Presented by Pham Thu Thuy, Moira Moeliono, Maria Brockhaus, Grace Wong and Le Ngoc Dung at a workshop on 'Sharing insights across REDD+ countries: Opportunities and obstacles for effective, efficient, and equitable carbon and non-carbon results' from 21-23 February 2017 in Naypyidaw, Myanmar.

1. Pham Thu Thuy, Moira Moeliono, Maria Brockhaus, Grace Wong, Le Ngoc Dung
Knowledge Sharing Workshop, Myanmar 23 February 2017
The politics of swidden:
A case study from Nghe An and Son La in Vietnam

2. Swidden Systems
 Swidden: long-held agriculture
practice in Vietnam (and elsewhere
in the region)
 New studies: swidden systems
within a complex landscape mosaic
can also contribute to maintaining
and enhancing forest carbon stocks
above and below ground (Mertz,
2009; Bruun et al, 2009; van
Noordwijk et al, 2009; Fox et al,
2009; Mukul et al, 2016)
 ..can play a contributing role in
REDD+ (Hett et al, 2012) and PES
programmes

3. The politics of swidden …
 Despite REDD+/PES potential, swidden seen as problem and
not as solution
 Swidden – a global colonial narrative of “slash and burn”,
which gets re-interpreted, translated, and implemented at
multiple levels of governance (and not everybody has
agency)
 What are the different narratives, what is shaping them,
and how in turn do they shape the outcomes of land use
policies?

4. The global narrative
Considered to be a main driver of deforestation and forest
degradation, swidden is seen as an obstacle to REDD+.
Indeed, since colonial times, swidden has been vilified and
denigrated. Governments all through the tropics see
swiddening as backwards, destructive and related to poverty
(Padoch et al, 2007), a wasteful act (Dove, 1983) or as an
impediment to ‘progress and development’ (Mertz et al,
2009). Policies and regulations aimed to ‘overcome’
swiddening and bring ‘development’ or promote conservation
are part of most governments’ policies in the region and have
led to the decline of swidden (Cramb et al, 2009).

5. Factors enabling or hindering
policy change
 Institutional stickiness: Formal power typically rests with
the ‘stickiest’ organisations –
 Interests: often lack of autonomy of State from interests
that drive deforestation and degradation (e.g. rent seeking,
fraud, collusion and corruption practices inside the
bureaucratic system)
 Information – a currency in todays world: facts getting
selected, interpreted, who counts counts, what is counted
counts.
 Ideas: belief systems, ideologies, discourses
(Brockhaus and Angelsen 2012)

6. THINKING beyond the canopy
Discourse
Discourse is critical in public policy-making
because it shapes how a policy
problem is perceived and, consequently,
what kinds of solutions are considered,
what is ‘reasonable’ and what is put
forward as ‘the possible’, the ‘right’ choice
(Hajer and Versteeg, 2005)

7. Methods
Case studies: Son La province and Nghe An province, Vietnam
 Legal review on national government policies and
measures on swidden and forest conservation
 Semi-structured interviews (22) with key informants at
national, provincial, district and commune levels
 Focus groups discussions (6) in 2 villages
 Household surveys (88) in 2 villages of each province
 Consultative and feedback workshops (5) at national,
provincial and village-levels

8. Study sites
Characteristic Village A Son La Village B Nghe An
Proximity to
National Park
Yes (core zone –
Xuan Nha National
Park)
Yes (buffer zone –
Pu Huong national
park)
Migration and
movement forms
Marriage, shifting
cultivation practices)
Young people seek
for off-farm jobs
Ethnicity Hmong people Thai people
Poverty rate 38% 64.4%
Number of
households
100 84
Swidden area
(provincial official
statistics)
Underreported 130 hectare

9. National level: swidden is considered a major driver of
deforestation and forest degradation and needs to be eliminated
Provincial level: persistence of swidden is considered a failure of
political performance, thus no data is collected
District level: swidden is allowed at the margins as one way to
maintain national security at border areas
Commune and village level: allows swidden to harmonize interests
of different groups and avoid protest of ethnic groups to
government
Household level: swidden as a normal practice for food security
Actors’ perceptions on swidden

10. “Government has tried to eradicate swidden since 1968 and
forest protection and development policies closely link to
permanent farming and settlement (định canh định cư). “
………
“We have recently realized that swidden indeed does not play
a significant role in the reduction of forest area as in fact,
powerful actors such as big corporations and state agencies
are indeed (behind / the drivers of) deforestation and
degradation. However, it is difficult to change what has been
written”, a government interviewee said.

11. Actors’ perceptions on swidden
National level: swidden is considered a major driver of
deforestation and forest degradation and needs to be eliminated
Provincial level: persistence of swidden is considered a failure of
political performance, thus no data is collected
District level: swidden is allowed at the margins as one way to
maintain national security at border areas
Commune and village level: allows swidden to harmonize interests
of different groups and avoid protest of ethnic groups to
government
Household level: swidden as a normal practice for food security

12. “Swidden no longer exists because forest rangers are very
strict. There is therefore no case of shifting cultivation. “
….
“We all know that shifting cultivation is still on-going and the
area has indeed increased but we cannot acknowledge this for
two main reasons. First, our province is the largest corn
producer in the country. Corn production plays a critical role in
the provincial economy but is mainly produced through
swidden and encroachment to the forests. We cannot report
on that. Secondly, central government asserted the need to
eliminate swidden due to its negative impact on forests and
thereby provided many government support programs to the
rural areas. The existence of shifting cultivation means we did
not do a good job. We cannot report on that”.

13. Actors’ perceptions on swidden
National level: swidden is considered a major driver of
deforestation and forest degradation and needs to be eliminated
Provincial level: persistence of swidden is considered a failure of
political performance, thus no data is collected
District level: swidden is allowed at the margins as one way to
maintain national security at border areas
Commune and village level: allows swidden to harmonize interests
of different groups and avoid protest of ethnic groups to
government
Household level: swidden as a normal practice for food security

14. “This is not official state policy but government wants to let
them stay and their shifting cultivation continue because
H’mong people live close to border and H’mong people can
inform them in case of any security issues”,

15. Actors’ perceptions on swidden
National level: swidden is considered a major driver of
deforestation and forest degradation and needs to be eliminated
Provincial level: persistence of swidden is considered a failure of
political performance, thus no data is collected
District level: swidden is allowed at the margins as one way to
maintain national security at border areas
Commune and village level: allows swidden to harmonize interests
of different groups and avoid protest of ethnic groups to
government
Household level: swidden as a normal practice for food security

16. “People are still expanding swidden area. Commune
authorities know about that but they have no other choice
than just ignore it. Without swidden area, how people can
feed themselves?”
…..
“What can we do? This is the traditional custom of the local
ethnic groups here and we cannot stop them. Forbidding
swidden will cause unhappiness and social unrest. We rather
not do this”.

17. Actors’ perceptions on swidden
National level: swidden is considered a major driver of
deforestation and forest degradation and needs to be eliminated
Provincial level: persistence of swidden is considered a failure of
political performance, thus no data is collected
District level: swidden is allowed at the margins as one way to
maintain national security at border areas
Commune and village level: allows swidden to harmonize interests
of different groups and avoid protest of ethnic groups to
government
Household level: swidden as a normal practice for food security

18. “We know that swidden practice is illegal, however, we need it
to have something to eat. Government said they will punish us
for still practicing swidden but I never see a single case. I
think government only say that to warn us but they
understand that we have no other choice”.

19. Swidden realities ..
 Institutional stickiness: throughout governance levels:
colonial legacies, State and conservation alliance, and its
legal manifestations
 Interests: maintaining development as usual business;
tactics of diversion of drivers of larger land use change?
 Information: what is counted, counts!
 Ideas: the mental models at all levels of what swidden is
remain unchanged despite newer and different information;
 dominant state discourse a powerful tool that effectively
legitimates and enables interventions in highland provinces to
control both resources and people thereby deepening unequal
power relations and rendering invisible diversity of land use
practices

20. Implications for REDD+
 Politics of control and power might exacerbate
environmental degradation in constraining managed
adaptations of swidden systems.
 The “invisibility” of swidden farmers in design and
implementation of policies that generate local benefits, such
as PES and REDD+, exacerbates inequity and potentially
negative behavior spillovers.
 PES and REDD+ policies may be misinformed due to
inaccurate (or lack of) information on the extent of swidden,
the actors engaged in the practice and the potential
contribution of swidden landscapes to the policies’
objectives.

21. We acknowledge the support from:
the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), the Norwegian Agency for
Development Cooperation (Norad), the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and
Trade (DFAT), the European Union (EU), the UK Government, USAID, the International
Climate Initiative (IKI) of the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature
Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB) and the CGIAR Research Program on
Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (CRP-FTA) with financial support from the CGIAR Fund.
& all research partners and individuals
that have contributed to this research
Thanks