Das Projekt "Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB) 564: Nachhaltige Landnutzung und ländliche Entwicklung in Bergregionen Südostasiens; Sustainable Land Use and Rural Development in Mountainous Regions of Southeast Asia, F 2.3: Impact valuation of land allocation and rural finance policies" wird/wurde gefördert durch: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft / Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) / National Research Council of Thailand (NRCT). Es wird/wurde ausgeführt durch: Universität Hohenheim, Institut für Agrar- und Sozialökonomie in den Tropen und Subtropen.Despite significant progress, hunger eradication and poverty alleviation remain an enormous concern to the Vietnamese Government, especially in the Upland areas. Targeting micro-finance, agricultural technology, education, health, and safety net services to the poor are among the major instruments of Vietnams poverty reduction strategy. In the 1st phase, sub-project F2 analysed the factors that determine households access to credit and savings services. One of the major findings was that the poor were more frequently excluded, despite the policy objective of the state-funded rural banking system to target the poor with credit. During the second phase subproject F2 explored the risk management of vulnerable households and identified a number of risk strategies, some of which depend on informal social networks. Major idiosyncratic and covariant risks as well as the households adaptive and coping risk management strategies could be identified for rural ethnic minority livelihoods, including unsustainable practices of farming and exploitation of natural resources. Overall, the results of F2 from the first and second phase show that households in the upland areas of Northern Vietnam - despite the efforts of the Governments rural development policies to target the poor with credit, safety net services, and agricultural technology - remain highly vulnerable and poor. These results of F2 suggest to explore three research questions during the third phase. First, the apparently low poverty outreach of credit raises the research question of whether other major rural development policy instruments that provide entitlements and knowledge to rural households (such as land allocation, education, basic health services, and agricultural extension) actually reach the poor (or poorest), and -if not - whether the targeting efficiency of rural development policy can be improved by the identification of more accurate poverty indicators than the ones currently used in the issuance of the so-called Poor Household Certificates. Second, since land and capital have been identified by previous research of the Uplands Program as the most binding micro-economic constraints in Northern Vietnam, project F2 will investigate in the third phase the impact of the land allocation and micro-credit policy on the adoption of crop and livestock technologies, on on-farm and off-farm income, household food security, and poverty. Third, the role of social capital and its contribution to social security will be explored by Prof.Dr. Gertrud Buchenrieder at Martin-Luther University Halle/IAMO through an associated research project.
Das Projekt "Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB) 564: Nachhaltige Landnutzung und ländliche Entwicklung in Bergregionen Südostasiens; Sustainable Land Use and Rural Development in Mountainous Regions of Southeast Asia, F 1: Resource tenure and management of natural resources in mountainous regions of Northern Thailand and Northwest Vietnam" wird/wurde gefördert durch: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft / Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) / National Research Council of Thailand (NRCT). Es wird/wurde ausgeführt durch: Universität Hohenheim, Institut für Agrar- und Sozialökonomie in den Tropen und Subtropen.In this subproject the effects of access to land on management of natural resources in highland regions of Southeast Asia are analysed drawing on case studies in selected watersheds of Northern Thailand and Northern Vietnam. The policies with regard to land tenure regimes in mountainous regions differ significantly between Thailand and Vietnam. Whereas Thailand largely neglects land use rights of ethnic minorities for both forest and agricultural land, Vietnam has started with the allocation of land use certificates for agricultural and forest land to individual households. The purpose of this subproject is to analyse how these policies are implemented and transformed at the local level and to provide insight into the effects of different land use policies on land use planning, natural resource management, adoption of soil and water conservation and other long-term investments, such as planting of fruit trees. Moreover, the different strategies of villagers to sustain their land use rights under various property regimes are analysed. Thus, the subproject will provide valuable information on resource management to other subprojects of the proposed SFB which are concentrating on the development of more sustainable land use practices in the highlands of Northern Thailand and Northern Vietnam. At the same time it will also draw upon the information gained in other subprojects on technical and socio-economic production constraints. Close connections exist with the studies on 'Sustainability of mountain farming systems' (D3), 'Rural finance development' (F2) 'Development projects, state administration and local responses' (F3), 'Soil conservation and crop productivity' (B3), 'Ecological assessment of barren hills' (C2) and ' Efficiency of smallholder animal husbandry' (D2).