The United Nations Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Land Degradation (UN-REDD) programme is a scheme in which rich developed countries with high carbon emissions pay developing countries with large stands of forests to preserve or increase the area of their forests as carbon stocks or sinks.

How this new global forest governance mechanism will play out on the ground, especially with regards to indigenous forest users and dwellers, is still uncertain, and is very much up to each national government since the financial transfer is from one government to another. Yet, to what extent is this discourse about engaging indigenous peoples actually happening on the ground?

It is still a huge question about what exactly forest-dependent communities think about REDD (CCMP, 2009), and in this essay, I will seek to explore the dissonances between forest discourse expressed by the indigenous forest users in Vietnam, as represented by the students at a Farmers Field School, and the global forest discourse emerging from the UN-REDD programme. After a brief overview of (a) the state of Vietnam’s forests, and (b) indigenous peoples in Vietnam and the Farmers Field School’s parent NGO, SPERI (Social Policy Ecology Research Institute), I will discuss my methods in understanding the discourses of my indigenous students. I will then discuss four points of dissonance between their discourse and the current global forest governance discourse: the extent of awareness of REDD, the perceived level of endemism of corruption, the ontological status of forests, and the ontological status of the self. Finally, I will conclude by commenting on what this could mean for truly meeting the principles of participation and engagement of indigenous peoples at the global level.