Van Chieu Hoang

Enhancing protected area management in the northeast of Vietnam through cooperation among protected area authorities and local communities.

At headquarter of Ba Be National Park 12 3 2008.

This is a research for my PhD study. The research explores participation of local people and communities in the management of protected areas in the northeast of Vietnam.

Currently, rural people in mountainous regions in Vietnam depend heavily on resources from protected areas as well as other forests for their livelihoods. This is claimed as one of the reasons of uncontrolled extraction of resources from protected areas that is creating difficulties for the management of these forests. However, there has been a lack of effective cooperation between protected area authorities who represent the State and local people to manage these resources. Therefore, this research aims to explore the possibilities for cooperation among protected area authorities and local people in managing resources of the protected areas.

The expected outcome from this research is that the reasonable arrangements for cooperation among these stakeholders will be indicated in order to meet the objectives of both nature conservation and local people’s livelihoods. To pursue this objective, the research will analyse some case studies of protected areas in the northeast of Vietnam. The intended sites include (1) Ba Be National Park, (2) Huu Lien Nature Reserve, and (3) South Xuan Lac Species and Habitat Conservation Area. The results from the analysis of these case studies will be used to explore the broad context of managing protect areas in the northeast of Vietnam. The data for this research analysis will include secondary data collected from publications and primary data collected by conducting fieldwork. The methods adopted for primary data collection include interviews, focus group discussions and participant observation in the communities inside and around the selected protected areas.

It is expected that this research will contribute to nature conservation through a reduction in the level of uncontrolled resource extraction from protected areas and sustain the local people’s livelihoods.

For more info contact chieu.hoang@anu.edu.au

Project Update: May 2008

Un-structured interview a local resident at Ba Be National Park on 4 4 2008.

Since being approved for financial support by RSG (on 7 March 2008), the research project has been carried out for over 2 months. After pre-survey in Ba Be National Park and its surrounding communities to collect primary data, focus of the research has been revised and updated. It will concentrate on finding the relationship between local people’s livelihoods and the protected areas’ resources. At the same time, it will determine the feasible mechanisms to encourage active involvements of local people in the management of the protected areas.

From pre-survey, it has been realised that the level of negative relationship between local people and the protected areas is greater than that of the positive relationship. On one hand, protected area management has caused significant obstacles to local people’s livelihoods, at the same time protected area authorities have faced difficulties caused by local residents during their management of the protected areas’ resources. On the other hand, the cooperation between local people and protected area authorities has been still limited and unsustainable.