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21 | 05 | 2008
This is a topic of Café science workshop organized by British Council in collaboration with Tia sang Magazine on 24/4/2008 within the framework of Asia Pacific Forest Week. In 2 hours, interested people both at home and abroad had opportunity to talk with those who “have deep understanding” on forest such as writer Nguyen Ngoc, professor Vo Quy, Dr. Dang Kim Son and professor Nguyen Ngoc Lung
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If in 1945, forest area in Vietnam was 14 million ha, equivalent to 50% of the country’s territory with a forest coverage of 43%, then in 1995, the forest area was reduced to about 9 million ha with a coverage of 28%. This indicates that each year, the forest area dropped by 100,000 ha and occupies just as much as ¼ of the country’s territory. Up to present, Tay Nguyen (the Central Highland) does not have vast forests as seen in years before 1975. In reality, “good forests”, tropical and primary forests are gradually disappearing. This is a big loss because primary forests always keep a vital role and become much more important than any other types of forests. Primary forest has strong capacity in producing organic matter and O2 and absorbing CO2 which is 30 times higher than the capacity of planted forests! The constant forest degrading in recent years has resulted to the fact that there have been more and more natural disasters such as floods, storms, droughts with severe water shortages…
Vietnam has so far been implementing many policies and programs to protect, rehabilitate and develop forests. In 1954, one year after the Northern Vietnam was liberated, the government launched a program of planting forests to prevent sandy storms in the provinces of the central part of the country. In 1980, 5 years after the country was united, a forest planting program was carried out to green the area of Hai Van pass. More than 10 years ago, since 1992, the program 327 of the government was started and up to 1997, about 2.5 million ha of hill and bare lands had been greened up. The assessment on the program 327 was diverse presenting with strong and weak points. In the second meeting of the national assembly term X, the Resolution 08/1997/QH10 on planting 5 million ha of forests was enacted.
Dr. Dang Kim Son shared the different views made on the economic value of forest. Since 2007, Vietnam has been integrating into the world and the capita income is improving. However, about 90% of the poor in Vietnam are living in forest and mountain regions, meeting a lot of difficulties in life as well as in accessing market and advance science and technology… So in the angle of economy, the question is how to encourage and engage people to protecting and developing forests. And it is the time where policy on forest planting and developing be changed and readjusted.
In a warm meeting room of My Dinh’s National Conference Center, the Café science workshop took place in an exciting atmosphere between the policy makers, scientists and audiences who shared common views in protecting and developing forests as well as solutions to cope with climate change and its adverse impacts on lives of many individuals and households across the country.