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Devolution of land management through land reform is among main concerns of policy makers in Vietnam, yet it is not a new topic. The first land reform dated back to as early as 1953 when the Vietnamese National Assembly passed the law on land reform. Since then, devolution in land management has been going through different stages. In 1993, the Government of Vietnam (GOV) made a remarkable change in its land administration by stipulating in 1993 Land Law that people are entitled to receive a long term land use title (also known as Red Book Certificate - RBC) for agricultural and residential land. Local people are granted legal rights to transfer, mortgage, rent, exchange and inherit the use rights with regard to the allocated land. However, devolution in forested land remains limited. Forest people are contracted on annual basis to protect the forested land, whose rights to use and to manage are legally still under the state forest organizations. By 1998, the idea of allocating forested land to local forest farmers with land use title (similar to the one discussed above) is initiated. The first place where this type of forest land allocation (FLA) is experimented is Dak Lak, a province in the Central Highland of Vietnam.

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Dak Lak is a largest province in Vietnam with 52% of the territory classified as forestland. The forest resources, which provide timber, firewood, food, medicine, fodder, and the likes, play an important role in the lives of the province's nearly 1.8 million people from 34 different ethnic groups.

Total agricultural land in 1976 was 92,722 ha. Since then, there has been an accelerated expansion of agricuultural land, which results in the total agricultural production land of 524,908 ha in the year 2000. This implies an increase of more than 5 times the agricultural land over a period of 25 years. The expansion of agricultural land during the last 25 years has been largely at the expense of natural forest areas.

A rapid increase of population also leads to high demand for agricultural land, timber for housing and other forest products. Population increases over the last two decades from 360,000 in 1976 to 1,706,675 in 1999. In other words, by 1999 the population in Dak Lak is more than 5 times as many as the population in 1976.

As a consequence, an alarming degradation and loss of forest resources has been reported. Forest cover has fallen from 63% in 1993 to 52% in 2000, representing a lost of 11%. This has a direct impact on the welfare of the local population who mainly rely on the forest product for their livelihood.

However, the management and production practices applied by state forest enterprises in the past can only be described as a "mining" activity. Forest resources, officially claimed as state assets, were put under control of state forest organizations, which are listed in the table below. Past and present systems of forest management do not encourage participation by local communities. Conflicts between local people and state forest enterprises over control of and access to forest resources increase over time.

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The results of adverse impacts on the state of resources and welfare of the upland population have motivated decision-makers in Dak Lak and Hanoi to focus their efforts on participatory approaches in forest protection and management. There is a growing understanding that sustainable forestry needs to involve local people. This leads to the decision of Dak Lak authority to implement an experimental forestland allocation program

In 1998, the forest land allocation process in Dak Lak marked as major change. In January 1998, the People's Committee (PC) of Dak Lak province initiated FLA. Following the PC's decree, the Department of Planning and Investment (DPI) assigned a plan and budgetary resources for the allocation of 1,000 ha to the State Forest Enterprise (SFE) in Ea H'Leo district. DPI also asked four other SFEs to prepare allocation of 1,000 ha each. The goal was to allocate existing forest to households and give them land use title for the land.

The objectives:

The FLA in Dak Lak aims to meet the following objectives:

• secure land and tree tenure: forest plots are assigned to households in an unambiguous way (no land conflicts); households' rights are recognized by other people and can be enforced against encroachment;
• an equitable distribution of forest land: villagers receive forest land plots according to clearly defined and widely accepted criteria; there are no major differences in forest land holdings among different groups (rich/poor, men/women, Kinh/Gig Rai, different clans); and,
• records for future land and forest management, which meet the requirements of the Department of Land Administration and Forest Protection Department.

It is important to understand that the forestland allocation process in Dak Lak has gone significantly beyond the national policy in the devolution of forest management. It is the first time that forested land is allocated to local people with land use title.

The Sustainable Management of Resources in the Lower Mekong Basin Project (SMRP) provides essential assistance to develop methods and organisational structures to help move FLA at the provincial policy as well as the implementation level. In addition, with support from SMRP, DARD has established an inter-institutional consultative working group (CWG) on forestland allocation and forest management systems. This group plays an important role in facilitating a process of cooperation between key organisations involved in FLA. It also provides practical help to forest enterprises implementing FLA. Due to the mix of group members from different key organisations, the CWG helps improve coordination among stakeholders and increase transparency of FLA. Its assistance to facilitate and organise workshops bringing together government agencies from commune, district and provincial levels has set an example for the potential of inter-institutional arrangements.

By the end of October 2000, 7,451 ha of stocked forest from 5 state forest enterprises have been allocated to 471 households and 8 user groups. In addition, 3,000 ha of forest from 2 additional forest enterprises are in the plan to be allocated to local farmers in 2000. Detailed information about allocated land is presented in the table bellow.

 For more information about FLA in Dak Lak, please visit the FLA Consultative Working Group (CWG) in Dak Lak.

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