Accounted for over 70% population as workforce, agriculture holds a large pie in economic structure of Viet Nam. Land is important resource to stimulate the development in agriculture and hold the role as living base for rural population. However, the growth of agriculture in recent years is strongly decreased.

One of main reasons is the diffuse of land that challenge the raise of productivity and large scale production in modern agriculture. To defense the position, the government has issued essential policies to encourage mass production and land gathering such as Decree no.02/2003/NQ-CP, Decision no.210/2013/ND-CP or Decision no.15.2015/ND-CP to encourage rural investment, well-plan for land and support for investors. This leads to the blooming of mass production project from large enterprises in Viet Nam, most of them are in commercial agricultural product such as coffee, rubber, sugar, paper powder and breeding.

The investment on land is a result of industrialization and modernization, followed up by economic benefit for involved parties as well as societal and environmental issues. Small scale farmers lost their land and be rejected from the revolution. This challenge requires corporate responsibility in non-economic field such as environment, society and culture. The question here is, how to balance the benefit for farmers – those who are holding most part of agricultural land, and the benefit of enterprises who invest in the field.

In the conference on Rules for responsible land investment in Viet Nam, organized by the Information Centre for Agriculture Development last May 23, ideas are discussed. According to Mr. Nguyen Anh Phong, Deputy Director of Information Centre for Agriculture Development assist that the build of Rules for Responsible Land Investment in Viet Nam based on two main purposes: identify issue to stimulate effective land investment in economic, societal and environmental side; and create a frame to guide competitive and sustainable development activities for investors.

In charge of guiding the conference, Mr. Pham Hoang Hai, Secretary of Viet Nam Business Council for Sustainable Development in Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VBCSD –VCCI) shared precious knowledge about Corporate Sustainability Index (CSI) and gained attention of the conference’s attendees. This is the first CSI of Viet Nam that was built by leading professionals in Viet Nam and foreign. In the application of CSI, enterprises is provided an effective tool to measure their efforts in sustainable development and risk management, improve their awareness to new business opportunity, increase clarity and strengthen belief from partners, investors, government and involved parties. The new CSI of 2017 now reduced to 134 items instead of the old 159, which includes 19 economic items, 18 environment items, 92 societal, labor and human rights items. Forest resource and biodiversity protection, land and water protection and sustainable usage are involved. According to Mr. Hai, VBCSD has successfully built a CSI for aquiculture beside standard one, as the very first step for industrial specific CSI in the near future.

CSI and Rules for Responsible Land Investment helps enterprises to execute their investment to sustainable development orientation, meet up opportunities and build long-term benefits for their own and their partners.