The guidelines for development for the years to comes are an integrated development of agriculture, forestry and fishery. With regard to forestry the main points are: forestry development going hand in hand with the stabilization and improvement of living conditions for local people, speed-up regreening of denuded hills and bare lands, forest protection to encourage natural regeneration and restoration, all contributing to cresting better improved conditions for higher forestry development in the mountainous area. The main policies, strategies and activities are: the intensification of the process of forest lands and forest allocation to people the strengthening of forestry extension activities for long-term protection of forest resources ecosystems and genetic resources and for better wildlife control, improve land farming, careful timber extraction..., and not the least adequate planning and efficient establishment and running of wood-based industries.
It is also essential to improve the forest cover over the whole country to 40-50% and to create new jobs for at least 1 million to 2 million young farmers living in the mountain rural area.
A number of national programmes and projects have been operating to attain the above-mentioned objectives/goals.
- The programme 327. It was shaped out following the Decision 327 of the Government and has been implemented since September 1992. In September 1996 the programme was amended to become a national programme dealing with the establishment of protection forests and special-use forests (or protected area). The programme is to be implemented using agroforest technologies and specific projects, in which the driving force comes from farmers' households. The component projects should work for strengthening the protective role of national forests, for the conservation of the ecological environment, for alleviating the impacts of natural calamities for bettering landuse and the living conditions of local farmers, thus linking the interests of the country with the immediate benefits of local participants.
Projects within the programme are funded by the state, with contribution of local people and communities being provided under the form of labour for the establishment the protection and maintain of forests as stipulated in specific contracts.
- The Resettlement and Sedentarization Programme. Two (2)million people of ethnic minorities living in remote mountain area are said to still practice shifting cultivation or slash and burn methods of land farming. Their living conditions are far from being stabilized, but the environmental conditions in the areas they are living get deteriorated very seriously. Facing the problem of extensive shifting cultivation, the Government has developed a programme known as the resettlement and sedentarization programme to develop and introduce more sedentary methods of land farming and to improve the economic conditions in these areas.
Based upon the demand of local farmer' households and communities, the Government has allocated and delivered resources to develop and improve the marginal sloping agriculture lands through the establishment and consolidation of terraces, alley cropping for the cultivation of rice, other food, cash, fruit and tree crops and even medicinal plants, and also to protect the existing forests for better soil and water conservation, the programme has also invested capital for the development of infrastructure in these areas: developing the irrigation network, the road network, building more schools and health stations there.
The programme is going to expand its beneficial effects on economic development and on forestry development as planned: and as a result, the Government has paid much attention to programme development and implementation.
- Foreign-assisted forestry projects.
The most important ones are:
· The Vietnam-Sweden Mountain Rural development Programme funded by SIDA, new being implemented at 5 provinces in forestry development area of the north;· The Technical Cooperation programme between Vietnam and Germany (GTZ): with a project dealing with social forestry development at Song Da in the two provinces of the North West;
· The Financial cooperation programme between Vietnam and Germany: dealing with forest plantation in the two northern provinces of Bac Giang and Lang Son and in three (3) provinces in central Vietnam of Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri;
· The WFP plantation programme now being implemented in 13 coastal provinces and other 5 provinces in the North;
· The EU project: for establishment and running of the nature reserve of Pu Mat Nghe An;
· The JICA project: providing equipment for the establishment of agroforest systems in Son la and Lai Chau provinces.
Other projects supported by UNDP, FAO and international NGOs have been also implemented for biodiversity conservation, sustainable land use and social forestry development.
- Industry plantation programme Under the current conditions of economic development in Vietnam, the demands in forest products (fuelwood and timber, non-wood forest products, et.) are going to increase dramatically (and under the conditions of some natural forests going to be closed for exploitation, that situation might get worse). Therefore, it is necessary to create intensively managed industrial plantations, in particular in specific areas. A plan to establish 5 million hectares of plantations of that category from now to the year 2003 have been approved for execution9.
9
At an average of about 833,300 ha/year, the proposed plantation rate is of above average scale even for the Asia-Pacific region other than China and India (Editor).
The main measures to be adopted for successful in implementation of that programme by all sectors of the economy are:
· Landuse planning: a necessary step is to have a clear demarcation line between protection forest and production forests. For production forest lands already allocated to households, now having legal land-use certificates, these should be motivation and incentives so to encourage farmers do their farming as planned.· Much more appropriate allocation of resources for forest plantation from national budgets, parallel with more intensive mobilization of funds within the country capital calling from foreign countries, improves joint ventures and limited companies establishment.
· Creation of credit/funds for money lending at favourably low interest rates for forest plantation;
· Greeting of tax holiday to encourage entrepreneurs to get involved in the different business of tree planting and wood production;
· Strengthening forestry extension to help farmers carry their plantations for profit; and
· Training of technical and managers for effective and efficient management to cope with different task of developing a large scale forest plantation programme.
