Spirit forests reflect beliefs and traditional socio-cultural structure of ethnic minority groups living in mountainous and border areas. In the Draft no.5 of the Law on Forest Protection and Development (revised), spirit forests have been classified as special-use forests, which makes a breakthrough in legislative mindset and creates an important foundation for further conservation strategies for development in order to restore religious beliefs and socio-cultural and ecological capital of more than 14 million ethnic minority people, who have severely been suffering from beliefs crisis since the American War.

According to the point 1 of Article 160 “Land used for belief practices” of the Land Law 2013, it is defined that land for belief practices includes land for communal houses, temples, shrines, hermitages, ancestral worship houses and ancestral temples. This definition, however, does only take into account the religious structures of the Kinh majority, while ignoring religious beliefs of more than 14 million ethnic minority people of 54 ethnic groups living in the mountainous and border areas, which are completely different. For these people, every living thing in nature has its own spirit and moves freely to wherever it likes. The nature spirits always listen to, observe and monitor behaviors of all community members within their living spaces. Therefore, before doing anything, people must ask the spirits for permission via rituals. For instance, they ask the forest spirit for timber for building houses, the field spirit and the spirits of pests, insects and birds for fruitful crops, the water spirit for water, etc. The spirits of all living things in the spiritual ecosystem surrounding villages are of freedom. The sacred forests that are defined as the spirit forests in the Draft no.5 are where there resides the spirits of all living things. By this recognition, it is proved that accusing ethnic minority people of destroying forests is a severe mistake.

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