This report assesses the experiences of forest rehabilitation in Vietnam and draws strategic lessons from these experiences to guide new forest rehabilitation projects. The report highlights lessons from Vietnam's experiences that will be helpful beyond the country border. This report has the following structure: the remainder of chpater one provides the conceptual clarification and theoritical underpinnings for the study and introduces the methodology.

A forestry advisor for the Co-operative League of the United States describes a programme to build co-operation between the forestry services and local communities in eastern Zambia. The programme has involved stakeholder workshops to write management plans, and support for more productive agriculture.

Very large numbers of the rural poor derive some part of their livelihood inputs from forest resources, in different ways and to different extents. For many the dependence on forests is a function of their poverty, because they lack better alternatives. Helping meet their subsistence and survival needs can therefore be as important a role for forestry aid as supporting those able to increase their incomes through forest activities, but needs to avoid encouraging forms of forest dependence that could lock the very poor into continued poverty.

The manager of Meru Forest Plantation in northern Tanzania describes how the plantation has made agreements with local communities to share responsibilities and benefits. As a result conflicts over livestock grazing have been minimised, corruption over land distribution has been reduced and no forest fires have taken place for three years.