Description

Summary: This report presents the findings of a study to explore constraints and potential to addressing important aspects of poverty in Vietnam Uplands through rewarding the upland poor for environmental services they provide. The study was done by a team of three Vietnamese researchers, under the coordination and supervision of the International Center for Research in Agroforestry in South East Asia (ICRAF SEA). The study was done to provide information for use by the Program Rewarding the Upland Poor in Asia for Environmental Services They Provide (RUPES) and Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) in planning future activities.

The study attempts to review RUPES-related experience of rural development projects in Vietnam, with particular focus on rural development projects that are funded by Sida and the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) in northern Vietnam. Given the ‘Terms of References’ by ICRAF SEA, the projects included in the study were Vietnam-Sweden Mountainous Rural Development programme (MRDP) and five IFAD-funded projects, namely Ha Giang Development Project for Ethnic Minorities (HGDPEM), Participatory Resource Management Project (PRMP) and Rural Income Diversification Project (RIDP) in Tuyen Quang province, Agricultural Resources Conservation and Development Project (ARCDP) in Quang Binh province, and Ha Tinh Rural Development Project (HTRDP). Other relevant experiences were also discussed. Constraints and potentials for RUPES were identified based on the analytical review and field surveys.

This study was explicitly conceived as an analytical study, to attain better understanding of RUPES-related experiences, constraints and opportunities to the application of RUPES concept in Vietnam. This study is neither a project evaluation nor an operational planning. However, it provides a background for the development of future RUPES activities in Vietnam. The report contains five chapters and an appendix:

Chapter 1 explains research problem, objectives and methodologies. Chapter 2 is a brief review of theoretical literature on environmental reward in several aspects such as environmental and economic basis for the rewards, type of reward, rewarding mechanism, issues associated with environmental rewarding.

Chapter 3 provides an overview of natural socio-economic and demographic situation of Vietnam uplands in General and the North Vietnam’s uplands in particular. Issues and challenges in environmental and natural resource management in the uplands were discussed.

Chapter 4 is an analysis of RUPES related experiences of selected IFAD and Sida funded rural development projects in Vietnam. This draws on a wide range of documents from these projects and data and information gathered from field surveys by the research team.

Chapter 5 attempts to synthesize major constraints and potential for RUPES in Vietnam and to provides recommendations for follow-up RUPES activities in Vietnam.