Red Books for Greener Trees: Strengthening Community Forestry in Vietnam

In December 2004, the passing of the Forest Protection and Development Law (FPDL) legally recognized community forest management (CFM) in Vietnam for the first time. Despite this step, skepticism remains about whether CFM can work in practice and to what extent legal recognition contributes to effective forest protection and management.

During 2008, in response to these concerns, the Forest Governance Learning Group (FGLG) visited 25 villages to learn from field implementation of CFM in seven provinces.

All except one of the villages had received, or were officially about to receive, a ‘Red Book’ granting them legal land-use title to natural forest areas. In the one village without legal title, local people were managing the forest according to their traditional regulations.

This brief presents findings on the extent to which legal forest rights contribute to the management and protection of local forest resources, and conversely, how the absence of forest land-use title disadvantages local communities and negatively affects forest condition. We argue that while the connection between legal rights and good forest protection is not straightforward, local communities with legal rights to forests are entitled to benefits they would not otherwise have.