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KKK_5. Buffer Zone and Included Territories

5.1 Synopsis

The buffer zone presents a number of challenges to the AHP management. It is not a homogenous area with significant differences in ethnic make-up, cultural norms and practices, access to goods and services, infrastructure and a diversity of land uses and ownership types.

Communes in the buffer zone face a number of challenges, some of which are a result of the land allocation itself. Agricultural land is in short supply. Health and education services are not always available in the abundance that they might be found outside the buffer zone. Many of the communes are remote and access is a challenge, especially during the wet season. There is a higher rate of food shortages, lower levels of access to education and a higher rate of childhood morbidity and mortality. Progress has been made by programmes aimed at rural development but buffer zone communes are still economically disadvantaged.

Forest management agreements are the principal means to support sustainable forest management. However, there are inefficiencies and inequalities in the system of agreements which disadvantage communes and reduce their conservation impact.

It is also diverse with differing access to agricultural land and livelihood opportunities and differing types of forest designation which have varying constraints on communities’ abilities to utilize forest resources for their livelihoods.

There is a multiplicity of authorities and non-state stakeholders in the buffer zone but there is little in relation to CSOs or private sector support to buffer zone communities.

5.2 Location and Area

The total natural area of the buffer zone of KKKNP is 15.184,5 ha spreading over 7 communes, including Ayun, Dak Jo Ta, HRa (Mang Yang district), Kon Pne, Krong, Dak Rong (Kbang district) and Ha Dong commune (Dak Doa district) (Figure 8). The communes in the buffer zone are located far from the economic centers of the districts. KKKNP is adjacent to two protection forest management boards (PFMB), namely Dak Doa PFMB and HRa PFMB.

Figure 8. Buffer zone of KKKNP

5.3 Administration

The organizational structure of the Commune People’s Committee includes the following main positions:

Commune People’s Committees regularly improve the capacity of officials at the same time reform administrative procedures and improve the operational efficiency of the administrative division .

5.4 Demographic Situation

5.4.1 Description of Communities

The Bahnar ethnic community is the indigenous people grroup who have lived here for a long time. They settled into villages and hamlets along the roads and along rivers and streams. Each village has 20 – 50 houses that are mostly stilt houses (Figure 9). All villages have Rong houses (a kind of communal houses for villager meeting), but most of the houses lack conveniences or are in degraded condition. There are also 9 other ethnic minority communities such as Tay, Nung, Hmong, Dao who have migrated from the Northern provinces since 1975, but these communities only account for a very small proportion compared to the total population of the region. Meanwhile, the Kinh ethnic group lives mainly in Mang Yang district, accounting for over 20%. Most of the Kinh people from the northern and central provinces migrated to the region to live and settle down (Long et al., 2014). Population and labor in the buffer zone communes of KKKNP is describled in Table 6.

Table 5. Population and labor in the buffer zone communes of KKKNP by the end of December 2019

No. Administrative units Total number of households People Labor  
 
Total Kinh people Other Ethnicities Total Male Female  
A Kbang district 2.797 10,827 972 9,855 8,657 4.325 4.332  
1 Kon Pne Commune 401 1,559 62 1,497 1,085 576 509  
2 Dak Rong Commune 1,090 3,805 280 3,525 3,609 1,668 1,941  
3 Krong Commune 1,306 5,463 630 4,833 3,963 2,081 1,882  
B Mang Yang district 2,507 8,747 3,930 4,817 7,888 4,084 3,804  
4 Ayun Commune 1,843 5,974 3,203 2,771 5,974 3,117 2,857  
5 Dak Jo Ta commune 664 2.773 727 2.046 1,914 967 947  
6 Hra                
C Dak Doa district 961 5,332 120 5,212 3,232 1,681 1,551  
7 Ha Dong Commune 961 5,332 120 5,212 3,232 1,681 1,551  
  Total 6,265 24,906 5.022 19,884 19,777 10,090 9,687  

Other ethnic minorities migrated to buffer zone of KKKNP mainly from the Northern provinces after 1975 and they have been scattered in A Yun and Krong communes. Cultural characteristics of the migrated ethnic groups are still different from Bahnar people’s culture, especially in funeral and wedding customs. In agricultural production, they have known how to intensively cultivate, increase crops and produce agroforestry.

The economic conditions of people living in the buffer zone of KKKNP are still difficult. However, in recent years, people in this area have been paid attention and supported by the state for economic development through poverty reduction projects such as Program 30A, Program 135, Project of supporting people to buy health insurance, etc. Up to now, people’s lives have made a great progress; the number of poor households in communes has tended to decrease gradually. However, 5 out of 6 communes in the buffer zone are far from the district centers, with rugged terrain, and underdeveloped transport systems such as Dak Jo Ta, Ha Dong, Kon Pne, Krong, and Dak Rong communes. This is an unfavorable condition for economic development. In these communes, the percentage of poor and near-poor households is still very high with over 30% of households. Food shortage still occurs during non-harvesting season from July to October every year, local authorities still have to regularly organize hunger relief support.

The Bahnar people have a tradition of swidden cultivation in the style of slash-and-burn agriculture. The cultivated area is rather fragmented and small, making it difficult to concentrate the area for intensive agricultural development. The Bahnar people have a Gong culture, which is one of the long-standing cultural features that is still preserved to this day. The Gong culture was recognized by UNESCO as “Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity” in 2005. The Bahnar people beat Gongs in important community activities such as Tet holidays, sowing and harvesting seasons. But now, this traditional culture is also being lost due to the cultural influences from other resident communities who have come to settle here.

The long-standing cultural features of the ethnic minorities here are the Gong culture and Grave-leaving Ritual. They beat Gongs, dance and sing together on holidays at the sowing seasons and at the end of the harvest season. However, some of these traditional cultural features have also been lost more or less due to several reasons. The customs and habits of ethnic minorities also maintain cultural features of a matriarchal society where women are highly valued in the family and children have the mother’s last name. Women have do the heaviest work in daily tasks while men do jobs such as cutting down trees, building houses, farming, knitting and hunting wild animals.

Figure 9. Stilt houses of ethnic minorities in the buffer zone of KKKNP

The Bahnar people have two main traditional occupations; those are brocade weaving and basket weaving (creating baskets made of rattan and bambo to store forest products or household items). The Bahnar people are trying to preserve the traditional brocade weaving in the trend of being lost due to the popularity of modern products.

Bahnar wicker products are often of very high quality and sophistication. To produce a basket, it often takes a lot of time to choose the best bamboo and rattan trees to dry before processing. Usually, this knitting work is done by men. Today, there are not many Bahnar people who can perform this manual work well. The main reason is to make a product takes a lot of time and meticulousness. Besides, the materials to make such as water rattan are also not much to exploit.

While men do the knitting, weaving is women’s work. Traditionally, the cloths are woven from cotton fibers grown in the fields. Today, women’s Bahnar often buy ready-made skeins of yarn from the market to weave. Weaving a cloth usually takes a lot of time and they will do this work during leisure time.

However, in today’s Bahnar villages, not many people do these manual jobs anymore, because the needs of life have changed a lot, and the products of clothing and everyday items (baskets, “gui”, etc.) easy to shop at the market.

Bahnar people’s costumes are woven from brocade cloth with unique patterns and special scents made of honey. The motifs in the costumes of the Bahnar are highly symbolic symmetrical shapes. Symmetrical motifs reflect the concept of the universe, heaven – earth, yin – yang and take nature as a model. The Bahnar people dye cloth with the ink colors of forest trees. Each color has its own meaning; for example, black represents the earth, red represents the color of fire, yellow represents sunlight, blue represents the color of the sky, the color of tree, etc.

The Bahnar people are famous for many traditional dishes imbued with cultural identity of mountains and forests of the Central Highlands such as: Termite mushroom porridge (made from forest termite mushrooms cooked with pounded rice); Blue-green shrimp cooked with Diplazium esculentum (a type of forest vegetable), Spring fish cooked with bamboo shoots, grilled Onychostoma gerlachi (this fish type is abundant in Dak Bla river), Bahnar people’s New Year’s dish is called Lam rice – made from glutinous rice.

In buffer zone of KKKNP, there are schools located in the center of the communes. In all communes, there are primary schools. High school students will have to go to ethnic minority boarding school or high schools in the centers of districts.  The school facilities and teaching equipment are still lacking and the quality of education is lower compared to the schools in the district. Due to economic conditions, the commune in general still lacks of awareness on the importance of children’s education.

Each commune has a health care station and is augmented with more doctors. National preventive medicinal programs have been implemented in a timely and effective manner, such as programs for the prevention and control of goiter, leprosy, malaria, and expanded immunization. However, the ability of commune health stations to provide medical examination and treatment for people is still limited and unable to meet the needs of the people due to the lack of medical equipment and medicines in quantity and variety.

Most of the people in the buffer zone communes only work as farmers, only a few work in both farming and other side jobs (Figure 10). People have low and unstable average income. The Bahnar have a tradition of shifting cultivation and exploiting forest resources. However, the arable land is often small; therefore the application of technological advances to farming faces many difficulties. Local people, especially ethnic minority group often grow upland rice which has low yield, leading to food insecurity. In recent years, they have started to cultivate wet rice, but the area and production are still very limited.

The Kinh people who are mainly from the provinces of the North and the Central regions has experience in agricultural and forestry production, retail trade and services. However, because they are mainly poor households leaving their home land for livelihoods at new land, so they often lack capital and land for production. Food security in the buffer zone communes is not guaranteed. All communes still have many households that are a shortage of food for some months before seeding season. People often cope by collecting forest products, borrowing, selling young agricultural products and waiting for support from local authorities.

Figure 10. Agricultural cultivation of local people in the buffer zone of KKKNP

5.4.2 Stakeholder and their roles in KKKNP

The co-management of KKKNP is related to stakeholders that play roles in forest protection and socio-economic development in the locality. These stakeholders include: Gia Lai Province Peoples Committee (PPC), DPCs of Mang Yang, Kbang, Dak Doa; DARD, CPCs of 07 communes, and local communities.

5.5 Local Customary Laws, Local Conventions/Social Norms

At present, KKKNP has signed a commitment with the majority of people living surrounding the Park to protect the forests. The commitment content is about not exploiting forest products, not illegally hunting animals and not violating forest protection and the work of forest fire prevention and fighting. In the period of 2021-2030, the National Park will continue to develop commitments to protect special-use forests in accordance with current laws and in the direction of clearly defining the responsibilities of village communities and local authorities in coordinating forest protection. The Park will develop regulations on sustainable exploitation of NTFPs in the ecological restoration and administrative services subdivision.

5.6 Land Use Plan and Status of Buffer Zone

There is no information obtained during the survey conducted.

5.7 Traditional Knowledge Relating to Nature and Biodiversity and the Benefit Sharing

The Bahnar people live in harmony with nature and depend on forests; therefore, they have developed a system of indigenous knowledge in exploiting and using forest resources. This knowledge system is rich in content, diverse in form and has scientific and practical significance; however, it is being lost and changed in the face of changes in natural and socio-economic conditions.

The Bahnar people realize that wood is a precious resource and each kind of wood is suitable for a purpose. For example: 4 types of precious, durable, strong, and termite-free wood including Red doussie, Techicai sitanand Narra padauk are used as main pillars of houses. Some other species exploited and used as auxiliary columns and rafters are Golden oak, Giant crape-myrtle, Menghundor (Michelia mediocris Dandy), Parashorea chinensis and Shorea roxburghii C. Don. Some pine species are exploited to make floors or walls, etc. People also sell these kinds of wood to increase their income. Since the establishment of the KKKNP (2003), harvesting timber is illegal. People in the buffer zone can only harvest timber to build houses under Programs 167 and 134 of the state and following the province’s policy of supporting timber for building new or repairing old houses. With these programs, they harvest trees that have been designated by forest owners. Therefore, knowledge about tree selection, logging and traditional timber use is no longer practiced, continuous and at risk of gradual lost. (Ha, 2020)

NTFPs are exploited and used in a very diverse manner by the Bahnar people. Currently, there are 102 species belonging to 95 genera, 54 families, 37 orders, 5 classes, 3 phylums of plants living in different habitats have been exploited and used as medicinal herbs to treat 11 common diseases in the community. In addition, 27 species of animal are aslo used to make medicine. Bahnar people in the buffer zone have exploited 7 species of plants for fruit, 2 species for tubers and 22 species of plants, bamboo shoots, mushrooms, etc. for eating stems, sheaths and leaves. These plants are important food sources of Bahnar people to help hunger relief, especially in the non-harvesting season. Besides, Bahnar people also exploit 14 species as raw materials for the production of appliances and work tools, 4 species for bonsai and 5 species for firewood. (Ha, 2020).

Bahnar people strictly follow certain principles for exploitation of each type of NTFP. For example, for cutting kinds of bamboo trees such as thorny bamboo, Bambusa balcooa or Maclurochloa sp., people normally choose qualified trees, cut 80-100 cm from the root so that the rest of the bamboo tree is used as a support for preventing bamboo shoots from being broken by wind or damaged by animals. Bahnar people do not collect the bamboo shoots at the beginning of bamboo shoots growing season and let them grow into mature plants. For Rattan species, they choose to exploit trees longer than 5 m. The vegetables and tubers are only partially exploited without uprooting all roots. (Ha, 2020).

  • Thua Thien Hue Union of Science and Technology Associations (HUSTA)
  • 06 Phan Boi Chau, Vinh Ninh, Hue city, Thua Thien Hue province, Vietnam
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