Vietnam High Conservation Value Forest Toolkit - HCV Resource ...

• Non-object values related to forests: poems, songs, legends, dances, customary law, etc;
• Indigenous knowledge of forest plants and animals.
Table 4. Possible cultural traits and thresholds
Cultural trait
Critical forest may include areas:
- Well established and agreed community protected forest areas;
- Pristine/virgin forest areas where no viable alternative pristine areas
exist;
- Specific areas considered sacred or perceived to have spiritual /
supernatural connections, such as altars or protected graveyards;
- Specific areas that have historically been actively governed and
regulated;
- Specific areas with remnants from the past linked to the identity of
an ethnic group, such as statues, megaliths, temples, graveyards, etc.
Non-critical forest areas may include:
- Recently established (≤ 2 generations or 15 years) protected and
sacred areas;
- Forest areas used by recently established villages (≤ 2 generations)
or communities those frequently move following exhaustion of
agricultural land.
Threshold
If forest areas are determined
to be critical to a
community’s culture and
when changes to a specific
forest can cause irreversible
change to culture, then the
forest area will be designated
as HCVF.
When forests are culturally
important to local
communities, but particular
forest areas are determined
to be non-critical, the forest
area will not be considered
as an HCVF.
MANAGEMENT OF HCVF IN VIET NAM
The identification of High Conservation Value Forest is only the first stage of the process. The
management of HCVF is far more important. However, going into great detail about suitable
management strategies is beyond the scope of this toolkit as this is a large and potentially
complex topic. Some information and guidance is given below on the stages users should go
through to develop and implement appropriate management of HCVF in Viet Nam.
Some more detailed guidance is contained in Part 3 of the ProForest Toolkit (2003) and
national toolkits of Indonesia, Laos PDR, Papua New Guinea, Ghana and Mozambique which
contain some information relevant to Viet Nam.
The most important factor when designing management strategies for HCVF is that they must
enhance or maintain the value. Therefore, it is of vital importance to understand the nature of
the values present, what their current condition is, what threats (actual/potential) their may be,
and to design management regimes that address these issues. Users must always be referring
back to the value when thinking of management. For example, if the value is HCV 4 and an
area is an important water catchment, management must simply maintain or enhance the
watershed.
There are some general stages that should be followed in the development of any HCVF
management plan:
Identification of the HCV
Assessment of the current state of the HCV
Assessment of threats to the HCV
Design management strategies for the HCV
Integration of HCV management into overall management plans
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