Forest Monitoring, Payment for Forest Environment services and REDD+ in Điện Biên Province
Nguyen Dinh Hung (Division of Sciences and Technologies, Forest Inventory and Planning Institute,Vietnam)

Today I would like to present the latest situation about ‘Forest Monitoring, Payment for Forest
Environment Services and REDD+ in Dien Bien Province.’ Actually, this presentation was prepared byMr. Nguyen Dinh Ky but he was busy and could not attend the meeting and I was asked to present onbehalf of him and I will try my best.

There are four main contents in the presentation.
monitoring system in Vietnam.

First, I will give brief overview of our national forest

Secondly, I will introduce about forest monitoring in Dien Bien Province,

and third Payment for Forest Environment Services in Dien Bien, and finally some relationships between
PFES 1 and REDD+ we have derived from our experience in Dien Bien Province.

1Payment for Forest Environment Services

First, about the national forest monitoring system in Vietnam. Basically, we have two programs formonitoring forest resources in Vietnam.

The first one is national forest inventory, assessment andmonitoring program, which has been implemented since 1991 in a 5-year cycle. So far, we have alreadycompleted four cycles.

This program was conducted by my institute. The second program is called theannual forest-monitoring program, which was conducted by Forest Protection Department.

This program

has been implemented since 2002 and the purpose is to provide annual updates on forest resources. As
you already know, in order to meet IPCC requirements, you need to provide annual forest monitoring
reports.

However, in Vietnam the annual reports do not have the necessary accuracy level.

Here are some drawbacks of the national forest monitoring in Vietnam. First of all, we have the forest
cover maps that are quite accurate at the district, province level, but not to the village and commune level.
Therefore, the forest cover maps cannot be used by local forest rangers to update the changes annually.
Also, each province updates annual changes on forest resources on their requirements and budget. Thereis no consensus about the data. The third drawback is that these updates at the province level are normallynot updated into the national forest update because there is no mechanism to verify this update. Also inmany provinces the forest protection sub-department only updates area data, but does not update thecorresponding forest cover map.

We only know the changes but do not know where the changes happen.

And also, budget from the state have been limited. As a result, the quality of previous cycles is not sogood.

The second main content is about forest monitoring in Dien Bien Province. First of all, I would like totalk about the existing data. We have forest cover map for the years 2006 and 2009 and we also have
many hardcopy and digital maps at the forestry sub-department and forest protection sub-department.
About annual updates of forest changes, every year the forest protection sub-department updates thechanges in area of deforestation due to agricultural use, forest fires, changing from forest use purposes toindustrial trees, transportation systems or hydropower plants and also the area of forest concessions. Thisdata is for the production forest. We also update the area changes of afforestation, reforestation, andregeneration. Based on these updates forest rangers at the commune level report the changes of the data to
the forest rangers at the district level and the district level aggregates the data on communes within thisdistrict and then reports the results to the forest protection sub-department at the province level. Then, atthe province level, they will aggregate the data for the districts in this province and report the results to theMinistry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Here are some drawbacks about the forest monitoring system in Dien Bien Province.

We do not haveadequate and accurate forest cover maps for local forest rangers in order to do the annual updates. Also
the updates are for the area data, but not forest maps. Also, many forest owners do not have the capacity
or scheme to monitor annual changes. And the capacity of local forest rangers is also very limited. Often,
they lack the skills of using GIS software or GPS equipment. Also, the allowance for local forest ranger
and forestry staff is rather low, so they are not encouraged to protect the forests. As for monitoring andassessment work, here I mean the quality assurance, which should be conducted by the district andprovincial People’s Committees is not implemented adequately.

This slide shows the forest monitoring system in Dien Bien Province and for other provinces in Vietnam
the system is also similar to this.

At the province level we have the Department of Agriculture and RuralDevelopment, which belongs to the provincial People’s Committee and inside the department we have two
sub departments relating to the forestry sector, which are the forestry sub-department and the forestprotection sub-department.

At the district level, we have the division of agriculture and rural development,

we have the forest ranger station. And now JICA have already supported a pilot project in Dien Bien
Province. So, we have a management board for this project. At the commune level, we have one cadastral
staff, one forestry staff, local forest rangers and also local staff for the project.

The third part is about Payment for Forest Environmental Services. After piloting the Payment for Forest
Environmental Services in two provinces, the Vietnamese government decided to expand this payment toother provinces and Dien Bien is also one of these provinces. The concept is that forests have manyenvironmental values and the users of these values should pay to the forest owners and to whoever creates
these values.

There are mainly two payment methods.

The direct payment method, in which the user

pays cash directly to the forest owners and the indirect payment method, where the users pay the cash to theforest owners through a third party, for example, the Forest Protection and Development Fund.

I think

that Vietnamese Government prefers the second method of payment.

There are some constraints and challenges in implementing PFES in Dien Bien Province. Firstly, thisactivity is quite new for Dien Bien Province. So, we do not have much experience about doing this.
Almost all the forest areas do not have specific owners. It currently managed by the commune People’sCommittees. Also, the forests in Dien Bien province are very dispersed and interlaced with residential
areas and agriculture lands. Although the total payment for the whole area is quite high, the payment foreach forest owner is low. Each forest owner has only received about 600,000VNĐ on average for 3
hectare of forest. Also many people nowadays know that they can receive some incentive from the forest,
so they want to have the forest allocated to them so that there will be many conflicts among them.

About the progress of implementing PFES in Dien Bien Province. So far, about 242,000 hectare havealready implemented PFES.

In 2 years, two hydropower plants have already paid about 6 million USD.

Now, the province is negotiating with other small hydropower plants in order to get more money for PFES.

When implementing PFES in Dien Bien Province, we have compared it with REDD+ in order to draw
some experience to do REDD+. Here are the similarities: Both have the same objective of forest
conservation and both pay for an area of forest based on forest quality. The annual forest monitoring isthe basis for payment.

But they also have some differences. PFES pays for someone who creates theservice like hydropower plant and it uses the data of forest area in the basin area as a base for payment.
But for REDD+, we pay for the increment of carbon stock or the reduction of greenhouse gases. Here, themonitoring system for PFES and REDD+ may be different.
We have drawn some conclusions.

First, the implementation of PFES will provide inputs for data about

forest owners, forest area, and forest stock for the implementation of REDD+.

When implemented

together, both REDD+ and PFES will consolidate each other and encourage forest conservation anddevelopment activities. REDD+ needs to establish a benefit sharing system, which is also a base for
implementing PFES.