Participatory landscape analysis for community-based livestock management in Vietnam

This article describes an action research project that explored the diagnosis of land use changes and problem prioritisation with local stakeholders and the design and testing of technical and organisational innovations in Vietnam. The research looks at the Mountain Agrarian Systems Programme, established in 1998, and aims to understand factors related to designing sustainable cropping systems and develop new tools to facilitate decision-making processes for rural development and natural resource management. The authors argue that it is important to understand the underlying social organisation of the community as well as its historical evolution and response to policy and institutional changes. The article presents methods to facilitate such a collective learning process that encourages changes in the spatial management of livestock systems and supports transformations in social organisation. The article focuses on a case study in Phieng Lieng Village to demonstrate how an effective mechanism for dialogue between researchers and local stakeholders can be a facilitative process. ôThe role of the researcher as facilitator is to find a context where individual behaviour will be compatible with the common good. It will then become possible to use the mediation tools developed to create sustainable collective management of natural resourcesö