Project News

On April 20th, 2018, the progress workshop was held in Hanoi for sharing the current development status of the tablet-based forest monitoring system and discussing its future replication. The large number of participants, nearly reaching a hundred, showed the magnitude of interest the project is drawing from those attending stakeholders from various organizations, including the Forest Protection Department in charge of forest monitoring, the Management Board for Forestry Project at MARD, 15 provinces that have already implemented the system as well as three other soon-to-implement provinces, and finally other donors.

In collaboration with other donor projects such as FCPF2^[1] of the World Bank, UN-REDD2 of UNDP/FAO/UNEP, and VFD of USAID, the forest monitoring system has been implemented by 15 provinces so far, including 5 supported by our project, while the number of such provinces is expected to increase. Along with the nation-wide implementation of the monitoring system, JICA is also proceeding the system integration of field data collected with tablet PCs into the database developed by FORMIS2 of the Finnish government, which is working on the establishment of a forest information system. Upon the prospective completion of system integration, it will be possible to manage all the data collected in fields at the central database, which makes the reporting of forest change much easier and more accurate.

At the workshop, it was emphasized by Mr. Tapio Leppanen, the chief technical advisor of FORMISⅡ, that both projects are collaborating together with high motivation for the common purpose to establish a forest information system in Vietnam. The system integration is now almost complete. With such activities recognized by the Vietnamese government, tablet PC was officially endorsed as a device for forest monitoring under the Circular 26 of MARD (26/2017/TT-BNNPTNT)last November, which revised the methodology of forest monitoring.

While the current development status of the forest monitoring system was reported, further maintenance activities necessary after the completion of the project in 2020 were also discussed. In the discussion, the importance of roles taken by the central level was emphasized by a provincial officer in charge of forest monitoring. The other points emphasized by Mr. Takahashi, the deputy chief technical adviser of SNRM, include the importance of responsibility taken not only by central officers but also by provincial officers at the management level as well as the necessity for a roadmap for nation-wide establishment of the forest monitoring system and its according budget allocation plan.

The utilization of tablet PC has been already officially endorsed and its integration with the central database is almost complete. We are now ready to proceed further activities for firmer establishment of the tablet-based forest monitoring already implemented in each province and also its nation-wide replication.

More than expected, nearly a hundred stakeholders participated in the workshop.

Chairman Thon at MBFPs and Deputy Director Thom at FPD sharing co-chairmanship at the workshop

Expert Hayashi at SNRM Project presenting their activities