land allocation and access to resources
perhaps the most important institutional changes in the agricultural areas of vietnam over the final decade of the twentieth century were those associated with land allocation. the land allocation process began in 1988 and was confirmed with the land law in 1993. the process varies according to the type of land. rice land, for example, is generally allocated on the basis of household membership, while hill land is allocated based on the ability of households to pay cooperatives for the rights to improvements such as planted trees (rambo 1995a; and chapters 6 and 7).
access to land fundamentally determines access to resources in the agrarian economy and, hence, levels of vulnerability and resilience. at this time, though, the net effect of the land allocation process in vietnam is difficult to assess. for exanple, some authors argue that, in the areas of provision of public services, such as agricultural research, helth and education, the private control of land and consequent increases in private income have been taken as signals to reduce state expenditure on these public goods with ambiguous impacts on the social structure of rural areas acting in different directions (rambo 1995a; tipping an truong viet dung 1997). by contrast, kolko (1997) sees land privatisation, and the