This project aimed to enhance capacity for multiple-objective land use planning in Vietnam by building a knowledge infrastructure platform that provided:

• space that brings together policy-makers, researchers, NGOs, donors and other stakeholders to define objectives for land use in Vietnam
• infrastructure (i.e. the data, scenarios, models and tools) to enable the development of optimised land policies.

By combining data from global economic and biophysical models with detailed Vietnamese land use and spatial data, the project created a toolbox to enable policy makers and other stakeholders to visualise the outcomes of various long-term scenarios with a focus on land use change in Vietnam. The Toolbox provided a coherent and integrative picture of possible economic and land use development paths and the impact of various land use influencing policies.

The project supported Vietnam’s implementation of programmes and policies on, inter alia, REDD+, climate smart agriculture, and rural development and employment. It has also provided a detailed case study of the “Land 2050 Initiative”, an international collaborative effort that brings together decision-makers, scientists, experts and agenda setters to understand competing demands on land and stimulate the linking of policy and knowledge.

Results of the global-to-local modelling exercise have been presented at several workshops, bringing together decision-makers, scientists and other stakeholders to exchange information on economic and spatial databases and models, to discuss research results and to develop land management strategies.

Update and Resources

Results have been presented at the Agro Environ 2012 conference in Wageningen, the 15th Annual Conference on Global Economic Analysis in Switzerland, and the Second Global Conference on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change in Hanoi, Vietnam in September 2012, where Ralph Ashton gave a key note speech. The papers presented at these conferences, available below, were submitted to academic journals in early 2013. In addition, the project team presented results to a high-level delegation from the Vietnamese Ministry of Planning and Investment.

• Paper presented at the 15th Annual Conference on Global Economic Analysis: A global-to-local modelling approach to land use dynamics in Vietnam: Potential effects of a high climate impact and a high economic growth scenario
• Paper presented at Agro Environ 2012: A global-to-local model approach to assess future land use dynamics: An application to Vietnam
• Policy Brief: Land Use, Food Security and Climate Change in Vietnam
• In-depth report: Land-use change, food security and climate change in Vietnam: A global-to-local modelling approach
• An academic paper Land Use Dynamics, Climate Change, and Food Security in Vietnam: A global-to-local modelling approach was published in the journal World Development in July 2014.

In addition to these resources, the project has created a global-to-local toolbox containing global economic and biophysical models and Vietnamese economic and land use models. The toolbox is designed to enable policy makers and other stakeholders to visualize the outcomes of various long-term scenarios, providing a coherent picture of possible economic and land use development paths and the impact of various land use influencing policies. Please contact CDKN or the project team for further details.

Further resources:

Blog by Michiel van Dijk of LEI-Wageningen UR: Holistic approach vital for managing issues of food, wealth and the environment.

Lead: Michiel Van Dijk (LEI, Wageningen UR)

Project Partners: Tran Kim Long and Vu Cong Lon (Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Vietnam); Ralph Ashton (Terrestrial Carbon Group Project); Wilbert van Rooij (AidEnvironment)

CDKN Funding: £120,000