The Steering Committee of VNGO-FLEGT network held its 3rd quarterly meeting in 2015 at the office of Vietnam Administration of Forestry (VNForest) on June 19th. At the meeting, the results of the scoping study conducted in the four provinces of Nghe An, Kon Tum, Binh Dinh, Hoa Binh between May and June 2015 were presented. The study is under the project “Promoting Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) in Southeast Asia through proactive Civil Society Organizations engagement”, funded by the EU through FERN.
Ms Nguyen Tuong Van, Deputy Director of the Department of Science, Technology &International Cooperation of VNForest, Mr Le Cong Luong, Chief Admin Manager of the Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Associations (VUSTA), and Mrs Vu Thi Bich Hop, Executive Director of SRD and Chair of the VNGO-FLEGT Steering Committee co-chaired the meeting. Attendees included representatives of SRD, the Research Institute for Sustainable Forest Management and Forest Certification ( SFMI), the Consultative Research Center for Natural Resource Management ( COREARM), the European Union, European Forest Institute (EFI), and Mandala.
Ms Nguyen Tuong Van, Deputy Director of the Department of Science, Technology &International Cooperation of VNForest
After 4 organizations presented the findings from the scoping study, some important comments were raised. These included the representativeness and suitablity of pilot provinces, criteria for choosing communes and districts to conduct research, potential to cover more household groups in the wood supply chain (besides the current household groups), the stability of sample groups, the changing nature of those regulations which establish legality definition (LD), and the difficulties in research conduction.
The experts participating in the meeting
Moreover, the participants discussed and chose the locations to conduct the main research in the future. Binh Dinh province was chosen to conduct the first main research in July 2015. The remainings will be undertaken in August 2015 in Hoa Binh, Nghe An and Kon Tum. The goal of the research is to assess the capacity of forest-dependent communities to comply with timber legality requirements, which will provide a baseline for VPA/FLEGT independent monitoring by civil society.
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