Aiming to improve the efficiency of management and sustainable use of forest resources, on February 29, 2024, the Prime Minister approved the Project to develop the multi-use value of Vietnam’s forest ecosystem until 2030, with a vision to 2050.
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| Growing medicinal herbs under the forest canopy both improves people's lives and contributes to forest protection. Source: thoibaotaichinh |
The project emphasizes the goal of developing the multi-use value of forest ecosystems to create jobs, preserve natural resources and biodiversity; preserve and promote cultural values, traditional history and indigenous knowledge of the local community.
It also aims to develop forest environmental services; develop community tourism and ecotourism activities; and attract a workforce who are ethnic minorities living in forested areas.
Mr. Pham Hong Luong, Deputy Director of the Forestry Department, said that to develop tourism under the forest canopy, the industry needs to focus on improving and specifying policies on leasing forest environmental services for tourism development, improving infrastructure, developing human factor, and well applying technology into marketing and electronic museum.
At a seminar on developing the multi-use value of Vietnam’s forest ecosystem, recently held in Hanoi, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Minh Hoan shared that it is necessary to have new thinking about forests in the context of balancing the mission of preserving forests and creating value from forests. The concept of hiring people to protect the forests needs to be changed to how to create more jobs and more livelihoods under the forest canopy as a sustainable measure.
Minister Le Minh Hoan stressed forests not only are economic and environmental values but bring community values, cultural values and beliefs of people. When people understand these values, they will voluntarily and proactively preserve and develop forests. Businesses can coordinate with people to create a chain of links, form cooperatives, create priorities for communities, and create space for people to preserve forests voluntarily and efficiently.
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| Effectively developing the multi-use values of the forest ecosystem is also the path to sustainable wealth from the forest. (Source: ITN) |
Suggesting a multi-dimensional approach to exploit the value of forests, Minister Le Minh Hoan emphasized that it is necessary to approach open thinking about the multi-use value of forest ecosystems.
“We have to step back to look at the forest, to think about forest development so that there is no conflict in forest development. When the value space is expanded, everyone will benefit and people will find ways to protect and develop forests. If we can do that, the value of the forest will be 10 to 100 times higher,” he said.
The project “Developing the multi-use value of Vietnam’s forest ecosystem” also targets to increase the value of non-timber forest products and medicinal herbs by 1.5 times by 2030 and 2 times by 2050. Export proportion will reach 10-15% by 2030 and 25% by 2050.
According to the Forestry Department, Vietnam's total forest area is now more than 14.8 million hectares; including more than 10.1 million hectares of natural forest which must be preserved and only nearly 4.7 million hectares of planted forests which can be exploited and organized for production to serve forestry economic development.
Effectively developing the multi-use values of forest ecosystems is also the path to sustainable enrichment from forests, contributing to socio-economic development, preserving natural resources, biodiversity and protecting the environment./.