Challenges and Recommendations First Regional Community Forum 90

Nguyen, Nguyen Kuester 127 - The allocated forest should provide an opportunity to generate employment and income for villagers; - The village’s political system should be adequate and strong enough to promote cooperation and good governance; and - Villagers should be fully aware of the importance of forest protection and management.

6. Challenges and Recommendations

• Challenges Ahead - International integration for community forestry development: The forestry sector is in the process of decentralizing management tasks and reforming administrations to allow for greater integration with international development networks. In order to facilitate this process it is necessary to finalize the legal framework and policy system relating to forestry, to develop human resources and to improve the capacity of relevant organizations from national to local levels with the aim to enable community forestry in particular and forestry in general to integrate into regional and international development networks. This is both an opportunity and a challenge to the forestry sector. - Legal, institutional and policy aspects: Although a system of legal framework and basic policy on community forestry development has been developed, this system is considered to be insufficient. Further development needs to take place on the legal, institutional and policy aspects of community forestry. - National Forestry Strategy 2006-2020 and community forestry: The forestry sector is developing a new National Forestry Strategy, in which community forestry also is recognized as one of the practices to manage forests at the local level. The challenge facing local authorities at the provincial, district and commune levels is how to integrate community forestry into its forestry development program when local management competence and capacity is limited. - Difficulty in community forestry operations in under-developed areas: The main challenges facing community forestry development is that community forestry developed in remote and difficult areas where there remains a high level of poverty and hunger, low-level of education, inadequate infrastructure, limited capital, technology and knowledge. - Economic advantages of community are limited: Normally, income gained from forests is low and the forests allocated to communities are generally degraded forests with low reserves making the benefits from these forests very limited, which leads to decreased interest in and concern by local residents for the forest. The immediate income generated from the forest does little to aid poverty reduction, hunger alleviation and livelihood development. Moreover, the possibility of forest-fed-forests and forest re-investment and development is not high. The current level of economic advantage offered by community forests is a long-term challenge. 128 VIETNAM • Recommendations to Develop Community Forestry - Policy on community forestry development: Add to, revise, and gradually finalize the policy system of the government and forestry sector. First institutionalize the policy on community forestry development at the sector level by issuing a document guiding community forestry implementation so that authorities at all levels have a basis to conduct relevant activities. - Verifying management and utilization rights of community forests: Undertake an inventory of community forests throughout the whole country and evaluate the effectiveness of community forest management that will serve as the basis for community forest planning and rationalization of forest areas managed and used by communities according to the new policies on land and forests. - Development of a Program or Project for community forestry at the national level: Community forestry development is mostly conducted in remote and difficult areas with poor infrastructure, low education levels, and high levels of hunger and poverty. In order to support community forestry in these types of areas the forestry sector must provide a lot of resources and be supported by the state, relevant sectors at all levels, and related organizations, especially by international organizations and foreign countries. In order to mobilize these resources, the state should develop a national community forestry program. - Integration of community forestry development into 5MHRP Program 661: From now until 2010 Vietnam will continue to implement the 5MHRP, so there should be a project to integrate community forestry development into 5MHRP. At the national level an explicit policy system should be developed, and the provincial and district levels should include community forestry components when implementing Program 661. - Form community forestry development fund and community credit fund: This initiative has been conducted by several projects funded by the UNDP and ORGUT in some local areas, initially showing good results and the potential for more widespread use. - Increase the size and responsibility of NWG-CFM: Through the Department of Forestry, NWG-CFM should be an advisor to MARD on policy and institutions for community forestry development, review and adjustment of community forestry management systems from national to local levels and on support provisions to local areas to conduct potential pilot programs in community forestry. In order to provide more services in community forestry the human resources of NWG-CFM should be enhanced to include representatives of Vietnam-based international organizations implementing community forestry, such as FAO, IUCN, SNV, ETSP and RECOFTC. NWG-CFM should cooperate with and be supported by the Forest Sector Support Program and Partnership FSSPP to formulate the Provincial Forestry Advisor Group, supporting the development of additional pilot programs in community forestry. - Change the means of providing ODA support: Vietnam is in the process of transitioning from project approaches to sector-wide approaches, however, there should be supporting funds directly provided to community forestry development, leading towards gradually replacing Nguyen, Nguyen Kuester 129 loan budgets for community forestry development with grant budgets, especially for subsistence community forestry. - Activity orientation: Based on current and potential status, DoF-MARD proposes a tentative framework of community forestry activities summarized in annex 1. 130 VIETNAM Annex 1: Tentative Mid-Term Time Schedule for CFM Development in Vietnam Time Period Activity Remarks October and November 2005 Inventory and evaluation of community forestry in period 2001- 2005 September- December 2005 Formulate and issue a ministerial decision by MARD on a guiding framework for community forestry covering aspects of land use planning, forest management planning, land allocation, organizational and institutional arrangements including benefit sharing, training extension, and financial management ƒ Best practices of selected ODA projects in Vietnam properly reflected through working groups on individual aspects ƒ International experiences properly reflected through cooperation between NWG- CFM RECOFTC January 2006 - August 2007 Implementation of a CFM pilot program in up to 80 communes in 10 CFM key provinces CFM activities outside the pilot program are implemented in line with policies and priorities of local governments, and involved parties and target groups ƒ With financial assistance from the multi-donor Trust Fund for Forests TFF ƒ Focus on resource management planning, organizational, and regulatory aspects, no investments ƒ Provinces in executing functions ƒ Support for provinces in the formulation of provincial CFM legislation September - October 2007 Evaluation of pilot program ƒ MARD, other related ministries, NWG-CFM, RECOFTC November- December 2007 ƒ Revision of ministerial decree, if necessary ƒ Creation of a unit for CFM within DoFMARD ƒ Linked with a principle review and adjustment of the organizational structure of the forest administration likely to take place during 2006-2010 January 2008 onwards Creation and implementation of a CFM support program ƒ Domestic funding partially from re-targeting of 5MHRP budgets ƒ Suited to allow for sector-wide approaches SWAP and direct budget support mechanisms in ODA funding N gu yen , N gu yen K u es ter 1 3 1 Annex 2: Tentative institutional Arrangements for Village-based Community Forestry Organization Task 1. Planning for forest protection and forest development of the village community forest

2. Forest and forest land allocation to village communities