Contesting policies: Rural development versus biodiversity conservation in the Ba Be National Park area, Viet Nam

During the last few decades, the mountain environment of northern Viel Nam has been undergoing tremendous land coyer changes due to expanding agricultural activities, Loss of forest coyer and resultant threats to biodiversity hotspots have caused increasing national and international concern. Environmental policies and programs have been launched to counteract the degradation processes and to assist the mountain populations to intensify and diversify their livelihood systems. However, both environmental and agricultural policies get re-interpreted and modified by local actors. In other words, their objectives and implementation are locally contested. This chapter adopts an historical perspective to analyze the rural development and biodiversity conservation policies implemented in the Ba Be National Park area of Bac Kan Province from the 1970s to the late 1990s. It makes use of land-use maps and interprets land-use changes in the light of changing policies. The research reveals the conflicting objectives of early conservation versus development policies, as weil as present-day conflicts between biodiversity conservation and rural development. The research findings indicate that the past and current policy and institutional frameworks have not generated the intended results in environmental protection, which has been outweighed by the effects of agricultural development in the region. Flexible policy frameworks are needed for ecologically- and ethnically-diverse mountain regions, and programs for conserving biodiversity need to adopt a more participatory approach.