Vietnam’s Forests

Vietnam’s forest area has increased from 9.18 million ha (27.2%) in 1990 to 12.61 million ha (37%) in 2006. The forest gains are mainly by establishment of plantations while exploitation and degradation of natural forest areas continues. However, Vietnam has made progress in slowing the rate of natural forest degradation. There has been reform in the forestry sectors to transfer forest land from big state forest farms to households (HH) or communes. Forest management plans for the communes/HH and training were provided. Vietnam is currently testing and analyzing the potential of other ways to increase the value of the forest, e.g. Payment for Environmental Services, REDD or FSC Certification. Take a look at photos from the project area for a sense of the Central Highlands.

UN-REDD Program Vietnam

The UN-REDD program seeks to address deforestation and forest degradation through capacity building at national and local level. It consists of three main components: (i) Improved institutional and technical capacity on national level, (ii) improved capacity to manage REDD on local level (province, district, and commune) and (iii) improved knowledge of approaches to reduce regional displacement of emissions. The outputs of Outcome II were formulated as follows:

• Output 2.1: REDD potential mainstreamed in provincial and district-level forest land-use plan
• Output 2.2: Participatory C-stock (volumes of carbon in different forest stocks) monitoring system
• Output 2.3: Equitable transparent benefit sharing payment systems
• Output 2.4: Awareness-raising at provincial, district and local levels

Lam Dong province was determined as the pilot province for the UN-REDD program. Nevertheless, it encouraged other donors and governmental agencies to provide lessons gained outside the pilot province. Especially provinces with tremendous deforestation rates but still large forest areas were encouraged to participate, if possible. Among 6 provinces, Dak Nong is considered as one of the provinces with great potential. In order to facilitate this process, the UN-REDD program established the UN-REDD Working group. This working group was divided into 4 sub-groups: (i) REDD governance, (ii) REDD carbon accounting (carbon inventories, data management), (iii) REDD financing and benefit sharing and, (iv) local implementation of REDD.

In 1993 the Social Forestry Development Program was launched in the North of Vietnam by GTZ. This resulted in several projects engaged in natural resource management, forestry and rural development. In June 2009, a comprehensive study on the state of community forestry in Vietnam (Wode, Bao Huy, June 2009) was elaborated. Experiences from the field, especially on benefit-sharing systems, were used to suggest transparent benefit sharing payment system for REDD. These findings were presented at the Conference of Parities (COP) 15 in Copenhagen. The study was also embedded into the UN-REDD program and contributes to Output: 2.3.

This Google financed REDD project contributes directly to Output 2.2 of the UN-REDD program. It is embedded in the Environmental Protection and Natural Resource Management Project (EPMNR), who is working on innovative forest financing mechanism. Elaboration of a Participatory Carbon Assessment Guideline in close collaboration with the Tay Nguyen University in Buon Ma Thout, training of this methodology and self-reliant implementation should foster the integration of communities into the REDD approach. Employees of provincial departments were integrated in the field implementation in order to enhance knowledge and commitment on provincial level as well.