Establishment of Forest Reference Level in Vietnam
Dinh Hung Nguyen (Forest Inventory and Planning Institute (FIPI),
Vietnam)

Session 1

Establishment of Forest Reference Level in Vietnam
Dinh Hung Nguyen (Forest Inventory and Planning Institute (FIPI), Vietnam)

Today, I would like to tell you about our experience in the establishment of the forest reference level in
Vietnam.
Explanation of FREL/Forest Reference Levels (FRL)

First of all, I would like to explain a little bit about the terms forest reference emission level and forest
reference level.

Basically, they are benchmarks for assessing the performance of REDD+.

The forest

reference emission level includes emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, while the forest
reference level includes removals from REDD+ activities such as enhancement of carbon stock, andsustainable management of forests.
It is also important to note that, according to the COP decision, in order to obtain and receive
result-based finance, developing country parties like Vietnam should submit a national forest reference
emission level or forest reference level as an interim measure, sub-national FREL/FRL.

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This is the technical guidance from the UNFCCC about FREL/FRL establishment.

First, thereporting unit should be in tons of CO2 per year, and the party should follow the most recent IPCC
guidelines as adopted and encouraged by the COP.

A party should also maintain consistency with the

LULUCF sector of greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory in national communication.

The dataset, approach,model, and assumption should be transparent, complete, consistent, and accurate.

A party should conduct

uncertainty assessment for FREL/FRL.

The party might use as a stepwise approach.

might use sub-national FREL/FRL as an interim measure.

For example, they

A party should update the FREL/FRL

periodically taking into account new knowledge, trends, and any modification of scope and methodologies.
A party might be allowed to make adjustment based on their national circumstances.

Dr. Julian Fox has presented about the international process of FREL/FRL submission.

Here, I only

want to stress that FREL/FRL is the only REDD+ element need to be technically assessed by the
UNFCCC, and the technical assessment is a facilitative process and can be considered as an opportunity for
improvement of the FREL/FRL.

Now 34 countries have already submitted FREL/FRL to the UNFCCC.

Please note that my number 34 is slightly different from Dr. Fox’s number of 38.

This is because somecountries like Brazil or Malaysia have submitted their FREL/FRL twice, so there is a little bit difference inthe numbers.

Among the 34 countries who have already submitted FREL/FRL, 17 countries have alreadycompleted a technical assessments, and have the technical assessment reports published on the UNFCCC
website.

Vietnam is among the countries that have made the technical assessment report published.

Establishment of Forest Reference Level in Vietnam
Dinh Hung Nguyen (Forest Inventory and Planning Institute (FIPI),
Vietnam)

Session 1

FREL/FRL in Vietnam

This graph shows the process of FREL/FRL preparation and submission of Vietnam.

Actually,

Vietnam has started preparing the FREL/FRL since 2009 with the support from Finland and the Japanese
governments, as well as the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development1 of Vietnam.

However, from2015, with the approval of UN REDD phase II programme, my institution together with the Vietnamese
Academy of Forest Sciences2 have improved the FREL/FRL with the direct technical support from FAO.
After completion of the first draft, we organized several consultation meetings to add comments for
improvement.

After that, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has validated and endorsed

the FREL/FRL submission of Vietnam and submitted it to UNFCCC in January 2016.
has received a concentrated review process in March 2016.

Our submission

Based on the feedback from the concentrated

review, we modified our FREL/FRL submission and resubmited it in July 2016.

After that, our nationalteam on FREL/FRL have had intensive discussion and action with the technical assessment (TA) team togive them more information for clarification.

Finally, the technical assessment report has been publishedin May 2017.

1
2

https://www.mard.gov.vn/en/Pages/default.aspx
http://vafs.gov.vn/en/Session 1
About the parameters of our country FREL/FRL, first was the scale.

Since in Vietnam we havehistorical data at the national level, we have decided to develop the FREL/FRL at the national level.
About the scope, because of recent reforestation, the forest cover in Vietnam has been increasing.
why we decided to include all of the five REDD+ activities.
two different reference levels, FREL and FRL.
of the availability of our historical data.
biomass and below-ground biomass.

That isHowever, in the report, we divided them into

The reference period is from 1995 to 2010.

It is because

About the pools included, we only included above-ground

For other carbon pools like the deadwood, litter, and soil, we

excluded them because we do not have country-specific data to calculate these carbon pools.
gases, we excluded non-CO2 because it is not significant based on some research.

About theIn order to develop

FREL/FRL, we use the sample plot data and also the forest cover maps every five years from 1995 to 2010
generated from the National Forest Inventory, Monitoring and Assessment Programme (NFIMAP).

This

programme was implemented by our institute.

We used our national forest definition in circular number 34 issued by the Ministry of Agriculture andRural Development.

This definition defined forest as a land expanding more than 0.5 hectare, having trees

with minimum height of five meters, and having minimum canopy cover of 10%.
we classify the forest and land use into 17 types in total.
12, and five non-forest types.

About the classification,

There are 12 forest types numbered from one to

For the evergreen broadleaf forest, which accounts for about 70% of

Vietnam, we further divide those into three subtypes based on the timber volume.
the forest type number one is evergreen broadleaf with rich timber volume.
timber volume, and number three is poor timber volume.

Here you can see that

Number two is medium

By dividing the evergreen broad leaf forest into

three subtypes, we can monitor the forest degradation and also forest enhancement.

Establishment of Forest Reference Level in Vietnam
Dinh Hung Nguyen (Forest Inventory and Planning Institute (FIPI),
Vietnam)Vietnam is a long country and has many agro-ecological regions.
carbon density across agro-ecological regions.

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One forest type may have different

That is why we have to stratify our mainland into eightagro-ecological regions based on both the ecological and administrative division.
Before, I have mentioned that in Vietnam we have included all of the five REDD+ activities.
would like to explain a little bit more about this.
four categories here in the matrix.
forest type to a non-forest type.

Here I

Actually, I have mapped these five REDD+ activities into

One is deforestation, which includes all of the conversions from a

The next one is forest degradation, which converts forest types with highcarbon density to forest types with low carbon density.

The third category is forest restoration, whichconverts a forest type from low carbon density to a forest type with high carbon density.

The last one isreforestation including all of the conversions from a non-forest type to a forest type.

Therefore, theconversion of carbon stock and sustainable management of forest can be mapped to restoration andenhancement of carbon stock can be mapped to restoration and also reforestation.
Calculating Emissions/Removals and Data Generation for FREL/FRL

To calculate emissions and removals, we follow the approach from the IPCC.

We multiply the activity

data by the emissions and removal factor to get the total emissions and removal.

For example, if there areSession 1
100 hectares of evergreen broadleaf forest deforested each year, and each hectare of deforestation of an
evergreen broadleaf forest emits 500 tons of CO2, then the total emission is 100 multiplied by 500 andequal to 50,000 tons of CO2 per year.
To generate activity data, we use forest carbon maps at four time points in 1995, 2000, 2005, and 2010.
These maps were originally generated by our institute as results for the four cycles of NFIMAP.

The

method for generating these maps is based on satellite imagery interpretation in combination with groundsurvey.

These maps have been improved by many international and national supports from Nordic

Agency for Development and Ecology3 (NORDECO), JICA, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural
Development, and finally the UN-REDD4 Programme.

Using this approach, we can track the change.

Especially our approach corresponds to IPCC’s approach three.

The emission/removal factor was calculated as the difference of carbon densities between two classesof change, and then converted to tons of CO2.

You can see from the formula here we take the carbon

density before the conversion minus the carbon density after the conversion, and then convert to tons ofCO2.

If the result is positive, it is the emission factor.

Otherwise, it is the removal factor.

Carbondensities for different forest types were derived from the plot data of NFIMAP in combination withcountry-specific allometric equations.

For mangroves, because the number of sample plot is very few, weused result from the other research institute.
equal to zero.

For non-forest types, we assumed that carbon density is

We also used IPCC’s default root-to-shoot ratio, which is 0.2 when the above-groundbiomass less than 125 tons of carbon per hectare, and 0.24 otherwise, and use the default carbon fractionof 0.47.

Our method uses both country-specific data and the IPCC default values, so it is equivalent to

IPCC’s tier two.
This flowchart shows the process of calculating the carbon density from the plot data of NFIMAP.
From the species information, we can assign the wood density, and from the DBH and heights of three34

https://www.nordeco.dk/
http://www.un-redd.org/

Establishment of Forest Reference Level in Vietnam
Dinh Hung Nguyen (Forest Inventory and Planning Institute (FIPI),
Vietnam)

Session 1

trees per plot, we can develop the height curve for each forest type and each eco region.

Then we use theheight curve and the DBH as the predictors to estimate the heights all other trees.

Finally, we use three

predictors: wood density, DBH, the height, and country-specific allometric equations to estimate theabove-ground biomass, then use the default root-to-shoot ratio to estimate the below-ground biomass, anduse the default carbon fraction to calculate the carbon density.

This graph shows the forest dynamics of Vietnam from 1943 to 2013.

You can see that, from 1943 to

1995, the forest cover of Vietnam had steadily decreased from 14.3% to 9.2%.

At that time, thegovernment of Vietnam has recognized the environmental importance of forest, and then the government
invested in several programs in order to reverse the trend.
327 and program number 661.
far.

Among these programs were program number

Program number 661 is the largest reforestation program of Vietnam so

It aimed to reforest about five million hectares over 12 years from 1998 to 2010.

very difficult for Vietnam to invest in such a big reforestation program.

In the future, it isThat is why we propose to makethe adjustment for the impact of the program 661 from our forest reference level.

Our method forassessment is we conduct a study to estimate the successful rate of program 661, and then make theadjustment accordingly.

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This graph shows our final result at the national level about the emissions and removals of the threetime periods from 1995 to 2000, from 2000 to 2005, and from 2005 to 2010.
the emission from deforestation.

The orange bars here show

The grey bars show the emission from forest degradation.

The bluebars show the removal from deforestation, and the green bars show the removal from forest restoration.
You can observe that there is no clear trend here.
FREL and FRL.

That is why we decided to use the average to make our

One more observation is that removal from reforestation for the period from 2000 to2005 and from 2005 to 2010 is higher than the removal from reforestation in the period from 1995 to 2000.
This clearly shows the impact of the program 661.

And this graph shows our proposed FREL and FRL.
deforestation and forest degradation.

The red bars here show the emissions from

This red line shows the average of three time periods.

our proposed FREL, which is about 60 million tons of CO2 per year.
from reforestation and forest restoration.

It is also

The green bars show the removals

The dotted green line shows the average over three time points.

The solid green line shows the adjusted forest reference level, which is about minus 40 million tons of CO2
per year.
Technical Assessment Summary/Recommendations

This slide shows the summary of the technical assessment.

The technical assessment team assesses

Establishment of Forest Reference Level in Vietnam
Dinh Hung Nguyen (Forest Inventory and Planning Institute (FIPI),
Vietnam)

Session 1

that Vietnam’s FREL/FRL is overall in accordance with the guidelines for submission of information on
FREL/FRL.

They also acknowledged Vietnam’s efforts to improve the transparency of the data used in

the construction of its FREL/FRL.

They also commend Vietnam for showing a strong commitment tothe continued improvement of this FREL/FRL estimates in line with stepwise approach.

You can accessthe technical assessment report on the UNFCCC website.
The TA team also made several recommendations for Vietnam to improve our FREL/FRL.
should use consistent an approach for image interpretation across the time series.

First, weWe should harmonize

the activity data and emission data used between the LULUCF GHG inventory and the FREL/FRL
submission.

We should provide time-series information on forest and land use transitions.

use time-series consistent data in the estimation of carbon density.

We should

We should improve the definition offorest degradation to include thresholds like canopy cover or carbon stock decline to exclude short-termloss of carbon stocks.
gases.

We should include non-biomass pools: soil, deadwood, and litter and non-CO2

We should also assess the effect of forest fires on the resulting non-CO2 emissions fromdeforestation and forest degradation.
Future Improvements

Based on the recommendations of the TA team, we have made a plan for near future improvement of
our FREL/FRL.

First, we will develop forest cover map based on previous maps to increase theconsistency and reduce artifact changes.
transition.

We will generate time-series information on forest and land use

We will harmonize the activity data and emission factor used between the LULUCF sector of

the GHG inventory and FREL/FRL submission.
and litter.

We will include other carbon pools of soil, deadwood,

We will revise the classification system to make the uncertainty assessment easier.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the donors that are supporting us in the establishmentof the FREL/FRL, in particular the UN-REDD Vietnam programme, the Norway, Finland, and Japan
governments, FAO, and other organizations.

Finally, thank you for your attention.