Forest Protection Law and Policy Need Amendment

Since "Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation" (REDD) became a major topic in international negotiations on climate change since 2007, negotiators and observers have given much thought to Vietnam. However, soon after the 13th Conference was held by the concerned parties (COP 13) involving in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UFCCC) on July 2007, Vietnam has become one of the first countries to express interest in forest carbon partnership facility (FCPF) administered by World Bank (WB) with an aim to supporting the development of national action plan on REDD +.

 

Compared with the other countries, Vietnam has successfully implemented Vietnam UN-REDD Programme Phase I, which was started in September 2009 and completed in June 2012. This is considered an important program to prepare for the implementation of REDD + in Vietnam. The program has reaped some notable achievements in the realization of designed objectives. For example, real estate benefit-sharing system was initially designed through discussions among forestry policy makers.

 

 According to research by scientists, Vietnam is one of the nations that will be most severely affected by the global climate change. Therefore, Vietnam needs to be fully aware about forest protection and development with its current area of 16 million ha. If we do not take effective measures to prevent forest degradation, the lost forest area will resulted in increased greenhouse gases which will account for 15-20 percent of the total emission.

 

Being fully supported and executed by three UN agencies (UNDP, FAO, UNEP), especially with financial and technical support from Norwegian Government, Vietnam UN-REDD Vietnam has officially operated since August 2009 with a view to strengthening technical and institutional capacity for concerned agencies, making good preparation for implementation of REDD + at the end of 2012 and positive contribution to climate change resilience efforts of international community. Additionally, it should be noted that one of the important components that was implemented in Phase I is to improve the REDD management ability at the local level (province, district and commune) through pilot implementation of REDD + in two districts of Lam Ha and Di Linh in Lam Dong Province. In the next phase, the program will focus on institutional strengthening and capacity building in 40 provinces with abundant forests and support pilot implementation of all the REDD activities + in 6 provinces.

 

After three years of implementation, the Government of Norway has provided support of US$4.4 million to Vietnam in phase I. To date, program has disbursed US$4.1 million. According to the agreement of the two governments of Vietnam and Norway on the implementation of phase II, Norwegian Government has also agreed to further sponsor Vietnam an amount of US$30 million. This phase is expected to last until 2020.

 

As far as we are concerned, in some localities implementing REDD program, there appear cases that collect the local people’s red permission to serve the purpose of project implementation. What do you think about this?
 In fact, we have conducted investigation and found that these are rare cases. However, I would like to state that this is a fraud to serve the personal gain of some individual or organizations that do not have executive authority, doing randomly without the direction of the state. As we know, forest protection is closely associated with forest and land allocation policy as well as utilization purposes regulated by local authorities for each household.

 

The overall objective of the program is to strengthen the institutional and technical capacity for the relevant agencies of MARD at the central, provincial and local level to the end of 2012. Vietnam are willing to implement “reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation” combined with sustainable conservation and management and increased storage of carbon (REDD +) and effectively contribute to climate change resilence efforts made by international community. The goal that needs to be realized is to enable Vietnam to be equipped with adequate policies and capacities for environmental protection, sustainable natural resource and cultural heritage management, contributing to poverty reduction, economic development and life quality improvement.

 

Accordingly, the contents of the program which will be implemented include: capacity building and institutional strengthening for agencies at the national level to manage, coordinate and implement REDD activities effectively in Vietnam, enhancement of REDD management ability at the grassroots level through pilot implementation of REDD + in two districts namely Di Linh and Lam Ha in Lam Dong Province and establishment and enhancement of cooperation, exchange of information and experience in implementing REDD + with other countries in the lower Mekong sub-region. In addition, Vietnam is in the process of establishing measurement, reporting and verification framework for REDD. This monitoring framework will serve as the ground for the operation of measurement, reporting and verification system so as to help Vietnam meet requirements on monitoring of REDD + activities and provide information as defined in the negotiations of the UN framework Convention on climate change and on REDD +. Vietnam will develop a measurement, reporting and verification framework as a part of the National REDD + Program.

 

In the process of implementation of REDD at site, we have met significant challenges. The participation of the private sector is not strong enough especially the companies working in the field of fisheries, agriculture related to conversion of agricultural land. The awareness of REDD is different from the central to local levels. There still remains much limitation in coordination among relevant agencies. On the legal basis, much needs to be done about Law on Forest Protection in 2005 and carbon rights as well as the decentralization of power to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment in the land allocation under Decree 99. The goal of phase II is to finalize the legal framework to enable REDD + to realize the intended objectives.