Thomas Sikor

Contributions of cultural services to the ecosystem services agenda

Cultural ecosystem services (ES) are consistently recognized but not yet adequately defined or integrated within the ES framework. A substantial body of models, methods, and data relevant to cultural services has been developed within the social and behavioral sciences before and outside of the ES approach. A selective review of work in landscape aesthetics, cultural heritage, outdoor recreation, and spiritual significance demonstrates opportunities for operationally defining cultural services in terms of socioecological models, consistent with the larger set of ES. Such models explicitly link ecological structures and functions with cultural values and benefits, facilitating communication between scientists and stakeholders and enabling economic, multicriterion, deliberative evaluation and other methods that can clarify tradeoffs and synergies involving cultural ES. Based on this approach, a common representation is offered that frames cultural services, along with all ES, by the relative contribution of relevant ecological structures and functions and by applicable social evaluation approaches. This perspective provides a foundation for merging ecological and social science epistemologies to define and integrate cultural services better within the broader ES framework.

The allocation of forestry land in Vietnam: did it cause the expansion of forests in the northwest?

Forests expanded rapidly in northwestern Vietnam in the 1990s. Forest expansion coincided with a new forest policy that mandated the devolution of forest management authority. A cornerstone of the new policy was the allocation of use rights for forestry land and trees to rural households. This paper examines to what extent the new forest policy contributed to the observed forest expansion. The findings of three village studies suggest that the new forest policy had minor effects on actual property rights, as villagers resisted its implementation. Instead, forests expanded, mainly due to the liberalization of agricultural output markets and availability of new technology. Changes in markets and technology motivated farmers to intensify crop production, reducing agricultural pressure on land. The research findings suggest the potential of market-based instruments and technology policy to facilitate forest regeneration. They also demonstrate the benefits of in-depth village studies for forest policy analysis, as it provides an integrated framework for assessing the relative effects of political, economic and technological changes on forests.

Tree plantations, politics of possession and the absence of land grabs in Vietnam

Viewed from the lens of ‘land grabs’, Vietnams fast-growing tree plantations look like an anomaly; many of them are tiny, owned and operated by rural households. In contrast, private companies and transnational corporations have not been able to get much of a foot into Vietnams plantation sector. This paper identifies the practices and processes underlying the apparent anomaly. On the basis of fieldwork in four villages, it points to the concrete mechanisms by which households have gained access to land, finance, and wood markets. Government policy emerges as a critical factor enabling household access, not in the sense of a coherent policy package but understood as sedimented outcomes of everyday processes of state formation over the past three decades. A central element in contestations over the state is what I call ‘politics of possession’: possession, referring to entitlement and control, has been closely tied to ideas about the state. The paper uses these empirical observations to contribute towards theoretical understandings of land grabs and exclusion. Land grabs may have to say as much about dynamics of state formation as processes of commodification and market expansion.

Agrarian differentiation in post-socialist societies:Evidence from three upland villages in North-Western Vietnam

The literature on post-socialist transformations displays a fairly broad consensus that changes in macro structures of state and economy generate or increase rural inequality. This article examines the distributional effects of macro changes in Vietnamese villages. Findings from local-level research highlight the multiple ways in which people react to changes in macro structures. Core fields of negotiation by local people include exchange relations, the use of surplus, and land tenure. Local negotiation may lead to local-level trajectories of agrarian change that differ significantly from national-level changes. Changes in macro structures thus may not substantially alter the underlying process of differentiation. Rural people may be rich and poor for the same reasons as under collective agriculture, though income differences may have become more accentuated.

Agricultural Policy and Land Use Changes in a Black Thai Commune of Northern Vietnam, 1952–1997

Abstract Vietnamese agricultural policy has changed radically during the past 5 decades. Decollectivization in the 1980s and 1990s followed 2 decades of collective agriculture. This article examines the effects of agricultural policy on land use. It reports the results of remote image interpretation and socioeconomic field study in a Black Thai commune in Vietnams northern mountains. It suggests that the landscape in the commune has been highly dynamic and that this dynamism was partly the result of the agricultural policy. Collectivization and decollectivization affected land use, but their influence was mediated by other factors, primarily changing technology and markets. In addition, the relationship between national policy and local land use is complicated by 2 factors: (1) changes in local institutions may predate national reforms, and (2) implementation of national policy and the resulting local institutions may differ from place to place.

Illegal Logging in Vietnam: Lam Tac (Forest Hijackers) in Practice and Talk

This article examines the political economy of illegal logging through a case study from Vietnam. The study examines the extraction and trade of a particular timber species through commodity-chain analysis and looks at national-level debates about illegal logging, corruption, and the state. Its findings suggest that central government concerns over authority and public discussions about corruption informed the criminalization of much logging. Criminalization provided the grounds for powerful wholesalers, brokers, and government officials to engage in the timber business and control the timber trade. The logging operations, in turn, fed back into the concerns of the central government and public. The article concludes that these interactions between local political economy and national politics may be a more general dynamic of illegal logging. A singular focus on law enforcement may serve neither local livelihoods nor forest protection in areas with smallholder extraction.

Economic and Environmental Dynamics of Reform in Vietnam

Vietnam is at a critical juncture in its economic development. Reforms currently underway are transforming the institutional framework that structures economic activity: the government has liberalized economic production and exchange; resource allocation has shifted toward market mechanisms with the goal of increasing flexibility and efficiency; state enterprise reform, the 1993 Land Law, and tax reforms have transferred assets to, and strengthened the role of, the private sector; and international trade and investment have been liberalized through the 1987 Foreign Investment Law and more recent foreign trade reforms. These institutional changes, while causing direct economic shifts, are exerting a profound influence on Vietnams environment. This article analyzes how two key effects of reform-shifts in the allocation of capital and shifts in control over production decisions-are altering human pressures on natural resources and environmental quality. Privatization and internationalization of the economy are altering patterns of capital accumulation among sectors and subsectors as capital allocation shifts to the market allocation. Control over production decisions is moving from the state and cooperatives to the private sector. We examine how these changes affect manufacturing, agriculture, and forestry and their impact on natural resource use and environmental quality. Reforms are having different impacts among economic sectors. In general, the consequences of reform vary according to the degree to which economic activities depend on public access to capital for efficient resource utilization, offer profitable opportunities for private investment, and change the relation-

From food to pest: Conversion factors determine switches between ecosystem services and disservices.

Abstract Ecosystem research focuses on goods and services, thereby ascribing beneficial values to the ecosystems. Depending on the context, however, outputs from ecosystems can be both positive and negative. We examined how provisioning services of wild animals and plants can switch between being services and disservices. We studied agricultural communities in Laos to illustrate when and why these switches take place. Government restrictions on land use combined with economic and cultural changes have created perceptions of rodents and plants as problem species in some communities. In other communities that are maintaining shifting cultivation practices, the very same taxa were perceived as beneficial. We propose conversion factors that in a given context can determine where an individual taxon is located along a spectrum from ecosystem service to disservice, when, and for whom. We argue that the omission of disservices in ecosystem service accounts may lead governments to direct investments at inappropriate targets.

REDD+ on the rocks? Conflict Over Forest and Politics of Justice in Vietnam.

In Vietnam, villagers involved in a REDD+ (reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) pilot protect areas with rocks which have barely a tree on them. The apparent paradox indicates how actual practices differ from general ideas about REDD+ due to ongoing conflict over forest, and how contestations over the meaning of justice are a core element in negotiations over REDD+. We explore these politics of justice by examining how the actors involved in the REDD+ pilot negotiate the particular subjects, dimensions, and authority of justice considered relevant, and show how politics of justice are implicit to practical decisions in project implementation. Contestations over the meaning of justice are an important element in the practices and processes constituting REDD+ at global, national and local levels, challenging uniform definitions of forest justice and how forests ought to be managed.

Learning Forest Devolution: An Assessment Tool Developed in Vietnam for Forest Departments

SUMMARY Devolution poses serious challenges to forest departments as it radically transforms their dealings with local people. Forest departments need to develop mechanisms for monitoring, analyzing, and adapting devolution policies in a timely and efficient manner. This paper discusses a tool developed in Vietnam for assessing local outcomes of devolution. The paper describes the social and analytical processes underlying the collaborative development of the assessment tool. Results from its application in ten villages in Dak Lak province suggest that the tool provides an effective and feasible way for forest departments to generate relevant information about local outcomes of forest devolution. Assessments such as the one in Dak Lak can make important contributions to learning-oriented approaches to forest devolution.