FGM Workshop Background Paper - REDD - VietNam

At the provincial level, the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development
(DARD), together with Forest Protection Sub-Department and Forestry Sub-
Department, which belong directly to DARD, are key agencies in charge of state
management of forest activities. Though placed under the management of technical
and professional aspects from MARD, most of the forestry activities at provincial,
district and commune levels are coordinated by the policies enforced by the
provincial people’s committee (PPC).
ISSUES TO BE ADDRESSED:
• The annual publication of exploited timber, as well as projects pertaining to
afforestation and forest development, which use the provincial budget, have
shown that although most of forest policies are carried out at provincial and
district levels, there is usually a lack of staff members to perform the assigned
tasks. The number of permanent staff members is based upon the decisions
made by the provincial Department of Home Affairs and the PPC.
• Another interesting finding is that DARD cannot be active in recruiting staff to
carry out the required assignments. Concerning the preparation of provincial
forest production and development plan, DARD is often assumed to be the
agency in charge of plan development, which in turn would be submitted to
the PPC. However, due to technical requirements, the final decision actually
depends greatly on the provincial Department of Finance. The cooperation
between these organizations is not always good, which can create difficulties.
The forestry sector is often less active than it would like to be, especially
under the implementation of its sector plan, due to the dependency on budget.
• This difficulty happens even when the income generated from forest, which in
principle would be used for forest protection and care, cannot be accessed by
the forest sector. This amount of money often goes to the State of Treasure
first, then is allocated through the provincial Department of Finance, based on
its annual budget plan. This creates unnecessary paper work, time-consuming
procedures and roots of bad practices.
• The stagnation in budget allocation causes a delay in planting forests,
resulting in the slow progress of forest development, and bad quality of
plantations. However, those reports failed to explain the reasons for the delay,
which organizations are now blamed for, and consequences in terms of profit
losses and what should be done to fix the problem.
What is monitored/ measured already?
• Number of staff members at local and provincial level.
• Procedures for budgeting and budget flows based on the regulation of
Ministry of Finance or the PPC at provincial level.
• Annual forest plantation and forest protection area plan based on the existing
forested area and land available for plantation.
• Annual report of forest production, forest protection area including the number
of forest law violation cases.
• Annual forest production turnover including domestic production and exporting
forest products.
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