Workshop on "Strategic building to minimize the impacts of VPA on vulnerable stakeholder groups"

With the financial support of the FAO EU FLEGT program in the framework project “Strengthening the capacity of CSOs and forest-dependent communities to effectively participate into the VPA process”, the Centre for Sustainable Rural Development (SRD) in collaboration with the People's Committees (PC) of Phu Luong District, Thai Nguyen Province and Yen Binh District, Yen Bai Province organized two workshops: “Building strategies to mitigate the impacts of VPA to vulnerable stakeholder groups”. The former workshop was held over 2.5 days from 7^th to 9^th August and the latter was held over 2 days, from 16^th to 17^th August.

These workshops were part of a series of research activities which assess the impacts of VPA on the livelihoods of forest-dependent people, to develop strategies mitigating the impacts on these vulnerable stakeholder groups in these two provinces.

Many district/communal-level representatives attended the workshops, including: the District PC; Forest Protection Department; Agriculture Division; Environment and Natural Resources Division; Chamber of Industry and Trade/Infrastructure; Tax Sub-Department; Farmers’ Union; Women’s Union and Communal PC.

There was also the involvement of local people representing workshops specialized in peeling, chopping and sawing Acacia timber; households working on planting forests on areas which used to be productive forests but are currently planned to be developed into protection forests/areas without certificates of land-use right due to the on-going cadastral records or disputed boundaries and households working on exploiting/transporting timber and collecting processed timber products.

At the workshops, the participants raised their opinions about the assessment report on vulnerable stakeholder groups and the institutions related to the VPA, as well as the transmission channel. With the assistance of experts from SRD, the groups identified the key issues by building “problems trees”, results chains and the theory of change. The purpose of these methods is to figure out the root causes of problems and build a solution to mitigate the potential risks during the process of negotiating and implementing of the VPA in Vietnam.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Kim Thu, vice chairman of the Farmers’ Union in Phu Luong District, Thai Nguyen said: "This is my first time to approach such a new method. I think it is practical and easy to carry out". Ms. Phan Thi Thu Huong, representing employees of local workshops in Yen Binh commune, Yen Bai added: "the teacher’s guidance can be well perceived" and she felt that “not only myself but other representatives such as forest planters and timber product sellers can analyze the problems on our own” and “we gradually realized what we should do”.

Local authorities and people in the two provinces were involved and raised their voices actively and honestly, thanks to the new information dissemination approach, along with the SRD experts’ participatory approach – a learner-centered teaching method.

The results of these two workshops should be important inputs for the VPA’s impact assessment report on vulnerable stakeholder groups. They should also be the proof to mobilize the VPA negotiators in Vietnam and Europe to pay more attention to vulnerable groups in the process of signing the VPA.

- SRD -

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