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Southeast Asia holds review of project to sustain forests

HA NOI — Viet Nam has hosted the first review meeting for a programme protecting Southeast Asia’s tropical forests, which finishes on Wednesday in Ha Noi.

Nine Southeast Asian countries participated in the review of the Small Grant Programme to Promote Tropical Forests, which is funded by the European Commission and administered by the United Nations Development Programme.

As Viet Nam tries to achieve its ambitious UN Millennium Development Goal of 42 per cent forest cover by 2010, the meeting heard its reforestation programme increased forest coverage to 32.2 per cent in 2001.

The tropical forest programme was launched in Viet Nam in January this year and has worked to support poor ethnic mountainous communities to manage their forests and combat poverty in the region.

"For this innovative project to be successful, ensuring the communities’ rights to use and participate in forests and forest land management is essential," said the UNDP resident representative in Viet Nam, Jordan Ryan.

EC Ambassador to Viet Nam, Markus Cornaro, believed the programme is a good example of the EC’s new approach in strengthening EC and UN collaboration and EC’s focus on forestry in Asia.

Like many developing countries over the world, increases in population and urbanisation put great pressure on the Viet Nam Government’s ability to protect the forests.

Forest cover fell from 43.7 per cent in 1943 to 23.6 per cent of the country’s area in 1983 due to the combined effects of agricultural encroachment, fuel wood consumption, commercial logging, shifting cultivation, overgrazing and war and fire damage.

At the meeting, participants from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Viet Nam have shared experiences and lessons from tropical forest promotion activities implemented in their countries, as well as finding ways to improve their future operations. — VNS