CODE is a partner in the Indigenous Key Farmer-Based Network of Southeast Asia, and has, alongside its sister organizations TEW (Women’s Rights-Based Organisational and Institutional Development), CIRD (Indigenous Community Rights-Based Development), CHESH (Land Use Master Planning for Community-Based Ecological Economic Practices), and SPERI (Social and Cultural Capital, Customary Law-Based Foundation Development) been working to enrich the Ecological Value of Highland Watershed Forests since 1995. Today CODE see the principal challenge facing Highland Watershed Forests and the communities living within them as the ecological, social and cultural damage being caused to by the unconstrained encroachment of industrial agriculture into these ecologically and culturally sensitive areas.

Understanding the history of CODE and its partners, CODE is, in the coming decades, re-positioning itself to bridge community entrepreneur leadership, commercial enterprises, and government policy makers in a shared moral and ethical approach in Highland Watershed Forest regions. One that respects the cultural, economic and ecological concerns of all parties.

CODE sees the newly established trade in Carbon Credits offers a prime opportunity for achieving this goal. It is therefore offering to act as an Independent Arbitrator in this trade to ensure that rural community entrepreneurs (community forest owners), and business enterprises (carbon emitters) share in a ‘no-harming’ approach to the forest trees, soil, and water that are the major source of the carbon sequestration for the Carbon Credit Market. CODE offers to supervise, on behalf of the government, the fair trade in carbon credits, the fair payment of taxation on incomes earned, and to facilitate media engagement to advance the national understanding of the whole Carbon, Carbon Credit and Carbon Credit Supply Chain complex.

CODE’s values and mission is to strengthen the interspace between 5 stakeholders (community forest owners, carbon emitters, independent arbitrator, government, and media) in the national Carbon Credit Supply Chain in highland, coastal, and delta regions to ensure the ‘fair sharing’ of the moral and ethical principles in the ecological circular economy of today and tomorrow.

The CODE Institute was co-founded in 2007 by Ms. Tran Thi Lanh, an Ecological Anthropologist, and Mr. Goverd Van Ord from the Netherlands. Ms. Tran Thi Lanh is also the Founder of the Social Policy Ecology Research Institute (SPERI) in 2006.

Following its inception in 2007, Senior Professor of Science Le Van Khoa served as the Institute's Director until his passing in 2017. From 2017 to 2023, Ms. Tran Thi Lanh stepped in to assume the role of Director while concurrently serving as the Founding Chair of the CODE Institute. In November 2023, Dr. Le Xuan Nghia took over the leadership and has been serving as the Director of the CODE Institute to the present day.

She is an eminent socio-political activist, recognized not only in Vietnam but also internationally. She has been a passionate contributor to global peace initiatives and was honored as a member of the "1000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize 2005" global project.

She pioneered the Theory of Bio-Human Ecology. Grounded in this theoretical framework, she went on to invent the concepts of Ecological Livelihood, Livelihood Identity, and Community Entrepreneurship with regards to local farmer needs.

Concurrently, she founded the Community Entrepreneur Development Institute (CEDI) in 2015 to provide a legal framework for the core farmer networks that her organizations have accompanied over a 40-year journey since 1986.

Most notably, she conceptualized "LIVELIHOOD SOVEREIGNTY (LISO)" — which stands as a credible and highly logical pillar among the four global development pillars across four countries: 1) Gross National Happiness (Bhutan), 2) Good Living (Bolivia), 3) Self-Reliance (Vanuatu), and 4) Livelihood Sovereignty in Southeast Asia, with Vietnam serving as the primary territory that inspired her to invent LISO.