| Summary: | The extreme diversity of the mountainous zones of northern Vietnam causes national policies to have vastly different outcomes in different areas, even within the same province or district. In this paper, we examine the relationships between the biophysical and socioeconomic factors that shape peoples’ livelihood strategies and, ultimately, their standards of living.We combine a regional-level geographic approach with localized monographic studies to assess the effect of geographic conditions on rural development. After identifying the village as the elementary unit of natural resource management, we demonstrate that landscape composition is an important defining factor behind village production systems. Villages that have production systems based on wide valley bottoms cropped with irrigated rice tend to be compact and accessible. In contrast, villages in steeply-sloped forested areas tend to be spread out, inaccessible. The Doi moi reforms of the 1980s and 1990s have mostly benefited the former type of villages, populated mostly by the Tày and Kinh ethnic groups, while leaving behind the latter type, mostly Dao and H’mong. The geographic approach offers researchers a mechanism for identifying the villages in greatest need of technical assistance.
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