be used to help design appropriate
approaches to conservation that will not increase poverty
(Fisher and others 2005); examples of where this infor-
mation could be useful include the new payments for
environmental services approaches that are becoming
increasingly popular in the developing world (Pagiola and
others 2005). In order for such payments to work efficiently
and effectively, they need to be targeted to ‘compensate
agents who would have benefited from the biodiversity-
threatening activity’, not necessarily to everyone in a
community (Wunder 2007).
For example, one possible way to avoid the negative
outcomes of a complete enforcement ban on extraction
from the KGNR is to target those households that harvested
certain high conservation value products (such as wild
animals or timber) or who were having a disproportionate
environmental impact through high levels of resource draw
(such as charcoal makers). Studies elsewhere have shown
that rather than blanket conservation enforcement, it often
makes sense to look at highly targeted interventions. For
example, in one study site in the Peruvian Amazon,
extraction of certain items of conservation importance
(such as palm fruits and hearts and game) were ‘highly
concentrated’ among a small number of households (Co-
omes and others 2004). Near the KGNR, the 18% of the
sample who made charcoal were having a disproportionate
conservation impact in that they used large quantities of

standing wood. On the other hand, the majority of house-
holds collected fuelwood, which was less detrimental to
forest structure as mostly leaves and dead wood and
branches were collected, not whole trees. A total forest
enforcement policy would exclude both groups of users,
while in fact it is the charcoal makers that were likely
having the largest impact. Enforcing a charcoal ban, while
allowing the legal collection of dry wood from dead
branches, would be one way to better target enforcement.
Targeting can be applied not just to certain species or
products of high conservation impact, but also to groups of
households that have higher levels of forest dependency. In
Cam Xuyen, the most forest dependent households were
not significantly different from others in terms of overall
income, as Table 3 indicated. The more forest dependent
households could be best identified not by overall income
class, but by analysis of their access to alternative income
streams. Those without access to wage labor or government
salaries tended to be more dependent, as did those with less
income from livestock and agriculture. These households
might be successfully targeted to reduce their conservation
impact.
A final aspect of targeting that would incorporate the
needs of local livelihoods of farmers would be seasonally
based conservation interventions. As noted earlier, the
nature of forest use is strongly seasonal in Ke Go, primarily
occurring the agricultural slack seasons of late winter, mid-
summer, and mid-fall, with winter being the most finan-
cially important as it was a time to raise cash for the lunar
new year’s celebrations. It is also likely that winter might

be an appropriate time to allow more harvesting, given
most plant growth cycles and reproduction (i.e., presence
of dead branches and dried wood in winter). Paying
attention to when households use forest products could be
used in conjunction with conservation measures such as
limited seasons for NTFP collecting to ensure reproduction
of key species, as long as livelihood needs throughout the
year could be matched satisfactorily with growing seasons
for forest produce or reproduction seasons for animals.
Substitutions for Income Lost to Conservation
One possible remedy to loss of income if the borders of the
KGNR are more strictly enforced is the substitution of
other income sources for that lost. A common strategy in
conservation has been to try to couple the protection of
lands through enforcement with development strategies to
reduce household dependence on protected areas, often
called Integrated Conservation and Development Projects
or ICDPs (Larson and others 1998; McShane and Wells
2004; Adams and Hulme 2001). Too often, however, IC-
DPs have been designed with only loose linkages between
126 Environmental Management (2010) 45:113–131
123
the households whose forest activities were curtailed and
the provision of alternative income sources (Salafsky and
Wollenberg 2000; Coad and others 2008). Often, com-
pensation for lost lands or livelihoods has been far less than
the value of decreased income opportunities (Schmidt-
Soltau 2004) or has involved new activities that might
favor some groups over others, leading to income
inequality (Mehta and Kellert 1998; Rugendyke and Son

2005). In other cases, the income substitution activities turn
out to be inappropriate for the local situation, and people
revert back to protected areas use (Peters 1998; Hughes and
Flintan 2001).
An example is the use by some ICDPs of investment in
agriculture as a substitute for forest income, particularly
where farmers are the forest users, as was the case in Ke
Go studied here. Some ICDPs have emphasized that
increasing productivity through intensification of agricul-
ture and higher prices for crops will lead to less pressure
for land expansion into forests (Green and others 2005).
However, there is also evidence that increased income in
the form of higher prices for agricultural crops is a major
factor behind deforestation as farms expand in response to
the market (Angelsen 1999b). In Cam Xuyen, the fact that
more forest dependent households had less land available
(about a third less than non-dependent households; see
Table 3) was likely to affect their ability to benefit from
agricultural interventions. This is confirmed by work in
India, where certain types of non-farm income were shown
to even out income inequality in communities in ways that
agriculture investment did not, as agriculture is linked to
land access and quality which is often unevenly distributed
(Mahapatra and others 2005).
In Cam Xuyen, another issue presented itself as a barrier
to substituting agriculture for forest use; that is the fact that
agriculture produced less net income than livestock or
wage labor because of the higher capital expenses involved
(on average, $82 US a year in inputs per household) for
buying pesticides, fertilizers, irrigation fees, hired labor,

milling, etc. For forest goods, there was no capital
expenses, as all were freely collected with no special
equipment or processing needed, and no need for cash
inputs as they were wild harvested, not cultivated. Finding
a substitution for forest income that would be effective
would require an alternative that had little initial capital
outlay, as was the case with forest extraction.
Thus wage labor appears to be a better alternative than
agriculture for many forest-dependent households, as wage
labor usually requires no initial access to capital. Similar
findings have been reported for India (Reddy and Chak-
ravarty 1999). Access to wage labor appeared to reduce
dependency on forests among current residents, as house-
holds near the KGNR that had non-forest related employ-
ment (doing wage labor, receiving government salaries or
pensions, or service or business income) had significantly
lower forest exploitation incomes than those who did not
have wage income. This finding is similar to reports from
elsewhere in Asia, where increased opportunities for wage
labor have been shown to reduce forest use (Shively and
Pagiola 2004). Qualitative interviews and focus groups in
the KGNR confirmed the survey conclusions, in that those
who had left activities such as charcoal making said they
did so primarily because they had found other wage labor
opportunities, not due to increased enforcement. Increasing
these waged opportunities might be one of the more
effective conservation investments the KGNR might make,
particularly if these jobs were to be targeted at the high
conservation impact households (i.e., charcoal makers,
hunters and timber traders).

Conclusions
This article has argued that paying more attention to the
interactions between farming households and forests and
protected areas is needed in Vietnam, mirroring concern
with poverty and conservation linkages elsewhere. This
article has shown that by numerous measures, the majority
of farming households surveyed relied on the nearby pro-
tected area for both cash and subsistence goods, even
though they were primarily identified (by themselves and
by others) as rice farmers. The farmers used the KGNR for
extraction of a diverse number of species, indicating
pressure on protected areas from farmers does not always
come from land expansion alone. Those households not
doing well in agriculture or who had no sources of off-farm
cash income tended to have the highest levels of depen-
dency on forests.
Better information on and attention to such details about
forest use in rural Vietnam is particularly needed as laws
are being strengthened to make the collection of products
from protected forests increasingly difficult. At the time of
the study, because enforcement actions were unevenly
directed, many households continued to freely collect for-
est products like rattans, medicinals and leaves without fear
of reprisal. Such openness was tenuous, however, as
rangers could at any time decide to strictly enforce the
national laws prohibiting forest extraction from Nature
Reserves. Without recognition of the links between farm-
ing and forest extraction, the enforcement of conservation
laws may appear to be easy and to affect few people
(because no one was actually living in the park under

study), but in fact could put some nearby farmers into
financial difficulty.
This is not to argue that enforcement is not needed or
there would be no conservation benefit if the KGNR was
better protected. Indeed, several activities, such as charcoal
Environmental Management (2010) 45:113–131 127
123
harvesting and hunting, had high conservation impacts.
And while this study did not attempt to value the ecosystem
services provided by the KGNR to the nearby farmers, it is
likely that continued loss of forest cover might indeed
impose costs on households who are dependent on good
water supplies from upstream for their wet rice irrigation
(see Naughton-Treves and others 2005 for examples).
Rather, this article argues that conservation interventions
need to be coupled with attention to who will be most
affected in order to ease the transition to conservation and
not lead to increased levels of hardship.
The problem, however, is that little attention has been
paid to these poverty-conservation conflicts, as they are
often overlooked in discussions in Vietnam. For example, a
recent document of the World Bank highlighted the need to
pay attention to conflicts between protected forests (many
of which are eligible for special conservation funding loans
from the Bank) and local populations’ use of these forests,
but the Bank’s concern was limited to a discussion of
ethnic minority populations in order to be in compliance
with the Bank’s overall indigenous peoples policies (World
Bank EASRE 2003). Farmers who are not ethnic minorities
are often not recognized as being in any special need of

attention or care with regard to forestry policy. Yet as this
article has demonstrated, Vietnamese peasants around
protected forests also may have high levels of dependency
on forest resources. More studies like this one are needed to
expand knowledge in Vietnam and elsewhere on how
economically linked farmers may be to nearby protected
areas, and how conservation interventions benefiting both
the forest and dependent households might be designed.
Acknowledgments Funding for research in Ha Tinh in 2000–2001
was generously provided by the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthro-
pological Research small grant and a National Science Foundation
Dissertation Improvement Grant. The author would like to thank her
research sponsor in Vietnam, the Centre for Natural Resources and
Environmental Studies of Vietnam National University, and in partic-
ular Dr. Vo Quy, Dr. Truong Quang Hoc, and Vo Thanh Giang, for their
support of this research project. Dr. Le Tran Chan’s assistance in
identifying specimens is gratefully acknowledged. The author would
also like to thank Michael Dove, Eric Worby and Jim Scott for their
comments on this research in different form.
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