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Looking to the future

Special-use Forests

The 1986 regulations on Special-use Forest management made an important contribution to the development of Vietnam's protected areas network. For example, for some areas, they provided for the establishment of management boards in a number of Special-use Forests, and facilitated the allocation of central government funds for the development of basic infrastructure and staffing.

Despite these successes, problems remain. Many areas still do not have management boards nor funding to establish infrastructure or pay for recurrent costs. Where funds have been allocated by central government, investment priorities are often skewed towards the construction of infrastructure, at the expense of supporting management activities, such as community liaison and development, environmental education, and patrolling. Forest guards currently have few incentives or resources to undertake effective enforcement activities. In several national parks, there has also been considerable investment in ex situ conservation activities (such as establishing botanic gardens and zoos) at the expense of investment in in situ conservation management.

The 1986 regulations prohibited activities that might, in future, be used to generate incentives for local stakeholders to support protected area management. For example, the management regulations prohibited the collection of non-timber forest products (including firewood) or the development of tourism in nature reserves. Instead, Special-use Forest management boards have had to rely heavily on national forestry programmes, the objectives of which are often incompatible with biodiversity conservation (5MHRP 2001). The result is that there have been few incentives to comply with the 1986 regulations, few alternatives to continuing patterns of forest resource use, and limited law enforcement capacity at the local level. Perhaps not surprisingly, unmanaged access to the forest resources of Special-use Forests has been the norm.

A key limitation of the existing system of Special-use Forests remains the mis-match between the type of funding mechanisms available for Special-use Forest management, and the nature of management that is actually needed to implement effective conservation activities. For example, most Special-use Forests depend on funding from national forestry programmes, most notably the 327 Programme and its successor, the on-going 661 Programme. The latter programme, popularly known as the 5 Million Hectares Reaforestation Programme, aims to increase national forest cover to 5 million hectares by 2010. However, many of the threats to biodiversity at Vietnam's protected areas cannot be addressed through forest establishment. For example, hunting, either for local consumption, or for commercial sale of live animals, meat, or other wildlife products, is one of the most pernicious threats to Vietnam's wildlife. Hunting and trapping of wildlife within Special-use Forests is widespread and common. Unfortunately, national forestry programmes do not provide an appropriate funding mechanism for managing this threat within Special-use Forests.

Wetland sites

The new proposals developed by MOSTE/NEA (2000) represent an important step forward. However, further attention to wetland conservation issues will still be required. Even if the new proposals compiled by MOSTE/NEA are implemented, these will not adequately reflect the range of habitats and diversity present in the country. While coastal and estuarine sites are well represented in the proposed MOSTE/NEA system, freshwater sites are under-represented, particularly areas of seasonally inundated grassland which are now of critical conservation concern. Melaleuca forests and freshwater swamps are also poorly represented. At present, the institutional arrangements for managing the nationally important wetlands identified by MOSTE/NEA have not been determined. It is unclear whether these sites will be incorporated within the Special-use Forests and/or marine protected areas systems, or whether a separate system of wetland protected areas will be established in the future.

Marine protected areas

Discussions on the legal and institutional status of marine protected areas are ongoing. Key to these discussions are collaborative arrangements between the different government stakeholders involved, at central and provincial levels (Nguyen Chu Hoi 2000). It is likely that MOFI will have overall management responsibility for the marine protected areas system but that sites with a terrestrial as well as a marine component will be managed by MARD together with MOFI. This situation is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. Management regulations for marine protected areas are also under discussion but these are likely to be broad and flexible, in order to allow management regulations to be tailored to specific geographical areas and management requirements.

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