DSpace at VNU: The allocation of forestry land in Vietnam: did it cause the expansion of forests in the northwest?

Forest Policy and Economics Ž2001 1᎐11 The allocation of forestry land in Vietnam: did it cause the expansion of forests in the northwest? Thomas SikorU,1 Center for Natural Resources and Enă ironmental Studies, Hanoi National Uniă ersity, 167 Bui Thi Xuan, Hanoi, Vietnam Received June 2000; received in revised form 24 October 2000; accepted November 2000 Abstract Forests expanded rapidly in northwestern Vietnam in the 1990s Forest expansion coincided with a new forest policy that mandated the devolution of forest management authority A cornerstone of the new policy was the allocation of use rights for forestry land and trees to rural households This paper examines to what extent the new forest policy contributed to the observed forest expansion The findings of three village studies suggest that the new forest policy had minor effects on actual property rights, as villagers resisted its implementation Instead, forests expanded, mainly due to the liberalization of agricultural output markets and availability of new technology Changes in markets and technology motivated farmers to intensify crop production, reducing agricultural pressure on land The research findings suggest the potential of market-based instruments and technology policy to facilitate forest regeneration They also demonstrate the benefits of in-depth village studies for forest policy analysis, as it provides an integrated framework for assessing the relative effects of political, economic and technological changes on forests ᮊ 2001 Elsevier Science B.V All rights reserved Keywords: Land tenure; Devolution; Agricultural intensification; Research method U Humboldt-Universitat ă zu Berlin, Institut fur ă Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften des Landbaus, Fachgebiet Ressourcenokonă omie, Luisenstr 56, D-10099 Berlin, Germany Tel.: q49-30-2093-6320; fax: q49-30-2093-6497 E-mail address: thomas.sikor@rz.hu-berlin.de ŽT Sikor Vietnamese contact: Tel.: q84-4-978-0822; fax: q84-4-821-8934 1389-9341r01r$ - see front matter ᮊ 2001 Elsevier Science B.V All rights reserved PII: S - Ž 0 0 - T Sikor r Forest Ecology and Economics (2001) 1᎐11 Introduction Forests rapidly expanded in northwestern Vietnam in the 1990s The People’s Committee of Son La province reported that forest cover had risen from 12% in 1990 to 22% in 1997, an increase of 80% in as little as years At the same time, changes in population and climate could not account for the increase Son La’s population had continued to grow rapidly, and no change in climate had been recorded If not changes in population or climate, what factors caused the expansion of forest cover? The People’s Committee attributed the expansion of forests to successful implementation of Vietnam’s new forest policy Beginning in 1993, national policy had called for the devolution of authority over forest management The policy mandated that forest management be handed over from state enterprises at the central government and provincial levels to households, villages, and communes The People’s Committee’s claim of success resonates with a major theme in the international literature, which suggests that the devolution of forest management bears significant potential to improve forest management This paper examines the causes underlying forest expansion in northwestern Vietnam In particular, it seeks to understand to what degree the devolution of forest management authority contributed to the increase in forest cover It reports the findings of in-depth field research on actual changes in property rights effected by the new policy The research also compares the effects of the new policy with the influence of other external changes, such as the liberalization of agricultural output markets and the availability of new technology The paper is expected to make two contributions to the literature First, it hopes to improve understanding of the conditions under which devolution can lead to better forest management Its findings also call for attention to alternative policy levers Policy modifying markets and available technology may have more potential to facilitate forest regeneration than devolution Second, the findings of the paper highlight the benefits of in-depth village studies Local-level research al- lows researchers to assess the relative effects of changes in property rights and other external factors on forests Its benefits stem from the fact that village land and tree tenure may be significantly different from national policy In Son La, village studies show that the change in authority over forest management, which appeared so radical on paper, had little effect in practice The paper begins with brief discussions of the literature and research design The following three sections report research results: the change in forest policy and its implementation in Son La province; the effects of policy implementation on property rights; and the effects of changing markets and technologies on the broader dynamics of land use The paper concludes with a discussion of implications for policy and research The literature This paper connects two themes in the literature on forest policy First, there has been an explosion of studies on ‘local forest management’ ŽWollenberg, 1998 These studies document local people’s historical and contemporary forest-use practices, as well as associated property rights arrangements They also emphasize that local people’s involvement has the potential to improve forest management Noting that forest policy has so far excluded local people from the forest, they call for the devolution of forest management authority to local levels of governance Žfor example, see Poffenberger, 1990; Bartlett and Malla, 1992; Peluso, 1992a,b; Lynch and Talbott, 1995; Poffenberger and McGean, 1996 The second theme is the recent emergence of studies that examine the effects of macroeconomic forces on forests Žfor example, see Kaimowitz et al., 1998; Ndoye and Kaimowitz, 1998; Sunderlin and Pokam, 1998; Sunderlin, 1999; Colchester, 1999; Minde et al., 1999 These studies view forests as part of livelihood strategies and business plans that respond to macroeconomic policy changes The changes that have received most attention include those effected by structural adjustment programs, economic crisis, the liberalization of agricultural output markets, and trade T Sikor r Forest Ecology and Economics (2001) 1᎐11 policy Correspondingly, the studies advocate for intervention at the macroeconomic level to achieve better forest management Three disjunctures separate these bodies of literature: a theoretical, a conceptual and a methodological one The theoretical disjuncture lies in the explanatory significance attributed to the factors affecting forest management The literature on local forest management emphasizes property rights as the key factor affecting forest management It gives much attention to the question of how to distribute property rights between the state and villages, and among villagers Other factors are assumed to be irrelevant, in most cases implicitly, but sometimes this assumption is also stated explicitly ŽRichards, 1993 In stark contrast, property rights not figure prominently in the equation of studies on the effects of macroeconomic factors Strengthening local people’s rights to land and trees appears a feeble attempt in the wake of the unstoppable force of macroeconomic factors The theoretical disjuncture is rooted in a more fundamental conceptual one, as I argue following Romm Ž1986 Studies of ‘local forest management’ typically consider local people and forests in isolation from larger economic forces They tend to ignore those forces, despite their effects on the livelihood and income of those people who are expected to manage forests sustainably once they are given the respective authority A rare exception are studies of the role of non-timber forest products in local economies that pay attention to national and global markets Žfor example, see Raintree and Francisco, 1994; Godoy et al., 1995; Wilkie and Godoy, 1996 In contrast, studies on the impacts of macroeconomic forces assume that those forces determine the fate of people and forests They consider resource-use practices to express the combination of those forces Putting forest management in the hands of local people, private companies, or the state would not make much difference, as macroeconomic factors would determine the actions of all three The conceptual differences are tied to different research methods Studies of ‘local forest management’ are typically located at the local level They emphasize the diversity and complexity of local property regimes If they aim at larger scales of relevance, they typically combine the findings of several case studies with attention to national legislation on property rights In contrast, studies on the impacts of large-scale forces tend to remain at the macro level They pay little attention to the concrete local expressions and effects of large-scale forces The challenge is to find an analytical approach that allows weighing the relative significance of macroeconomic forces versus local property rights as factors modifying forests Such an approach would need to be sensitive to the local specificity of macro forces, as well as to macro influences on local conditions It would yield insights into the conditions that influence the relative influence of the different factors This paper is intended to demonstrate such an approach Research design and background The remainder of this paper presents an empirical analysis of the causes underlying the increase in forest cover in northwestern Vietnam The research took a broad look at village land-use practices and the strategies that guide villagers’ allocation of labor to different opportunities It examined the concrete effects of policy reform on property rights and villagers’ allocation of labor, and it contrasted them with the effects of changes in markets and technologies The research thus combined in-depth understanding of local change with attention to the effects of large-scale forces The research included the collection of socioeconomic data in three villages In each village, semi-structured interviews with a 20% random sample of households yielded data on current land-use practices, changes in land and tree tenure over the past 15 years and plot histories Direct observation and key informant interviews deepened the understanding of policy implementation and village tenure Review of government documents helped to describe formal tenure Interpretation of remote imagery yielded data on changes in land use and forest cover The interpretation used SPOT images from 1989, 1993 and 1996r1997, as well as observation on the T Sikor r Forest Ecology and Economics (2001) 1᎐11 Fig Chieng Dong in northern Vietnam ground Land use was classified into five categories: wet-rice fields; upland fields; scrub land; open-canopy forest; and closed-canopy forest Partial cloud cover on the 1989 image, however, hampered easy comparison with the other images The following discussions will therefore use the data from 1993 and 1996r1997 only This does not affect the general validity of the reported land-use trend Comparison with the 1989 image suggests that the reported increase in forest cover began before 1993 The research took place in Chieng Dong commune of Son La province ŽFig Almost all of the commune’s inhabitants and a majority of the provincial population are Black Thai Black Thai inhabited the region that is today northwestern Vietnam for centuries Yet the integration of the previously quite autonomous Black Thai villages into the Vietnamese state happened only in the course of the 20th century After 1954, the year of independence from French rule, the Vietnamese state extended its administrative structure to Son La The state recruited Black Thai mostly to staff communes Žthe lowest administrative unit., districts and the provincial administration of Son La Until today, almost all Black Thai live off the land They typically work wet-rice fields in the valleys dissecting the northwestern mountains They supplement wet-rice cultivation with dry rice, corn and cassava fields, as well as animal husbandry on the surrounding slopes The land requirements of rice swiddening, in particular, are extensive, as villagers work fields for or years only and then fallow the land for several years By the late 1980s, villagers had expanded rice swiddens far up the slopes As a result, forests had receded to mountain tops, rocky outcrops, and other land unsuitable for cultivation Forest policy and its implementation in Son La The Land Law, passed by Vietnam’s National Assembly in 1993, mandated the state to formally allocate land to households under long-term lease arrangements In the case of forestry land, allocation entitled land users to use the land for 50 years, enjoy its benefits, transfer use rights to other entities, and use allocated rights as collateral The Land Law was a cornerstone in a quite radical plan to devolve authority over forest management to the local level While state forest enterprises located at the central and provincial levels had previously managed most land, policy T Sikor r Forest Ecology and Economics (2001) 1᎐11 now wanted communes, villages and households to take their place Yet the Land Law and subsequent implementing decrees limited the rights given to the local level First, the state reserved the right of land classification to the district, provincial, and central government levels Once land was classified as forestry land, its use was solely restricted to forestry Second, subsequent decrees mandated that natural forests and forestry land in important watersheds could not be allocated to households Instead, the land would be allocated to communes, districts and State Forest Enterprises, which in turn would sign protection contracts with households The contracts included small payments to households for their protection services, but restricted their use of the forest to minor forest products The People’s Committee of Son La province initiated a campaign for forest protection and land allocation in 1994 The People’s Committee called upon district administrations to form task forces for each commune It also set out strict guidelines for land classification: the task force had to zone all existing forest, rocky outcrops, the top third of each hill and mountain, and 80-m wide belts on each side of the national road as forestry land In Chieng Dong, district cadre, commune officials, and village leaders formed a task force to implement the campaign The task force demarcated forestry land following the provincial criteria, communicated the concrete boundaries to villagers, made them commit to abandon fields on the protected land, and allocated the forestry land to each village Much of it was scrub land, a consequence of extensive rice swiddening in previous years The task force also requested villagers to organize forest protection groups and promised payments in the case of successful protection In addition, it signed up villagers to plant trees, providing seedlings and cash payments The district administration initiated a new round of devolution in 1995, when the district was selected as a pilot site for the implementation of the German-funded Social Forestry Development Project Song Da District cadres returned to the villages to assign specific parcels of forestry land to households for protection They concluded protection contracts with individual households and groups of households At the same time, the district cadres sought ways to increase villagers’ commitment to forest protection They negotiated forest protection codes with villages They also fined approximately 90 households that had continued cultivating fields on land zoned as forestry land in the previous year The number of reported violations against forest protection significantly subsided in the following years In 1996 and 1997, the district’s Forest Protection Unit fined only two households In addition, the Unit expressed satisfaction with villagers’ protection efforts and disbursed all promised payments Villagers’ requests for tree seedlings exceeded nursery capacity in many villages They planted approximately 400 between 1995 and 1997 At the same time, forest cover increased from 1993 to 1996r1997, as it did in the whole of Son La province ŽFig Had forest land allocation and protection contracts caused villagers to protect forests, and hence led to the expansion of forests? The effects of land allocation and protection contracts on the forest Land allocation had the goal of providing incentives for forestry in the uplands The rationale was that villagers would be more interested in forest protection and management if they got formal rights for the benefits from the forest In particular, it was assumed that by allocating rights to specific parcels to individual villagers, they would be motivated to keep other villagers out Under the previous policy, which reserved control over forestry land to State Forest Enterprises, villagers had not enjoyed such right In addition, the new policy included financial incentives, small cash payments for protection services and relatively significant subsidies for tree planting The Vietnamese state hoped that legal and financial incentives would be sufficiently strong to promote forestry The incentives proved too weak to exclude agricultural uses on the land classified as forestry T Sikor r Forest Ecology and Economics (2001) 1᎐11 Fig Forest expansion in Son La and Chieng Dong land In the years following allocation, villagers expanded their fields up the slopes into the supposedly protected top parts Some villagers even opened up new fields on protected land The upland area under cultivation in Chieng Dong significantly expanded between 1993 and 1996r1997, as it did in the whole province of Son La ŽFig The forest protection contracts did not modify the ways in which villagers gained access to forestry land and resources in Chieng Dong Households with contracts did not prevent others from using the assigned land to graze their livestock, extract wood, collect other forest products, or expand adjacent upland fields They did not even stop fellow villagers from opening up small rice swiddens or cassava fields on remote forestry land, as those claimed to need the land to meet their food needs Despite their obligation to report violations and the threat to be fined themselves, they did not inform the Forest Protection Unit Village solidarity was stronger than the state’s reach Tree planting was popular for two reasons Most villagers were keen to plant trees for the cash payments associated with tree planting A few even planted trees on the land holdings of other households, though there was no guarantee that they would enjoy future benefits A few villagers planted trees on their previous upland fields Fig Uplands under cultivation in Son La and Chieng Dong T Sikor r Forest Ecology and Economics (2001) 1᎐11 along National Road No 6, because they were allowed to intercrop agricultural crops during the first years Both groups planted trees for their short-term benefits ᎏ cash and continued access to the land It does not come as a surprise then that the trees did not grow well Neither group was interested in their long-term benefits For example, the Forest Protection Unit estimated that only 10᎐15% of the trees planted in 1995 survived the first year The tree plantations along Road No 6, in particular, looked very poor The trees were means to the people, means that they used for their own goals The potential of the trees to yield significant long-term benefits was considered low The larger reasons for the lack of success were rooted in the relations between villagers and the state Villagers had claimed control over most of the uplands during the previous years Particu- larly during the 1980s, they had opened up new rice swiddens all over the uplands Legal authority, which rested with the state, and actual property relations were far apart ŽFig As a consequence, land allocation and protection contracts did not imply a shift of control toward villagers, but had the potential to weaken villagers’ control Villagers therefore resisted the implementation of the policy Facing this situation, the district authorities did not invest the resources to enforce state control District cadres looked away from the discrepancy between formal regulations and village practice After 1995, they virtually stopped enforcing forest protection regulations They paid out the full amount of protection payments, though many parcels of forestry land showed visible evidence of agricultural use Even the provincial People’s Committee retracted In 1997, it revoked its origi- Fig The conflict between village land use and state regulation in 1989 8 T Sikor r Forest Ecology and Economics (2001) 1᎐11 nal order to zone protection belts along the national road Local cadres accommodated village practice because they maintained close ties with the villages Village leaders and commune officials continued to live in the villages and work in agriculture full-time Many district cadres came from farm households within the district The ties of the cadres with the central state authorities were limited Ethnic differences, difficult topography, and a lack of infrastructure weakened the linkages with Hanoi In addition, the cadres were hired and paid by the local state authorities, and they spent their entire professional careers in the district The close ties with villagers and weak linkages with Hanoi motivated cadres to accommodate village practices, even if these collided with national policy National objectives seriously competed with conflicting village interests only when the central and provincial governments underwent particular effort to enforce their goals, for example the forest protection campaign of 1994 The effects of changing markets and technologies Forestry land allocation and protection contracts did not have much effect on village land and tree tenure If not forest policy, the question is, what factors caused the increase in forest cover? The answer lies in the broader dynamics of land use and the ways in which changing market and technological opportunities affected agricultural production Market expansion and newly available technologies motivated two shifts in village land use: a shift in rice production from swiddens to wet-rice fields and a change in cash cropping from cassava to corn In terms of rice production, villagers had relied on extensive rice swiddening until the end of the 1980s, as it had been more productive than wetrice cultivation ŽFig Around 1990 several factors increased the relative attractiveness of wetrice production New seed varieties and increasingly available chemical fertilizer facilitated an average yield increase of approximately a quarter in wet-rice production At the same time, the average productivity declined and weeding requirements grew in rice swiddening, as fallow cycles shortened The returns to labor in wet-rice cultivation began to exceed those in rice swiddening In 1992, labor day yielded an average of almost kg paddy in wet-rice production, but only kg in rice swiddening Consequently, villagers increasingly shifted their labor to intensify production on wet-rice fields Villagers did not only intensify production on the existing fields, but also constructed new terraces on previous upland fields and fallow land to expand the area of rice sowed Terracing required an initial investment of household labor Once the terraces were built, labor requirements on the terraces were similar to those on existing fields Starting in 1991, the construction of new terraces exceeded haryear Terracing reached a peak in 1995, when villagers built approximately 10 of new terraces As a result of the intensification of existing wet-rice fields and the construction of new fields, rice output dramatically increased between 1990 and 1997 ŽFig In later years, market and technological factors continued to favor wet-rice cultivation More favorable prices motivated an increase in fertilizer application rates The district’s input store continued to introduce new rice varieties with higher yields In addition, the store advanced fertilizer to households and collected its cost in paddy after harvest Cuts in taxes and co-operative fees also raised the share of output retained by households from 70 to 85% As a consequence, fertilizer application rates, average yield, and output continued to grow as villagers intensified wet-rice production And as wet-rice production produced sufficient foods to cover subsistence requirements, rice swiddening declined drastically Changing markets and technologies also motivated a shift in cash cropping from cassava to corn ŽFig Markets for agricultural output rapidly expanded in the late 1980s, when the Vietnamese state abandoned mandatory procurement Traders began to arrive in larger numbers in search of agricultural crops to satisfy the demand for animal feed in the lowlands The prices T Sikor r Forest Ecology and Economics (2001) 1᎐11 Fig The shift from rice swiddens to wet-rice fields in Chieng Dong they offered became increasingly favorable to corn Corn prices rose against cassava, particularly in 1995 and 1996 In terms of technology, new corn varieties became available in the 1990s They allowed corn yields to triple within a few years, without the use of fertilizer and pesticides By 1993, the returns for corn cropping exceeded those of cassava cultivation: labor day produced an average return of VND 20 000 in corn production, compared to VND 15 000 in cassava In addition, corn output was more secure, as the maturation period of corn was much shorter In sum, changes in markets and available technologies changed the relative costs and benefits of agricultural crops In response, rice production shifted from swiddens to wet-rice fields Corn replaced cassava as the major cash crop The shift in land use reduced the demand for land, as wet-rice and corn production took place on permanent fields They required a smaller total area of land for the same annual area under cultivation, as villagers had previously rotated rice swiddens and cassava fields As a result, forests quickly regenerated in Chieng Dong, as in the whole of Son La, given the favorable natural growth conditions Žsee Fig The expansion was due to an increase in open-canopy forest Closed-canopy forest remained unchanged The forest grew back, Fig The shift from cassava to corn in Chieng Dong 10 T Sikor r Forest Ecology and Economics (2001) 1᎐11 although the actual area under cultivation in a given year expanded Summary and conclusions: the limits of devolution The Vietnamese government radically changed forest policy in the early 1990s The new policy mandated the devolution of authority over forest management to the local level The People’s Committee of Son La province implemented forest land allocation in 1994 Yet the concurrent expansion of forest cover was mainly due to other factors Changing markets and newly available technology motivated villagers to intensify land use Forest policy reform had little effect because policy implementation did not affect actual property rights Village land and tree tenure persisted because villagers resisted the implementation of the new policy, and because local state cadres did not enforce it In addition, tree planting met with little success, and the payments associated with tree planting and forest protection were small in relation to agricultural income The findings demonstrate how forests are embedded in the broader dynamics of land use The changing forests of Son La reflected the combination of a variety of economic, technological and political factors These factors shaped the set of opportunities available to villagers, as well as the relative costs and benefits of those opportunities When key economic and technological factors changed, they modified the relative costs and benefits of opportunities Villagers correspondingly changed their allocation of labor, which affected land use and forests In contrast, the new forest policy did not affect greatly labor allocation, as it left opportunity sets virtually unchanged The findings also indicate how the effects of forest policy and other large-scale forces are specific to local contexts They highlight various factors that led to particular policy outcomes in Chieng Dong and Son La, in particular the nature of village᎐state relations, social relations among villagers, favorable access to product markets, the absence of off-farm employment, and the avail- ability of credit for fertilizer Policy outcomes will be different in other local contexts In Son La, policy makers at the national and provincial level have several options to promote forest regeneration They could improve the state’s capacity at enforcement Measures that improve local cadres’ commitment to national objectives could strengthen the implementation of forest policy Combining enforcement efforts with incentives, such as preferential access to credit, could improve their attractiveness to villagers Second, market-based intervention could alleviate agricultural pressure on marginal land Suitable instruments might include taxes on land under cultivation, subsidies for wet-rice cultivation, and credit support for the improvement of rice terraces The state could also use public investment into infrastructure and industry projects to create off-farm employment and increase off-farm wages Third, directing agricultural research toward labor-intensive technology could reduce the demand for land Continuing intensification will satisfy the demands and absorb the labor of a rapidly rising population New rice varieties that tolerate seasonal water shortages or cold spells could facilitate a further expansion of rice terraces into land considered unsuitable under current technological conditions Most likely, the best policy includes elements of all three strategies and provides flexibility to respond to different conditions The tree planting along the national road serves as an example of bad targeting Provincial policy-makers prioritized forest protection on land that was highly attractive for cultivation Economic and technological forces provided strong motivation for villagers to use the land for cash cropping The same economic and technological forces, however, ameliorated cultivation pressures in more remote areas The potential of the new forest policy lies in those areas It is there that land allocation and protection contracts may tip the balance of relative costs and benefits in favor of forestry The research findings attest to the importance of in-depth village studies for forest policy research Local property rights may display significant discrepancies from national legislation A policy that promotes the devolution of forest T Sikor r Forest Ecology and Economics (2001) 1᎐11 management authority may actually bear the potential to increase state control, as in Son La The overlap between actual and formal rules depends on enforcement and, in a broader sense, the negotiations between villagers and the state The conditions framing these negotiations differ among places and change over time In Son La, Black Thai villages enjoyed significant autonomy from state intervention, making it possible for them to resist the new policy Local-level studies of livelihood practices also provide a framework that allows for assessment of the relative strength of different influences on the forest Such a framework is able to capture the politics surrounding property rights, as well as the economics of production Given appropriate attention to the effects of large-scale forces, locallevel studies can provide important insights into the effects ᎏ or lack of effects ᎏ of forest policy Local-level studies can indicate the relative influences of large-scale forces, although the balance and concrete expressions of those largescale forces remain specific to particular local contexts Acknowledgements The author would like to thank an anonymous reviewer, Brigitta Bode, and Jeff Romm for comments This article uses the results of remote imagery interpretation by Dao Minh Truong, researcher at the Center for Natural Resources and Environmental Studies of Hanoi National University The writing of this paper was supported by a Postdoctoral Fellowship for Research and Training in Vietnam awarded by the Social Science Research Council ŽUSA with funding provided by the Ford Foundation The Ford Foundation also supported the field research through an individual grant References Bartlett, A.G., Malla, Y.B., 1992 Local forest management and forest policy in Nepal J World For Resour Manage 6, 99᎐116 Colchester, M., 1999 Social Exclusion and Development Domination The Underlying Causes of Deforestation and 11 Forest Degradation in Guyana Forest Peoples Programme, London Godoy, R., Brokaw, N., Wilkie, D., 1995 The effect of income on the extraction of non-timber tropical forest 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Crop Diversification, and Gender Division of Labor Centre for International Forestry Research, Bogor Wilkie, D.S., Godoy, R.A., 1996 Trade, indigenous rain forest economics and biological diversity In: Ruiz Perez, M., Arnold, J.E.M ŽEds , Current Issues in Non-Timber Forest Product Research Centre for International Forestry Research, Bogor, pp 83᎐102 Wollenberg, E., 1998 A conceptual framework and typology for explaining the outcomes of local forest management J World For Resour Manage 9, 1᎐35  ... policy lies in those areas It is there that land allocation and protection contracts may tip the balance of relative costs and benefits in favor of forestry The research findings attest to the importance... contracts caused villagers to protect forests, and hence led to the expansion of forests? The effects of land allocation and protection contracts on the forest Land allocation had the goal of providing... sensitive to the local specificity of macro forces, as well as to macro influences on local conditions It would yield insights into the conditions that influence the relative influence of the