Here and there from Nam Giang

Yesterday and today have been days of meeting harvesters and middlemen of rattan, among other things. We met with three sets of people yesterday and two today, had long conversations about the products they harvest, their relationship with the forest, the support they need to be successful. Each one of them was very kind to us. They offered us water, green tea, fruits and most importantly time and knowledge. Some of our meetings were at home, one at a coffee shop, and we visited one of the forest areas today. It is evident that people are poor - in one of the meetings we asked why some households do not harvest rattan. The village headman wryly replied it is because only the poor do it. In the forest today we saw young and older rattan trees, oui trees (the tallest in the forest), lon bon trees and some coffee trees. We also saw many, many ants, several of which feasted on us. We went to one village and one plantation first. We then started walking to another site which in the past was a rattan nursery but now has no support. Our walk attracted quite a bit of attention - children and adults looked and smiled at us, a pack of mangy and scrawny dogs that barked continuously at us and followed us a little. This was definitely a lot of forest and foliage. It started to rain a little but stopped soon which was good because being drenched in a downpour in the forest would have been quite the adventure but not as much fun.

Exploring in Nam Giang

'Uoi' drying outside

Today was a really good day in the field. It was full of meeting people, learning more about rattan harvesting and copious amounts of note-taking. We met the heads of a few villages, learned about how they harvest rattan, what is and is not working, what they need. We also learned a lot about another nut 'uoi'. It is available only once every 3-4 years and is worth a lot more money than things like rattan or crops like maize and rice. It makes sense now because at our last field visit one of the groups was busy collecting this and did not make it to our meeting. It seems like it does not react well to water (from a sales perspective), the collection period is short (June-July), while shaking the tree for is a good way to get it, a lot of time the tree is rather tall and cut down to get larger quantities. It seems to need shade in its younger days and then provides canopy cover. I know a lot about it, I saw it, I believe it helps with back pain, but I don't know how to spell it correctly. It is interesting because we went out to find more about rattan and instead we are back with a lot of information about 'uoi'. It seems like no training sessions, health camps etc are well-attended in this season because everyone is out to gather as much of it as they can. It makes complete sense. As one of the groups told us, rattan gatherers are among the poorest in their communities. Selling 'uoi' helps make a large amount of money but it is only once every few years. The day ended with a downpour that made the weather lovely. We then found a new local restaurant that was really nice. It had a picture of Che Guevera and I have to say this was one of the dinners I enjoyed the most, because we nerded out on discussions centering around race, discrimination, policies and more. I recognize that this is all talk and we don't necessarily achieve anything by only talking but I think it is a good platform to form my own ideas as I go along.

Coke in a bowl. First time for everything.

Say hullo to this super nice place in
Nam Giang

Look at the fancy lady and
the not so fancy man.

Figuring out rattan

A month ago I had never heard the word rattan. Now I am spending my days figuring out how rattan grows, how its value chain operates, how can it be harvested sustainably and provide a source of livelihood to communities for our second project (in addition to the project about identifying community readiness for Payments for Ecosystem Services).

Rattan products at a shop

Rattan is one of the most commercially valuable Non Timber Forest Products. It is a "climbing spiny plant belonging to the palm family". It grows in tropical parts of Asia, Africa and Australia and while efforts have been made to classify and list different species, it doesn't seem like the work is quite complete yet. There are over 600 species of rattan that have been currently identified. Some of these are edible as well. While we saw acacia and rubber trees during our visit to Nam Dong, we didn't manage to see places where rattan is cultivated.

Rattan has several uses including for making furniture, baskets and decorative items. The rattan industry has seen tremendous growth in recent years and this has been accompanied by over-harvesting, exploitation and subsequent yield decline. Many of the countries where rattan grows have tried to set harvesting quotas on rattan. But since information on growth and yield is limited, these quotas are often ineffective.

Sustainable harvesting of rattan would involve identifying annual growth patterns, determining how much can be harvested annually without over-exploiting rattan, having a supportive legislative and policy framework, and having buy-in from the communities, the intermediaries, the non-profit organizations, and buyers.

Rattan falls within the larger category of Non Timber Forest Products and of course the larger problem of sustainably harvesting these. But unlike other products such as bamboo, less information is available about rattan.

If you'd like read more and learn about this spiny plant, check out the WWF page. I will keep posting more as I learn more!

Preparing for our field work next week

Working breakfast during our meeting 
to finalize the survey

Most of this week and today has been spent preparing for our field visits next week. As of now the idea is to meet with officials from three departments that work in the area of forestry and meet with 12 groups in different villages. How much of this will convert into reality will only be known next week. The planning for this trip has been fairly fluid, in terms of dates, people going with us, the groups we are meeting etc etc. We have prepared our questionnaires and surveys and have gone through three rounds of reviews.

Week 2 (the honeymoon period is over and work is on)

A picture with Dean (extreme left)
and Dung (extreme right)

Things are picking up at work. We started yesterday with a presentation by Dean Current (our adviser) on Community Forestry Management. This was very informative and useful, especially for me because of my limited background in natural resource management. He mentioned that the theory behind this is the idea that there is some value that forests represent, that needs to be valued and conserved. Different forms of enterprises in natural forest management include: timber enterprises, Non Timber Forest Enterprises, PES, REDD+ and eco-tourism. We have come across most of these already and it will be interesting to learn more.

We spent the rest of the day with Dean and Dung Ngo from CORENARM, hashing out our final project plan. We have been going a little bit back and forth on this but now it seems like we have two interlinked projects to work on.

Day 4 (also the day where we go sightseeing)

Group photo!

This is, if you haven't already figured out, a relatively light week for us. Our experience can vary between 8 - 10 weeks and we are choosing to spend 10 weeks here and thus I think we are using this week mostly the way we intended to. Rather I should say I think this is a justified and sensible use of our time. I have hit the ground running for different projects in different cities (in India) and I have known and been in favor of the motivation for that. That being said, it has been a really long time since I had the chance to slowly immerse myself into a new project. I think being in a new country, where I don't speak the language at all, where our work has relevance but not the pressing immediacy of say a disaster relief project (which I have worked on), I am grateful for the opportunity to explore the city, meet with different people and treat this like a marathon instead of a sprint.

Day 2 @ Work

A very bad picture
 of our office space (sorry!)

We started the day earlier today to meet with our adviser and discuss our options. We are still fuzzy on the exact details but it seems like we are move in the broad direction of Community Based Forestry Management (CBFM) and Enterprises (CBFE), with a possible focus on rattan. As someone with no experience with forest and land issues, I have known right from the beginning that I have a lot of learning to do. Before I can delve into the specifics of CBFM in Thua Thien-Hue, which is where we will work, I need to understand how it works in general and then in Vietnam. I realized that I am using a funnel approach to learning and as I learn about the environmental aspects, I am also trying to understand how the political and social structure plays out at the macro, meso and micro levels (an approach I learned from one of my professors in Fall 2013).