TRADITIONAL NATURAL RESOURCES MANAGEMENT

1 INTRODUCTION
The research was conducted between June 3 and June 26 on the pilot sites of the Sustainable Management of Resources in the Lower Mekong Basin (SMRLMB) Project of the Mekong River Commission. The project is active in the four riparian countries Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam.
The project has selected three pilot sites that total nine villages in the District of Lak, Dak Lak Province, in Tay Nguyen, the Central Highlands of Vietnam. The rivers in the project area are tributaries to the lower Mekong River. Two of these sites, three and four villages, are in Dak Phoi Commune, one with two villages is in Krong No Commune. The two sites in Dak Phoi are adjacent, but Dak Phoi and Krong No are separated by a hilly area. Walking through the hills is possible and exchange takes place – we met people from Dak Phoi villages in Krong No.
Two ethnologists went on site: Luu Hung, Head of the Department for Research and Collection on the Central Highlands at the Museum of Ethnology in Hanoi, and Markus Vorpahl, Ph.D. student at the Institute of Ethnology, University of Hamburg, Germany. The aim of the research was to identify and analyze social and cultural structures determining the use of natural resources by the MNong ethnic minority resident on the pilot sites, and their significance for the project. Special attention was given to the possible reawakening of some of these structures or parts of them to support project activities.

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2 MNONG CULTURE
The villages in the project area are almost only inhabited by MNong. They have been residing for a long time in the central highlands, mainly in the South of Dak Lak Province, the project area. On the pilot sites we were confronted with two different subgroups of MNong:

1. In most villages there live MNong Gar,
2. in Buon Nam, Dak Phoi Commune, live MNong Cil.

There are other MNong Cil villages in the area, but this is the only one in the project villages. The differences between MNong Gar and MNong Cil are of no importance for this research, as they share the same language, culture, social structure and the same economy of shifting cultivation. The different identity nevertheless makes Buon Nam a village constantly considered by its inhabitants, as much as by outsiders, as not like the rest. The situation is getting more complicated as the ancestral land of Buon Nam is one day’s walk away. Now the village is located on land which belonged traditionally to other villages, so that they are seen as intruders, and for every extension or exchange of land the have to ask the neighboring villages.
Close to the MNong villages, but outside the project site, is a village of Thai and Nung minority people from the North of Vietnam. They named their village after their province of origin, Cao Bang.
Inside some MNong villages, there are a few other ethnic people, husbands or wives who married into MNong families, or whole families. There are Ede, Giarai, Hre, Co, Thai and Kinh. For MNong villages this is a recent phenomenon, as the villages are traditionally homogenous and, as described below, have a strong interior cohesion and a strong concept of traditional land ownership based on village and clan adhesion. In one case there is a family of Kinh living in a village, in Buon Lieng Ke, Dak Phoi Commune. This family bought land there and uses it in the same way as their MNong neighbors, but also owns a small shop. Other Kinh shops in Dak Phoi Commune are owned by people from the District town Lien Son, not constantly living in the villages. In Krong No Commune there are more Kinh families living in the villages. They are all shop-owners, bartering food with their MNong neighbors, buying forest products (rattan, different kinds of bamboo and bamboo shoots, snakes) from them and catering for the truck drivers on the national road passing through Krong No. Although these families might have lived in the villages since more than ten years, they are considered "temporary" residents by the MNong.

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The life of the MNong Gar in the project area is based on the forest. The forest is the (natural) resource traditionally used and exploited by them. It is used mainly in two ways: by rotational shifting cultivation, producing rice, vegetables and some other plants, and by collecting non-cultivated forest products for food, construction and sale. In the traditional MNong society, concepts such as "Natural Resources Management" or "Strategies" in the western meaning were not explicitly formulated, as they saw themselves as integral part of their natural environment, and the Traditional Natural Resources Management Strategies were part of their lives. They were conscious of the importance of the forest for their live and aware of their interaction with the natural environment. There were complex systems and strategies to maintain and protect the forest and the forest land. On the other hand, there were no protection mechanisms directly concerning water, as water is abundant and experience shows that water resources are stable when the forest is protected.
All nine villages are situated in tropical forest with fertile soil, lots of forest products to gather and possibilities for hunting. They live on shifting cultivation, with rice as staple crop and main food supply. The fields are mostly on steep slopes. Like other groups in the Central Highlands and in similar natural environments, they use "slash and burn" to prepare their fields, they cut the forest on former fields and burn the trees to prepare new fields. As all over Tay Nguyen, there are two seasons: the dry season from November to April and the rainy season from May to October. 85% of the annual rain fall in the rainy season, the most pouring down between July and September.
3.1 Social Institutions and Traditional Natural Resources Management
Since generations, MNong Gar live on shifting cultivation, cutting forest to clear land for cultivation and planting upland rice on steep slopes. They both clear forest and protect it, exploit land and let it recover. They use a reasonable and efficient system to manage their natural resources, adapted to the local conditions. The strategies described below demonstrate an awareness of the necessity to manage forest and land properly. This awareness is part of their tradition and it is found in all of the studied villages, providing an important access to the spirit of the target group for the project in matters of natural resources management. Together with other factors it creates a social environment favorable to traditional or modern natural resources management strategies. Examples are the practice of community collaboration during cultivation, the solidarity and interior cohesion of the village, the mutual help between households, or the importance of traditional rules. Under the circumstances of low population density and a non-monetary economy, the traditional strategies are effective means to secure the living and maintain the natural environment. Rotational shifting cultivation and the controlled use of other forest products, i.e., the traditional resources management, based on long-term experience, has to be considered ecologically sustainable. However, present policies to "protect" forest areas and other external activities in Dak Phoi are partly responsible for the decrease of agricultural land available for shifting cultivation, thus generating a relative increase of population pressure.
3.1.1 The Village as Center of Social Life
The village bon is the center of the traditional MNong society, of the individual’s and the community’s life. Every village has three major natural, non-social constituents:

• Forest, for fields and the exploitation for other subsistence purposes,
• Residential area, to build the village and to live,
• Water: underground water to drink and cook, river water for fishing.

Every village has its own territory that has to meet these basic requirements. The whole life of the people takes place inside the defined village territory. In former times, this territory was a large area, mainly of old forest. The territory has its stable frontiers with adjacent villages. These frontiers are normally along rivers and mountain ridges. They are well known to the villagers and respected by the people living in adjacent areas and other outsiders. We could collect leadership list of up to eight generations depth in some villages. According to the traditional leaders today, the village territory and the frontiers did not change since then. Traditionally, the territory was closed strictly to foreigners. It had legal value according to the customary laws and all violations of it were punished by the village community. All exploitation by outsiders was restricted and had to be sanctioned by the village. Today, only the installation of shifting cultivation fields and the cutting of big trees by outsiders is – theoretically – restricted and subject to punishment by the community as well as by the government.
Although living closely to the highly organized states of the Cham, the Khmer and the Kinh, and being in contact with traders from these societies coming into the mountains, in the MNong society the village was and is the highest political institution. In relations with the exterior and with each other, every village is an autonomous unit. The relations that govern the live inside the village are those between the village, the family and the clan. A number of different clans live together in every village. Each family is affected by its position in and its relation to the village and the clan. As in other traditional societies in Tay Nguyen and elsewhere, the clan has a clear structure and a clear position in the life of the individual, the family and the village. The families of the clan who opened the village territory, the "founding clan" of the village, play a major role in the village society.
The village owns the residential land as a community, whereas the fields in the forest are owned by each clan and each family. The ownership of the miir, the field for shifting cultivation, is stable and rests always with the owners, even if the fields are not used for cultivation. This ownership of ancestral land of the families was established long ago, and it is known to everybody what piece of land is owned by which family. The ownership of every piece of land is protected by the village rules. Land use right and land ownership are closely linked to adherence to the village.
The villagers not only have the right to cultivate in the village, on land owned by them, but to gather in the forest on the village territory. The identity of village society and village land is characteristic for the MNong society. Every individual and every family has a "sacred" link to the village and the village territory. Every MNong has to be a member of a family, a clan and a village, and is subject to multiple relations with these entities. The personal behavior is supervised by other villagers. Formerly, nobody could survive outside the social, cultural and natural environment of the village. The homogeneity of the ethnic and cultural composition strengthened the cohesion of the village community. The village's stability was based on solidarity and on customary rules.
The traditional society before the 1960s had the morale and the internal power to protect the territory and to conserve the natural resources forest, soil and water, as this was considered necessary for their lives. Every village had its own set of rules on its scale, but the rules in all villages were similar. The rules and structures described below are therefore a condensation of what we heard in the different villages. The villagers shared the benefits of exploitation, the right to use and the responsibility to protect the natural resources on the village territory. The specific rules formulated by the villages to protect their natural resources are potential avenues to what is called "Traditional Natural Resources Management Strategies" by the project.

Source: Traditional Natural Resources Management Strategies of the MNong in Lak District, Dak Lak Province

Report on Field Study by Luu Hung and Markus Vorpahl. June 1997