In October 2022, the European Forest Institute (EFI) and the Provincial Project Management Unit of Lam Dong Province hosted a Land-use Planner training course in Da Lat City, Vietnam. The event welcomed 32 participants from Lam Dong and Dak Nong Provinces, including members from several People’s Committees, the Department of Agricultural and Rural Development and of Natural Resources and Environment, and non-governmental organisations.
The training course was participatory and trainee-centred, with participants encouraged to engage actively in learning activities using real-life situations. Three project teams shared their experiences in learning how to use the Land-use Planner to support sustainable agricultural and land-use planning.
Participants engaging in the Land-use Planner training course. Source: Q-Huong Le, MDRI, 2022
Using the Land-use Planner at the commune level: Dak Nong cadastral work
A group of various actors from diverse sectors and fields, including local officials doing cadastral work at the commune level, joined the training from Dak Nong. They used official statistics and local knowledge from real experiences in their commune to develop different land-use scenarios. These included:
Timber plantation in the Nam Cat Tien forest
Intercropping vegetables under durian trees
Grazing for swine in forest and farming areas
Some in the group spend most of their daily work carrying out on-site visits and communicating with local residents at those sites. Many noted the usefulness and practicality of the Land-use Planner as a tool to support better discussions with stakeholders in the field.
“This tool suits my work well and is helping to support farmers in my area.”
A cadastral official from Dak Nong
Source: Q-Huong Le, MDRI, 2022
DANOFARM: women from ethnic minority groups engaging in sustainable agriculture in Dak Nong Province
Ms Ta Thi Lien with DANOFARM’s coffee brand Rockway. Source: Q-Huong Le, MDRI
Located in Quang Son Commune, Dak G’long District, Dak Nong Province, DANOFARM is a cooperative with members from diverse ethnic groups, many of whom are women. The cooperative aims to promote traditional handicrafts and local agricultural products like Robusta coffee.
As Ms Ta Thi Lien, Director of DANOFARM, explained, despite the high quality of their coffee products, it is hard for DANOFARM to find markets for their coffee. This is because the cooperative is limited in resources and technical capacity for market promotion and competition.
Ms Lien participated in the Land-use Planner training course and tested DANOFARM’s business data to develop some practical agricultural production scenarios. Based on DANOFARM’s current and prospective business practice, she tested three scenarios:
Intercropping coffee with medical herb
Combining bee-raising and silkworm-raising with mulberry farming (for silkworm feeding)
Agricultural tourism
Her participation provided a practical perspective in discussions with participants from the public sector.
Global Coffee Platform: experience with the Land-use Planner in different projects and its potential use for diverse actors
Apart from local stakeholders, the Land-use Planner training course also welcomed a technical expert from the Global Coffee Platform – Mr Mai Xuan Thong. Mr Thong has previously used the Land-use Planner and other similar modelling tools. Coupled with his rich experience in coffee production techniques, he offered valuable support and insights while facilitating group discussions.
During the training course, Mr Thong collaborated with a group of participants from Di Linh to develop scenarios for the district. Their scenarios explored increasing forest, rice and coffee plantation areas to exploit fallow and unused land areas.
Mr Thong (on the left) discussing with other participants. Source: Q-Huong Le, MDRI
From Mr Thong’s perspective, the Land-use Planner can be a valuable tool for a multitude of users, at diverse scales and with varying aims, from cooperatives or even family farms up to large-scale planning processes. The tool and its outputs can help stakeholders find a balance between agricultural production and forest ecosystem-based services.
Participants from the Central Highlands of Vietnam explored the various ways the Land-use Planner could support sustainable land-use planning in their areas and meet a range of needs. Bringing together a diverse set of stakeholders from the government, private sector and civil society, the training helped to establish a Land-use Planner community of practice in Vietnam, and users can continue to exchange on using data and modelling future scenarios to inform land-use strategies.
Nguyen Que Huong Le
Research analyst
Mekong Development Research Institute
https://euredd.efi.int/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/land-use-planner-training-participants-vietnam.jpg6271200Carlos Rianohttps://euredd.efi.int/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/EU-REDD-Facility-logo-tagline.svgCarlos Riano2023-04-25 09:00:042023-04-25 09:00:07Bringing together stakeholders for land-use planning in Vietnam
I love coffee in the morning, its taste, its aroma and the boost of energy it gives me to start the day. While enjoying a fresh brew some years ago, I began to think about what was behind my morning cup – where do the beans come from? What are the landscapes where they are produced like? And who are the people that harvest this coffee?
These are questions I continue to reflect on in my work. Over the last 10 years, I have supported efforts to reduce deforestation, much of which has been driven by the production of agricultural commodities, including coffee. In my current work, I focus on finding ways to support sustainable coffee production in Vietnam.
Agricultural landscape of Di Linh, Lam Dong Province. Source: Nguyen Que Huong Le, MDRI
The world’s largest producer of robusta coffee
In recent decades, the Central Highlands region of Vietnam has become the world’s main production area of robusta coffee. Major companies like Nestle, Jacobs Douwe Egberts, Lavazza, Olam and Starbucks source from this region, bringing Vietnamese coffee to supermarket shelves and cafés around the world. Likewise, national coffee companies like VinaCafe and Trung Nguyen have arisen as a symbol of the coffee-culture in Vietnam.
The transformation of the Central Highlands into a coffee capital reminds me of Colombia, my home country. In Colombia, the famous Coffee Triangle landscape experienced a boom in the production of arabica coffee at the beginning of the 19th century owing to agricultural expansion policies. Currently, the region has become the symbol of the ‘Café de Colombia’ origin certification, which is recognised as one of the best coffees in the world.
I see many parallels between the coffee stories of the two countries, and the economic, social and environmental impacts associated with coffee cultivation. The environment in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, just like in my country, is suffering from the negative effects of unsustainable coffee production. Rapid expansion of coffee crops is driving deforestation. Coffee is also spreading to areas inappropriate for its cultivation because of unsuitable soils and limited access to water. As a result, coffee farmers deplete groundwater resources and use an excessive amount of chemicals and fertilisers.
Environmental issues are mixed up with socioeconomic challenges. Despite coffee being a valuable commodity, the region has not bore the fruits of increased coffee production and has one of the highest rural poverty rates in the country. Opportunities for minority groups to benefit from the coffee trade are limited, especially for women. Between the ’70s and the ’90s, the arrival of international companies and an accelerated immigration caused by national resettlement policies, including the establishment of new economic zones and the land-use reform or “Doi Moi”, led to the boom in the price of coffee. Since then, local communities and ethnic minorities have been largely marginalised, being unable to adapt their traditional practices to the economic development of the region, due to their limited formal education and lack of capacity to adapt to the new business requirements. This gives a bittersweet taste to coffee coming from the region.
How sustainability helps shift the paradigm
Instead of exacerbating the situation for farmers and the environment, I want my cup of coffee to contribute to addressing climate change, while leaving no one behind. But how can I sweeten up my morning cup of coffee and make it sustainable?
There is a common understanding that soil, water, forests and other natural resources are limited, and that our planet that is warming because of humans activities. Making the transition towards sustainability is therefore our duty. These efforts should involve the whole coffee supply chain – producers, traders and, of course, consumers. We all must ensure that our cup of coffee is sustainably produced. But what does than mean?
I like the definition of sustainability used by the United Nations, which includes three dimensions:
An economic dimension, where everyone in the commodity supply chain must obtain a fair wage for their work and that profits are shared equitably
A social dimension, with inclusive and ethical work, reasonable working hours, no child labour, and giving options to farmers for optimising their croplands
An environmental dimension, where the exploitation of natural resources is done sustainably, biodiversity is protected and global warming kept below 1.5 ºC
Vietnam has an ambitious agenda for transitioning towards sustainability. Among other things, the country has committed to implement an ambitious national plan to address climate change as part of its nationally determined contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement and has committed to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Both incorporate sustainability as an inalienable principle and include several policies and measures in the agricultural and forest sectors aimed at curbing carbon emissions and reducing poverty.
The use of organic fertilisers, improving water irrigation techniques and protecting, conserving and managing sustainable forest lands, and providing access to education, health and decent jobs to people
Coffee certification – turning commitments to action?
International commitments are a good starting point, but how can we implement sustainability on the ground?
Despite the implementation of these schemes, certified coffee remains a fraction of overall production (around 1.75 million tons in 2020), and environmental, social and economic challenges persist in the Central Highlands. Among other things, most coffee growers cannot afford the costs of obtaining certification. The premiums offered for certified coffee do not compensate for the production costs associated with meeting the standards. In fact, the labour’s wage is usually not integrated into the certification schemes.
And finally, there are difficulties in implementing the traceability systems, which track coffee beans from the plantation to the final consumer. These systems are highly time consuming to set up. But they are also characterised by low monitoring and evaluation level of social and environmental issues, such as child labour, local communities’ inclusion and compliance with regulations on the use of pesticides and other chemicals.
Acting on sustainability at the right scale: the jurisdiction
Advertisement of crops without glyphosate, promoting crops free of chemicals as a good agricultural practice. Source: Satrio Wicaksono, EFI
Although certification initiatives have helped increase sustainable coffee production and allowed consumers to recognise sustainable products, they cannot address the deforestation that occurs at the margins or outside of certified concession areas or farms. Measuring sustainability performance at subnational jurisdiction level, rather than at farm or concession level, can help achieve impact at scale while ensuring the participation of smallholders and minorities. With this orientation, stakeholders from different sectors, positions, interests and needs, including local governments, civil society organisations and companies, can dialogue on sustainable coffee production.
With a jurisdictional approach, stakeholders can measure the sustainability in an entire administrative area (province, district or others). By working at the jurisdictional level, it is possible to safeguard forests, carbon and biodiversity across the landscape, not just at farm level. Such an approach also reduces costs for groups of farmers and for small and medium agribusinesses. It further provides a strong incentive for identifying and supporting collective, joint solutions, given that failure to reach or maintain the standard impacts all actors involved. This helps to transform entire landscapes towards sustainability.
At EFI, we are testing this new recipe to promote sustainable coffee in two districts of Vietnam’s Central Highlands. It is composed of few but powerful elements:
Social inclusion at the jurisdiction level, using a multistakeholder platform with the leadership of the local government institutions, to allow representatives of the coffee supply chain, including local communities and ethnic minorities, that are in the jurisdiction to actively participate in the sustainable production of coffee.
Environmental enhancement, which occurs when sustainable agriculture practices and land-use planning are in motion along the supply chain. These practices reduce water consumption, protect the forest and soil and increase the quality of the coffee in the jurisdiction.
Economic benefits for the people in the jurisdiction. With an improved organisation of producers, more transparent and shortened supply chains and existing certifications, the coffee produced in the jurisdiction is more competitive and can comply with the evolving international market requirements, like those in the proposed EU regulation on deforestation-free commodities.
We are developing a system to measure, track and assess the sustainability of coffee production at the jurisdictional level, beyond farms. It includes the participation of all stakeholders along the supply chain, fostering collaboration and transparency, while working to protect the forest, water and soil in the jurisdiction and improve working conditions. At the end of the day, we aim to transition the entire coffee sector towards sustainablity.
That’s the cup of coffee that I want to smell and taste.
https://euredd.efi.int/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/coffee-beans.jpg6291200Carlos Rianohttps://euredd.efi.int/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/EU-REDD-Facility-logo-tagline.svgCarlos Riano2022-06-20 15:00:312022-07-19 21:45:22Reducing the bitterness of coffee from Vietnam’s Central Highlands
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