Challenging slopes: ethnic minority livelihoods, state visions, and land-use land cover change in Vietnam’s northern mountainous borderlands

Sloping farmlands dominate much of Vietnam’s northern borderlands with China. Here, ethnic minority farmers have relied on their traditional ecological knowledge for centuries to fashion sustainable semi-subsistence livelihoods as best they can. With a rapidly increasing agrarian transition, these farmers must now juggle the agro-ecological limits of their farmlands with new state agricultural policies, growing market integration, and increasing extreme weather events. Despite about 60 percent of Vietnam’s landmass comprising slopes greater than 15°, there is sparse information regarding how best to support sustainable livelihood approaches in such regions. Yet, an understanding of current crop choices, agricultural limits, and farmer decision-making processes in such locales is vital for relevant, slope-related policy suggestions to be formulated. In this paper, we take a mixed methods approach, combining land-use and land cover (LULC) change mapping with qualitative interviews and observations, to investigate the interactions among sloping lands, LULC change, and local livelihoods in a remote, mountainous commune in northern Vietnam’s borderlands. We analyze LULC maps for Bản Phố commune, Lào Cai province, which contains 13 ethnic minority Hmong villages and has a fairly typical upland topography with three-quarters of the land sloped over 15°. Focusing on three main findings from our LULC analysis we then determine the drivers and livelihood consequences of an increase of ‘shrubs’ on sloped land, specific pockets of conversion to ‘bare soils’, and an increase in particular urban areas. We find that state afforestation policies, lowland demand for ‘authentic upland alcohols’, and officials keen to raise the status of a nearby town, all factor into the challenges and opportunities farmers now face.