Phuc Xuan To
Phuc To is an Honorary Lecturer in the Resources, Environment and Development Group of Crawford School of Public Policy. Phuc’s areas of expertise include resource governance, environmental change, and development studies. In 2012 – 2017 Phuc worked on an ARC research project examining how forest users in the Mekong countries respond to the complex local, national, and regional dimensions of the emerging market for forest carbon. Since 2018, Phuc has worked on a new ARC Discovery project examining how nature-society ruptures generate local and civil society responses, and how these responses affect states in the region.
Phuc received his PhD in resource governance. His PhD project examines the dynamics of access and control over the forest in Vietnam. In 2007-2009 period, Phuc was a postdoc fellow at Anthropology Department of University of Toronto (Canada), where he engaged in a large-scale research project funded by the Canadian Research Council examining the agrarian change in Southeast Asian countries.
Since 2009, Phuc has been working with Forest Trends as a senior policy analyst. His work has been focusing on the dynamics of market-based instruments, forest-risk commodities, global legality regulations, land governance, state authority and legitimacy. Phuc has been providing policy advice to the EU, the US Departments of Justice, of Forest Service, Asian Development Bank, and Australian Department of Agriculture, Water and Environment.
COVID-19 expertise
Phuc To has been working intensively in COVID-19-relevant areas.
In February and March 2020, in collaboration with timber sector in Vietnam Phuc was examining the impacts of COVID-19 on the sector particularly in the areas of wood export and import, production, and consumption.
The research combined an enterprise survey and in-depth interviews with key actors revealed paramount impacts of the pandemic on the sector, including disruption of supply chains, the company’s shrinking production or entirely shutting down, and large-scale job loss. Vulnerable groups such as household-based/micro and small-scale enterprises and hired laborers were hit the hardest.
The study findings directly fed into policymaking process, triggering the Vietnamese government’s issuance of the policies and measures aimed at mitigating the negative impacts of the pandemic on the sector and vulnerable groups.
In collaboration with local partners, Phuc used the findings to inform a virtual high-profile workshop to discuss how to improve the sector’s resilience and sustainability post-COVID 19. The findings also helped generate healthy discussions on how to prepare the country and the sector to embrace the opportunities and mitigate the risks associated with the shift of global supply chains from China to Vietnam in the future.
Phuc To has started engaging in the rubber and sugar sector in Vietnam for similar research.
Research Interest
Researcher’s projects
The political ecology of forest carbon – mainland Southeast Asia’s new commodity frontier (2012-2015), supported by an ARC Discovery Grant, this study aims to understand how forest user in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos respond to the complex local, national and regional dimension of the emerging market for forest carbon. In this project Phuc works as a research fellow.
Since June 2018 Phuc has worked on a new ARC Discovery research project Rupture: Nature – Society transformation in mainland Southeast Asia. This project will reveal how nature – society ruptures generate local and civil society responses, and how these responses affect states in the regions.
Since 2009 Phuc has led a research team in Vietnam and together with our local partners (e.g. government research institutions, private sector) to conduct policy research in the areas of land governance, cross-border illegal logging, and responsible trade of forest-risk commodities. Insights from these studies have been used by government actors, private sector and development practitioners in Vietnam, the Mekong Region, and beyond to inform the policy dialogue with aim to improve resource governance in the Region.
Research interests
- The dynamics of market-based instruments
- Commodity markets
- Land governance
- Global legality systems for land-based commodities.
Teaching
Phuc has been doing a numerous guest lectures on rural property relations, state, payment for ecosystem service, illegal logging, resource access and control.
Publications
BOOK
Sikor, T. S. Dorondel, J. Stahl and P. To. 2018. When Things Become Property: Land reform, authority, and value in postsocialist Europe and Asia. Berghahn Books.
P. To. 2007. Forest Property in the Vietnamese Uplands: An Ethnography of Forest Relations in Three Dao Villages. Berlin and London: LIT Verlag/Transaction Publishers
ARTICLE
To, P. and S. Mahanty. 2019. Vietnam’s cross-border timber crackdown and the quest for state legitimacy. Political Geography.
To, P., S. Mahanty and A. Wells-Dang. 2019. From “Land to the Tiller” to the “New Land Lords”? The Debate over Vietnam’s Lastest Land Reforms. Land. https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/8/8/120
Milne, S., Mahanty, S., To, P., Dressler, W., Kanowski, P., Thavat, M. 2019. ‘Learning from ‘actually existing’ REDD+: A synthesis of ethnographic findings’. Conservation & Society 17(1): 84-95
To, P. 2019. Review of the Book Forests Are Gold: Trees, People, and Environmental Rule in Vietnam by Pamela McElwee. The Journal of Asian Studies. Doi:doi:10.1017/S0021911819000512
To, P. and W. Dressler. 2019. Rethinking ‘Success’: The politics of payment for forest ecosystem services in Vietnam. Land Use Policy, 81:582-593.
Ingalls, M., P. Meyfroidt, To, P., M.,Kenney-Lazar, and M. Eppecht. 2018. The transboundary of deforestration under REDD+: Problematic intersections between the trade of forest-risk commodities and land grabbing in the Mekong region. Global Environmental Change, 50: 255-267.
To, P., W. Dressler, S. Mahanty. 2017. REDD+ for Red Books? Negotiating rights to land and livelihoods through carbon governance in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Geoforum, 81, 163-173.
To, P. S. Mahanty, W. Dressler. 2016. Moral economy and market:’Insider’ cassava trading in Kon Tum, Vietnam. Asia Pacific Viewpoint 57(2): 168-179.
To, P. 2015. State Territorialization and Illegal Logging: The Dynamic Relationships between Practices and Images of the State in Vietnam. Critical Asian Studies, 47:2, 229-252. DOI: 10.1080/14672715.2015.1041278
Dressler, W. D. Wilson, J. Clendenning, R. Laslo, R. Cramb, R. Keenan, S. Mahanty, D. Gervana, P. To. 2015. How do long-fallow swidden systems impact upon livelihood and ecosystem serves outcomes compared with alternative land uses in the uplands of Southeast Asia? Journal of Development Effectiveness, DOI: 10.1080/19439342.2014.991799
To, P., S. Mahanty, W. Dressler. 2015. A New Landlord’ (địa chủ mới)? Community, Land Conflict and State Forest Companies (SFCs) in Vietnam, Forest Policy and Economics, DOI: 10. 1016/j.forpol.2014.10.005
W. Dressler, S. Mahanty, J. Clendenning, To, P. 2015. Rearticulating Governance through Carbon in the Lao PDR? Environment and Planning C, DOI: 10.1080/19439342.2014.991799
Mai, V.T and P. To. 2015. A system thinking approach for achieving a better understanding of swidden cultivation in Vietnam. Human Ecology. DOI: 10.1007/s10745-015-9722-8
To, P., S. Mahanty, W. Dressler. 2014. Networks of Corruption in Vietnamese and Lao Cross-border Timber Trade, Anthropological Forum, 24 (2):1–21
Dressler, W., To, P. & Mahanty, S. 2013. How Biodiversity Conservation Policy Accelerates Agrarian Differentiation: The Account of an Upland Village in Vietnam, Conservation and Society, 11, 130-143.
To, P., W. Dressler, S. Mahanty, Pham. T.T, C. Zingerli. 2012. The Prospectives for Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) in Vietnam: A Look at Three Payment Schemes. Human Ecology, 40:237-249
Sikor, T. and To, P. 2011. Illegal Logging in Vietnam: Lam Tac (Forest Hijackers) in Practice and Talk. Society & Natural Resources, 24: 7, 688-701
To, P. 2009. Why Did the Forest Conservation Policy Fail in the Vietnamese Uplands? Forest Conflicts in Ba Vi National Park in Northern Region International Journal for Environmental Studies 66 (1): 59-68
To, P. 2007. Fuzzy Property Relations in the Vietnamese Uplands: Ethnography of Forest Access and Control. International Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law (5):37-73
BOOK CHAPTER
To, P. 2013. Legal Rights to Resources Versus Forest Access in the Vietnamese Uplands, In State, Society and the Market in Contemporary Vietnam. Hue-Tam H.T.; M. Sidel (eds.) London and New York: Routledge. Pp. 71-86.
To, P. 2012. Dai Gia Ve Que [The “New Rich” Go To the Countryside]: Impacts of the Urban-fuelled Rural Land Market. In The Reinvention of Distinction: Modernity and the Middle Class in Urban Vietnam. V. Nguyen-Marshall; L. Drummond; D. Belanger (eds). Singapore: Springer. Pp. 143-155
To, P. 2011. Forest Devolution and Social Differentiation in Vietnam. In Forests and People: Property, Governance, and Human Rights. T. Sikor and J. Stahl (eds.). New York: Earthscan. Pp.99-110
To, P. 2011. The development of a Land Market in the Uplands of Vietnam. In Upland Transformations: Opening Boundaries in Vietnam. T. Sikor, Nghiem T.P.T, J. Romm, and J. Sowerwine (eds.). Singapore: Singapore National University Press. Pp.208-227
To, P. 2010. Legal Pluralism in the Management of Luoi Hai Mountain Forest, Vietnam. In Negotiating Local Governance: Natural Resources Management at the Interface of Communities and the State. I. Eguavoen, L. Wolfram (eds.). Berlin and London: LIT Verlag/Transaction Publishers. Pp.21-44
To, P. 2009. Elite Capture and Local Inequality In Politics of Devolution in Southeast Asia. P. Vandergeest and C. Vitayapak (eds.). Chiangmai: Mekong Press
To, P. 2008. Whose Land, Whose Forest? Contesting Highland Forest Resources in Vietnam. In Challenging the Limits: Indigenous Peoples of the Mekong Region. L. Prasit, D. McCaskill, B. Kwanchewan (eds.) Chiangmai: Mekong Press
POLICY PAPER (2017-2018)
Nguyen, Q., To, P., Cao, C. and Nguyen, Q., 2018. Linking smallholder plantations to global markets: Lessons learned from the IKEA model in Vietnam._ Washington D.C.: Forest Trends.
To, P., Dang, Q., Nguyen, Q. and Cao, C., 2018. Vietnam wood market in market integration context. _Hanoi: VIFOREST and Forest Trends.
To, P., Tran, H., Cao, C. and Nguyen, Q. 2018. Vietnam’s import and export of wood and wood products: Current situation and future trends. Hanoi: _VIFORES and Forest Trends.
To, P., Tran, H., Cao, C., Nguyen, Q. and Huynh, H., 2018. Vietnam’s import of wood from Africa: Current situation and risks. Hanoi: _VIFORES and Forest Trends.
To, P., Tran, H., Cao, C., Nguyen, Q. and Huynh, H., 2018. Timber trade between Vietnam and the United State. Hanoi: _VIFORES and Forest Trends.
To, P., Tran, H., Cao, C., Nguyen, Q. and Huynh, H., 2018. Timber trade between Vietnam and China. Hanoi: _VIFORES and Forest Trends.
To, P., 2017. Linkages in wood sector in Vietnam for better values. _Hanoi: Forest Trends.
To, P. and Dang, Q., 2017. Linkages in rubber sector in Vietnam: Opportunity and risk. _Hanoi: Forest Trends.
Advisory work
Phuc has been providing technical advice to the Asian Development Bank, European Forest Institute, World Resources Institute, United National Development Programme and Forest Trends. Phuc has been a policy advisor for various government agencies and timber and rubber sector in Vietnam.
Phuc is a contributor to the Financial Times. He writes about timber trade, FDI investment, state regulations and impacts of the US - China trade war.
Expertise Area(s)
Contact Email
phuc.to@anu.edu.auContact Phone
+61487`48240