Through the lens of the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, the paper analyses how the combination of reforestation programs and households uplands allocation has significantly altered land management in a commune of Northern Vietnam. Based on a three villages’ case study, we argue that the government policies implemented in the end of the 1990s have not only impacted on individual farmer land-use, but has also induced the collapse of existing informal institutional arrangements governing uplands management. In turn this has had repercussions on farmers’ strategies and households’ resilience. For instance, important changes in land access and land-use rights broke up the subtle collective rules that enabled grazing and cropping systems co-existence. Further to the analysis of policies’ impacts on land use and farmers livelihoods, this study examines how, and under what conditions for a three decade period, farmers have been able to adopt new strategies, new land management systems and new institutional arrangements. Furthermore, we make recommendations for policy-making: on the one hand, directions for new policies development and on the other, advice to champion policies which match impacts to pursued objectives. We adopt a political ecology perspective by focusing on institutions and policies as driving forces for environmental change, and propose a comprehensive approach for analyzing land-use change in mountainous areas. Methodology for data analysis combines the use of the IAD, a rigorous institutional framework that has been widely used in the field of the commons studies, with an historical perspective. The approach integrates environmental, social, and economic factors – from the micro to the macro level – to explain how uniform national policies have lead to different farmers’ strategies and distinct upland management systems.