Project News

The 5th Lang Biang World Biosphere Reserve Management Board (LB-BR MB) meeting was held at Dalat city, Lam Dong province on 19th April 2018. The following wide range of project activities are reported and discussed among the more than 70 participants at the meeting.

1) LB-BR 5-year Management Plan

The outline of the management plan was already presented at the 4th LB-BR MB meeting, but in response to the fact that the management plan is to be officially approved by the People's Committee of Lam Dong Province (PPC) soon, Mr. Le Van Huong, vice-chairman of LB-BR MB, provided his orientation on the management plan, focusing on the required procedures to relevant authorities after its approval. The Project will support the relevant provincial organizations to formulate the annual plans and their implementation with working group members of LB-BR.

2) Collaborative Management Platform, and Compost Making through Cowshed Improvement in Collaboration among Public, Private and Communities

The Collaborative Management Platform (CMP) was established in January 2018 with the approval from the LB-BR MB in order to effectively address the issues within the LB-BR area through the collaboration among relevant stakeholders such as provincial governmental agencies, private enterprises, and local communities, etc. In this meeting, key points of CMP were presented, then a representative from People's Committee of Lac Duong District introduced an activity on "compost making from cattle manure through cowshed improvement, and livelihood improvement through its appropriate applications" which is currently being implemented by relevant stakeholders with the support of the Project based on the results of CMP meeting. Participants showed their high interests on the activity as a good model to be implemented in collaboration manner toward the better impacts rather than implementing a single entity with limited financial and human resources.

3) Progress on Project Activities based on CMA and Its Direction toward 2020

The Project supports to formulate Collaborative Management Agreements among forest owners (Bidoup-Nuiba National Park, etc.), local communities, and Commune People's Committee (CPC) and work on the activities such as the improvement of PFES patrol toward the strengthening forest conservation mechanism, as one of the most important activities for sustainable conservation and management of LB-BR. In this meeting, reports were made on the results of the activities being conducted in two sites within the targeted villages and direction of the project activities until 2020. The Project will review the activities among the relevant parties, and support the formulation of action plan and its implementation and monitoring, including new five models to be established in next phase.

4) Biodiversity Monitoring System

In order to develop a biodiversity monitoring system in the core and buffer of LB-BR centered in Bidoup Nuiba National Park, the Project has supported for the preparation of vegetation maps, baseline survey on flora and fauna such as mammals/ insects/ amphibians/ fish, and examination on selection criteria for indicator species and monitoring implementation method based on the survey results. At this meeting, the summary of the developed monitoring system and support activities for the implementation of the monitoring for the national park scheduled for 2018/2019 were explained.

5) Environmental Education Program

It is one of the important responsibilities for BR to promote environmental education activities in order to deepen the understanding of natural conservation and sustainable utilization, and contribute to the development of next generations. This Project has supported to formulate environmental education program in LB-BR targeting to Vietnamese secondary school students, and based on the result of 3 days 2 nights pilot tour conducted from 6th to 8th April 2018, the report was made at the meeting. This program is a nature experience program concepted "Art-Nature-Fun", and attracted many attentions from the participants as one of the models of environmental education activities to be promoted in BR.

At the discussion time, the representatives from UNESCO Vietnam, MAB Vietnam, MARD and other participants from LB-BR area requested the Project to share the results of wide range of the project activities with other area in the country for its dissemination as one of good models in Vietnam. As for this Project, firstly shall focus on building the activities within the LB-BR area and willing to widely disseminate the results of the project activities.

Presentation on CMP

Exhibition of the products such as coffee, mushroom, etc. from private companies in LB-BR area at the booth set up in the meeting

Closing remark by Dr. Pham S, Chairman of LB-BR MB