Project News

F-REDD supports the central level policies and institutions related to REDD+ and the forestry sector in general. The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) is currently formulating the National REDD Strategy and is also revising the Forestry Law. Thereafter, the results are planned to be incorporated into the revision of the Forest Strategy.

As a preparatory step for this entire process, F-REDD implemented the Forestry Sector Indicator Survey to collect and analyze the latest forest-related information in Lao PDR. The survey took two months to categorize the information into eight fields and 26 indicators － including forest area change dynamics and the driving factors, timber logging and export, and afforestation. Moreover, F-REDD presented the trends with real figures. Also, the report was finalized by incorporating opinions and comments from the stakeholders concerned.

The survey revealed the continuing trend of deforestation and discovered the expansion of the commercial agricultural production area as its main driver. There seems to be a large gap between the government quota on timber harvesting volume and the data of the timber export volume provided by the United Nations which indicates that, although the situation has been improving in recent years, a large amount of timber is still illegally logged. In addition to a sharp increase of export of white charcoal to Korea and Japan since 2000, the export of black charcoal to China and Thailand has also increased rapidly since 2010, which brings up a concern over deterioration of forest resources. The results will be used as an input when revising the Forestry Law and the Forest Strategy.