Who Will Buy Potential Buyers For Mangrove Environmental Services In 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 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.

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.

Marine and coastal resources provide millions of people with their livelihoods, such as fishing and tourism, and a range of critical additional ‘ecosystem services’, from biodiversity and culture to carbon storage and flood protection. Yet across the world, these resources are fast-diminishing under the weight of pollution, land clearance, coastal development, overfishing, natural disasters and climate change. This book shows how economic instruments can be used to incentivize the conservation of marine and coastal resources. It is shown that traditional approaches to halt the decline focus on regulating against destructive practices, but to little effect. A more successful strategy could be to establish schemes such as payments for ecosystem services (PES), or incorporate an element of financial incentives into existing regulatory mechanisms. Examples, both terrestrial and marine, from across the world suggest that PES can work to protect both livelihoods and environments. But to succeed, it is shown that these schemes must be underpinned by robust research, clear property rights, sound governance structures, equitable benefit sharing, and sustainable finance. Case studies are included from south and east Asia, Latin America, Africa and Australia. The book explores the prospects and challenges, and draws lessons from PES and PES-like programmes from across the globe.

Big Data has the power to change all aspects of agriculture, environmental protection and healthcare, especially in developing countries, by allowing new levels of analysis and tailoring of impacts. How big datawill impact will benefit smallholder farmers relative to global multinationals. The book considers how big data can changing the way lenders assess creditworthiness of potential borrowers.Data privacy and security issues are important issues. The key ideas, concepts and theories presented are explored, illustrated and contrasted through in-depth case studies of developing world-based big data companies and deployment and utilization big data in agriculture, environmental protection and healthcare.

A global assessment of potential and anticipated impacts of efforts to achieve the SDGs on forests and related socio-economic systems. This title is available as Open Access via Cambridge Core.

Vietnam is acknowledged to be REDD+ pioneer country, having adopted REDD+ in 2009. This paper is an updated version of Vietnam’s REDD+ Country Profile which was first published by CIFOR in 2012. Our findings show that forest cover has increased since 2012, but enhancing, or even maintaining, forest quality remains a challenge. Drivers of deforestation and degradation in Vietnam, including legal and illegal logging, conversion of forest for national development goals and commercial agriculture, weak law enforcement and weak governance, have persisted since 2012 up to 2017. However, with strong political commitment, the government has made significant progress in addressing major drivers, such as the expansion of hydropower plants and rubber plantations.Since 2012, Vietnam has also signed important international treaties and agreements on trade, such as Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPAs) through the European Union’s (EU) Forest Law Enforcement. These new policies have enhanced the role of the forestry sector within the overall national economy and provided a strong legal framework and incentives for forestuser groups and government agencies to take part in forest protection and development. Nevertheless, new market rules and international trade patterns also pose significant challenges for Vietnam, where the domestic forestry sector is characterized by state-owned companies and a large number of domestic firms that struggle to comply with these new rules.The climate change policies, national REDD+ strategy and REDD+ institutional setting has been refined and revised over time. However, uncertain and complex international requirements on REDD+ and limited funding have weakened the government’s interest in and political commitment to REDD+. REDD+ policies in Vietnam have shown significant progress in terms of its monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) systems, forest reference emission levels (FREL), and performance-based and benefit-sharing mechanisms by taking into account lessons learnt from its national Payment for Forest Environmental Services (PFES) Scheme. Evidence also shows increasing efforts of government and international communities to ground forestry policies in a participatory decision-making processes and the progress on developing safeguarding policies in Vietnam between 2012 and 2017 affirms the government’s interest in pursuing an equitable REDD+ implementation. Policy documents have fully recognized the need to give civil society organizations (CSOs) and ethnic groups political space and include them in decision making. Yet, participation remains token. Government provision for tenure security and carbon rights for local households are still being developed, with little progress since 2012.The effectiveness of REDD+ policies in addressing drivers of deforestation and degradation has not be proven, even though the revised NRAP has recently been approved. However, the fact that drivers of deforestation and degradation are outside of the forestry sector and have a strong link to national economic development goals points to an uneasy pathway for REDD+. The business case for REDD+ in Vietnam has not been proven, due to an uncertain carbon market, increasing requirements from donors and developed countries, and high transaction and implementation costs. Current efforts toward 3Es outcomes of REDD+ could be enhanced by stronger political commitment to addressing the drivers of deforestation from all sectors, broader changes in policy framework that create both incentives and disincentives for avoiding deforestation and degradation, cross-sectoral collaboration, and committed funding from both the government and developed countries.