Project News

The Policy Support Component of the SNRM2 Project supports the development and review of policies and plans related to sustainable forest management and biodiversity conservation. A part of the project support is the support for the review of sustainable forest management planning and forest certification.

The Forestry Law 2017 requires the formulation of sustainable forest management plans for organizational forest owners, while the Law encourages the individual forest owners to do the same. In order to achieve this objective, the Prime Minister approved a project on sustainable forest management planning and forest certification for 2018-2030 (Decision No. 1288/QD-TTg). Upon the implementation of the project for three years, the Vietnam Administration of Forestry (VNFOREST) requested the SNRM2's support in reviewing its implementation.

The review results indicate that 331 out of 743 (45%) organizational forest owners had already formulated sustainable forest management plans, covering nearly 4 million ha (48%) of the existing forest areas in the country. At the same time, 314,000 ha of the forest had been certified by the end of 2020. Most of these certified forests were by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), but about 70,000 ha were by the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC).

The review concludes that the implementation progress of the project has been satisfactory; however, a series of issues slowing down the progress of the project has also been identified such as A) the procedures for sustainable forest management planning (as stipulated in Circular No. 28/2018/TT-BNNPTNT) are too complicated for most of the forest owners, B) support and subsidies from the authorities have been limited, C) the cost of forest certification is still expensive, and D) the market for certified timber is still underdeveloped. In order to promote further sustainable forest management planning and forest certification, the country will have to solve these existing issues.