Forest Cover Change, Households’ Livelihoods, Trade-Offs, and Constraints Associated with Plantation Forests in Poor Upland-Rural Landscapes: Evidence from North Central Vietnam
Abstract
<jats:p>Vietnam’s forests have experienced a notable transformation over the past 20 years from net deforestation to reforestation and expanding forests. Continued reforestation that aims to achieve further economic and environmental benefits remains a national priority and strategy. We explore the current status of plantation forests and highlight possible means to facilitate their expansion in the uplands of Vietnam. We employ mixed method triangulation to empirically explore plantation forests and their economic role in household livelihood, to quantify trade-offs between plantation forests and shifting cultivation, and to assess the constraints on plantation forest expansion in Nghe An province, north-central Vietnam. Results show that forest in the study area expanded by 406,000 ha (71.1%) between 1990 and 2016. Plantation forests increased by nearly 500% (from 32,000 ha to 190,000 ha), while natural forests expanded by 48.1% (from 538,000 ha to 797,000 ha). Plantation forests contributed an average of 35.1 percent of total household income in wealthier households and 27.9 percent of income in poor households. Switching from shifting cultivation to plantation forests would increase total household income and average carbon stock but decrease food provision. Total Economic Value would be higher for plantation forest scenarios if increased carbon stocks in plantations can be monetized. This carbon income might drive conversion of shifting cultivation to plantation forests. Constraints on further expansion of plantation forest are low external cooperation, education, market stability, and agroforestry extension services. Our empirical results inform national plantation forest development, sustainable upland livelihood development, and climate change mitigation programs to ultimately facilitate forest transition and improve the resilience and sustainability of socio-ecological systems.</jats:p>
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Van Khuc, Q, TAT Le, TH Nguyen, D Nong, BQ Tran, P Meyfroidt, T Tran, PB Duong, et al. (n.d.). Forest Cover Change, Households’ Livelihoods, Trade-Offs, and Constraints Associated with Plantation Forests in Poor Upland-Rural Landscapes: Evidence from North Central Vietnam. Forests, 11(5). pp. 548–548. 10.3390/f11050548 Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/20639.
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Trung Thanh Nguyen
Dr. Nguyen is at the Institute for Environmental Economics and World Trade (www.iuw.uni-hannover.de), School of Economics and Management (www.wiwi.uni-hannover.de), Leibniz University Hannover (www.uni-hannover.de), Germany, and visiting associate professor at Duke/Duke Kunshan Universities. He received his MSc in International Forestry and Management from the Technical University of Dresden, Germany in 2002 and his PhD in Agricultural Economics from Justus Liebieg University Giessen, Germany in 2008. He has also qualified for a full professorship (“Habilitation”) in Ecosystem Services from the University of Bayreuth, Germany in 2015 and in Economics from the Leibniz University Hannover, Germany in 2016. His research and teaching focus on the interactions between environmental and development issues in the developing world. He has authored about 50 articles published in international journals such as World Development, Journal of Development Studies, Ecological Economics, Agricultural Economics, Forest Policy and Economics, Land Use Policy, Food Security, Economic Analysis and Policy, and Energy Policy. He is particularly interested in comparative studies of environmental governance and policy at the international level.
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