FGM Workshop Background Paper - REDD - VietNam

Chapter 6: CONCLUSION
Due to the increasing recognition of the importance of forest governance quality on
progress towards SFM, FLEGT and the reduction of deforestation and forest
degradation (REDD+), increasingly many efforts are taken to monitor and report
forest governance and governance quality. Recently, the REDD negotiations under
the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change have agreed on safeguards,
initiative of EU FLEGT VPA, and timber supply chain policy of different governments
that relate to forest governance, further increasing the need for monitoring. However,
perhaps most importantly, forest governance monitoring systems at the country level
need to meet national monitoring needs in order to be relevant. This means that
monitoring of forest governance should be most of all useful to better fulfill national
and local priorities for forest management. Any forest governance monitoring that
should be established by countries needs to be feasible, cost-effective, reliable
(verifiable), allow reliable measurement of change over time, and fulfill international
reporting requirements.
To meet these goals, Government of Vietnam (MARD) has requested the assistance
of FAO to help integrate forest governance monitoring into national-forest related
monitoring systems. To this end, FAO is providing support through the services of a
national consultant and international technical consultants.
Initially, the national consultant tried to use 13 components and 77 sub-components
of the “FAO framework for assessing and monitoring forest governance”, to assess
FGM in Vietnam. The consultant sent the framework to 43 people (including 29 from
domestic organizations and 14 from international organizations) requesting them to
assess FGM in Vietnam accordingly to 13 components and 77 sub-components of
the framework. Opinion of majority of the requested is too difficult to assess FGM in
Vietnam by using the 13 components and 77 sub-components of the framework. And
the consultant is in the similar view. In fact, it is too difficult to classify what is being
done in Vietnam, in terms of FGM, into 13 components and 77 sub-components of
the “FAO framework for assessing and monitoring forest governance”. Until time
when the consultant starts writing the background paper, only 6 assessments in the
mentioned way were received. As explained by the requested the main reason of the
difficulties is the components and sub-components of the FAO framework are still
general. Besides of that a common understanding about forest governance in
Vietnam is governance to implement Vietnam Forestry Development Strategy 2006-
2020. In another words, it is governance to implement the 5 programs of the strategy
and their targets. This fact is a self explanation that: (i) FAO vision on assessment of
FGM based on FG with the 13 components and 77 subcomponents is rather quite far
from Vietnam circumstances on assessment of FGM based on FG towards
implementation of the Forestry Development Strategy 2006-2020; (ii) The first step
to shorten the gap, perhaps, is both sides (FAO & Vietnam) to work out indicators of
assessment of FGM (because any monitoring can be effective if is based on clearly
identified indicators); and based on that (iii) a base for comparison of those
indicators to select indicators appropriate for Vietnam and also for FAO, to apply for
FGM in Vietnam.
Because of explanations above, this background paper is written based on analysis
of related documentation and interviews of selected government officers in forest
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