Processes driving forest and livelihood transformations in Central Vietnam: Policy shifts and institutional change effects with the empirical focus on the Thua Thien Hue – Sao La Nature Reserve

What happens in the forests and local livelihoods when the wave of wave of forest management policies and programs have been taken place over nearly five decades in the Thua Thien Hue Sao La Nature Reserve in Central Vietnam? The question motivates me to examine the performance of multitude forest policies and short-term project by projects driving and shaping local forest transformation and its implications on local livelihoods. The analysis will go through the shifts of forest management paradigm, with many policies and interventions, such as: forest devolution and decentralization process, bans on shifting cultivation, logging and hunting to avoid deforestation and forest degradation, the establishment of protected areas, forest rehabilitation and restoration and new emerging “cash for conservation” through PES/REDD+ initiatives by state actors and international NGOs in this place. The policy changes also rooted in the change in institutions, from state-control to social forestry, from forest management to forest governance. Adopting an interdisciplinary qualitative framework rooted in political ecology and critical institutional analysis, the research attempt to answer the main questions related to what happens when these outside interventions is institutionalized, how it is translated locally and what are the local effects of these processes on forest transformation and local livelihoods at different moments in time, from the past, present and predict for future. Studying these dynamics processes, its institutionalizations and its impacts on the ground can help to better understanding pathways of forest dynamics at local-level in ways promote better forest governance and enhances sustainability for forests and people.