Commune-level institutional arrangements and monitoring framework for integrated tree-based landscape management
Authors:   World Agroforestry, Phuong Vu Tan , Truong Nguyen Van , Hoan Do Trong 
Published: September 2021

Governance is a difficult task in the context of achieving landscape multifunctionality owing to the multiplicity of stakeholders, institutions, scale and ecosystem services: the ‘many-multiple’ (Cockburn et al 2018). Governing and managing the physical landscape and the actors in the landscape requires intensive knowledge and good planning systems. Land-use planning is a powerful instrument in landscape governance because it directly guides how actors will intervene in the physical landscape (land use) to gain commonly desired value. It is essential for sustaining rural landscapes and improving the livelihoods of rural communities (Bourgoin and Castella 2011, Bourgoin et al 2012, Rydin 1998), ensuring landscape multifunctionality (Nelson et al 2009, Reyers et al 2012) and enhancing efficiency in carbon sequestration, in particular (Bourgoin et al 2013, Cathcart et al 2007). It is also considered critical to the successful implementation of land-based climate mitigation, such as under Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), because the Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) sector is included in the mitigation contributions of nearly 90 percent of countries in Sub-Saharan and Southern Asia countries and in the Latin American and Caribbean regions (FAO 2016). Viet Nam has been implementing its NDC, which includes forestry and land-based mitigation options under the LULUCF sector. The contribution of the sector to committed national emission reduction is significant and cost-effective compared with other sectors. In addition to achieving emission reduction targets, implementation of forestry and land-based mitigation options has the highest benefits for social-economic development and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (MONRE 2020). Challenges, however, lie in the way national priorities and targets are translated into sub-national delivery plans and the way sub-national actors are brought together in orchestration (Hsu et al 2019) in a context where the legal framework for climate-change mitigation is elaborated at national rather than sub-national levels and coordination between government bodies and among stakeholders is generally ineffective (UNDP 2018). In many developing countries, conventional ‘top–down’, centralized land-use planning approaches have been widely practised, with very little success, a result of a lack of flexibility in adapting local peculiarities (Amler et al 1999, Ducourtieux et al 2005, Kauzeni et al 1993). In forest–agriculture mosaic landscapes, the fundamental question is how land-use planning can best conserve forest and agricultural land, both as sources of economic income and environmental services (O’Farrell and Anderson 2010). This paper provides guidance on monitoring integrated tree-based landscape management at commune level, based on the current legal framework related to natural resource management (land and forest) and the requirements of national green-growth development and assessment of land uses in two communes in Dien Bien and Son La provinces. The concept of integrated tree based landscape management in Viet Nam is still new and should be further developed for wider application across levels.