9/26: Dr. Christian Culas gives a presentation on environmental management in mountainous areas of Vietnam

Topic: Research on knowledge exchange and indigenous practices in environmental management in mountainous areas of Vietnam: Anthropological perspective

Presenter: Dr. Christian Culas - Marseille Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (IRSEA – Marseille)

Time: 9:00 a.m. September 26, 2008 (Friday morning)

Location: Multimedia Room - Museum of Anthropology - 3rd floor, building D - University of Social Sciences and Humanities - 336 Nguyen Trai - Thanh Xuan - Hanoi.

Presentation Summary

Over the past 50 years, shifting cultivation by ethnic minorities in the mountainous regions of Vietnam, Laos and Thailand has often been criticized for destroying forests. In the case of Vietnam, before the 1993 Land Law, most ethnic minorities such as the Hmong and Dao had a fair amount of autonomy in land use. However, since the 1993 Land Law and the Anti-Opium Production Law (1993), pressure on land use and agricultural production techniques has increased dramatically. In this new situation, most mountain dwellers have been able to adapt to varying degrees to agricultural and forestry production, but in most cases these adaptations were not anticipated by the authorities, making it difficult to manage social change from the perspective of practices and networks and in terms of the short- and long-term impacts on the balance between agricultural production (as a direct and immediate source of income) and forest protection.

The presentation will present the diversity of perceptions of these pressures from the perspective of mountain farmers and explain the ability to organize agricultural production and forest management over the years. Using case studies from Vietnam, combined with examples from Thailand, the author wants to introduce the debate in anthropology about the collection, analysis and use of indigenous knowledge and practices to help us manage the process of sustainable development.

Keywords

Epistemology of social science discourses, anthropological perspectives, indigenous knowledge, ecological knowledge, practices in forest use and management, environmental management, shifting cultivation, agriculture, forestry, ethnic minorities, Northern and Central Vietnam.