Institutional Structures and Effects on Communal Forest Management

Abstract

In Vietnam, communal forests are mainly managed under two major governance modes with the different institutional structures: (i) village forest management (VFM), in which all households of a village belong to a forest management group, and (ii) forest user group (FUG), formed by a small number of households, a subset of a village. The objective of this study is to comparatively analyze the performances of community forest models under these institutional structures and to identify the determinants affecting the performance from analyzing 11 CFM models at Hoa Binh Province. The study results show that CFM models are rather diversity in terms of governance modes and reflect the adaptive process in CFM. The institutional structure has significant effect on the outcome of a CFM model, of which group size and linkage between local groups and local authorities are two key determinants. In many cases, the communal forests governed by the small-sized groups, which are nested under the control of local authorities are better managed than the forests governed by the large sized groups operating almost independently. From the findings, it is recommended that the diversity of governance modes in CFM should be fully recognized in legal frameworks and it should create an open space for local level negotiation and choice over forest governance structure.