Mangroves Of Vietnam

This book presents a historical and ethnographic study of changing mangrove management in northern Vietnam over the past 100 years, grounded in a case study in the Red River Delta in northern Vietnam. The book shows that three primary socio-economic dynamics have affected mangroves: enclosure movements that have restricted access by different user communities over time, such as the exclusion of women; changing valuation of mangroves and their products and services; and social and class differentiation caused by privatization of once common resources. The result of these pressures have been erosions of norms, rules, and collective action to protect and nurture mangroves, leading to widespread loss of coastal forests. Sustainable mangrove management will require attention to these dynamics to address current-day land conflicts. The book will be of interest to policy-makers, practitioners, and academics and students in forest policy, management and governance; rural livelihoods; and globalization and agrarian change.

In Vietnam, mangrove forests have been threatened by economic pressures and climate change. This report aims to analyze both opportunities and constraints for mangrove protection and management in Vietnam.The study found that local people appreciate the role that mangroves play in providing income, an attractive landscape and shelter from climate change related floods and storms. Many communities would be willing to contribute between USD 2-20 per year to a trust fund so as to protect their forests. A large number of policies and projects promote mangrove conservation activities. This has helped strengthen law enforcement, raised local awareness of the role and importance of maintaining forests, and restricted the conversion of mangroves to other economic activities. Government policies and development projects also provide capacity building, training and seedlings for mangrove reforestation activities at the studied sites. Additionally, new incentives such as payment for forest environmental services (PFES) are emerging as a potential source of finance to support mangrove protection and development in the future. Collective action for mangrove protection is widely recognized and promoted among study sites. People have self-organized strikes and protests to oppose converting mangroves to other economic purposes.Many policies and projects offer social and economic incentives for mangrove protection. However, they are impeded by insecure tenure, land grabbing, elite capture, inequitable benefit-sharing, and unclear responsibilities among government agencies at central, provincial and multilateral levels. Access to information on both policies and projects is difficult for local people. The monitoring and evaluation systems, incentives and disincentives designed by policies and projects have low enforcement and compliance. Policies and projects strongly emphasize and create incentives to replant mangrove forests, rather than to maintain and conserve existing mangrove forest areas. Incentives are also designed to compensate local labor costs for replanting mangrove or patrolling activities, rather than addressing the direct drivers of deforestation and degradation.Protecting mangroves requires a policy shift in land-use planning to address the drivers of mangrove deforestation and degradation. These drivers, in turn, respond to national and provincial economic development agendas, which focus on aquaculture expansion and migration. Cross-sectoral coordination also needs to be further enhanced to improve effectiveness in law enforcement. Enhancing local participation in mangrove forest protection and development requires a gender-sensitive approach and enabling conditions, such as well-enforced policies, accountable and transparent benefit-sharing, and inclusive decision making.

This book presents selected articles from the International Conference on Asian and Pacific Coasts (APAC 2019), an event intended to promote academic and technical exchange on coastal related studies, including coastal engineering and coastal environmental problems, among Asian and Pacific countries/regions. APAC is jointly supported by the Chinese Ocean Engineering Society (COES), the Coastal Engineering Committee of the Japan Society of Civil Engineers (JSCE), and the Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers (KSCOE). APAC is jointly supported by the Chinese Ocean Engineering Society (COES), the Coastal Engineering Committee of the Japan Society of Civil Engineers (JSCE), and the Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers (KSCOE).

This field guide showcases the beauty and diversity of mangrove species throughout the Kien Giang Province. Its development has been a joint initiative between the Kien Giang Biosphere Reserve and Dr Norm Duke from the University of Queensland, Australia, who is an internationally recognised expert of mangrove taxonomy and ecology. The mangrove forests of Kien Giang form an important vegetative barrier that protect our communities, their households and valuable farming land from the impacts of a changing climate. It is anticipated that this field guide will be used for identification that will promote greater protection, increased propagation, as well as better appreciation of these species and the forests in which they occur. This publication will be an important resource for community, land managers, provincial staff and visitors alike.

This document aims to provide an understanding of the scientific methodology that can be employed to demonstrate, monitor and assess mangrove-relevant environmental services by using case studies of mangroves in Hai Phong City and the Can Gio district of Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. In addition to previous work, this methodology evaluates the water purification services of mangroves in the context of existing policies on payment for forest environmental services in Vietnam, and discusses lessons learned, and funding requirements for effective assessment, evaluation and monitoring of the service. The findings contribute to identifying users and buyers of mangrove environmental services and developing implementation and monitoring mechanisms for payment for forest environmental services (PFES) through the application of environmental indices. The document is made in the hope that future studies can apply its methodology in other regions of the country to develop a database for evaluating the roles of mangroves throughout Vietnam.

Key messagesWhen it comes to mangroves in Vietnam, the payment mechanism for forest environmental services (PFES) can be applied to 8 types of environmental services: (1) carbon absorption and storage; (2) sedimentation and sludge reduction; (3) coastal erosion protection; (4) wave shielding; (5) supplying clean water, filtering heavy metals and pollutants; (6) spawning grounds provision; (7) landscape – tourism; and (8) food and ingredient provision.There are 20 potential buyer groups that could pay for mangrove environment services in Hai Phong. These include: companies focused on dredging, sand mining, clean water, energy, banking, petroleum, entertainment, tourism, shipbuilding, air transport, and producers of agricultural, forestry and aquatic products; fishing and sea ports; those involved in the coastal economic zone; industries focused on mining and metallurgy, transportation and thermal power; dike management groups; and residential communities. While some buyer groups have expressed strong commitment to make payments (e.g. banks, energy companies, those producing agricultural, forestry and aquatic products), more research is needed to understand how willing other parties are to participate in paying for environmental services.In Hai Phong, two of these environmental services – (1) carbon absorption and storage and (5) clean water provision and heavy metal filtration – have the largest number of potential buyers.To develop a mechanism for payment for environmental services, four key questions must be answered: (1) Which services are being paid for? (2) Who is paying? (3) How much is the payment? and (4) What is the revenue and expenditure mechanism? Answering these will need long-term, thorough research, particularly demonstrating stakeholders use of environmental services. Based on the pre-feasibility study in 2018–2019, this policy summary answers the first two questions. The last two will be answered in another policy brief, once the study is complete in 2020.

This book summarizes the key findings of a five-year interdisciplinary research project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research and Education (BMBF). It serves as a typical case study for a rapidly growing and developing urban center – Da Nang City, which is surrounded by remote areas characterized by increasing migration and limited development. A number of German and Vietnamese universities and international institutions participated in the project, contributing their particular expertise to assess the data-scarce region under study, two provinces in central Vietnam with a combined area of ca. 12,000 km2.