Project Detail

Developing the model promoting sustainable use of indigenous bamboo forest in Nguyet An Commune, Ngoc Lac District, Thanh Hoa Province

Thanh Hoa is the province which has the largest area of indigenous bamboo in Vietnam. The province has provided bamboo seedlings and bamboo shoots to meet the demand of other localities throughout the country. With the existing area of bamboo forests and community experience in bamboo forest plantation, Thanh Hoa has great potential in developing into a specialised bamboo area of high economic value.

However, these bamboo forests have become degraded in terms of area and quality. Low community awareness on the importance of sustainable use of the bamboo forest and overexploitation of bamboo forest resources for daily subsistence of the rural poor communities living in adjacent to the forests, result in these bamboo forests degradation. Land degradation and the exhaustion of forest resources, which have provided the main income source of the community, have significantly increased the poverty in the area which is acute due to the high population growth. Pest diseases are also a major problem because all of the existing bamboo forests are homogeneous. As a result, farmers have replaced areas devoted to bamboo with other crops for the short-term benefit in recent years.

The project meets the goal of GEF/SGP by promoting the sustainable use of the indigenous bamboo forest resources, contributing to poverty alleviation of the ethnic minorities in the project area. It will be carried out in Nguyet An Commune, Ngoc Lac District, which is one of the localities having the largest areas devoted to bamboo forest in Thanh Hoa Province. The project will develop a model which promotes inter-cropping of bamboo trees and other indigenous wood species. Appropriate silvicultural techniques in bamboo forest plantation and harvesting will be transferred to farmers. The model aims to protect the existing bamboo forests, increase the acreage of bamboo forests and generate higher income for the community. Through undertaking the project activities, the project aims to raise environmental awareness of local stakeholders and community on the issues of biodiversity conservation and sustainable use of bamboo forest resources.

The project supports the forestry programmes of the province of Thanh Hoa through developing the model which has the potential to be largely replicated in all the province where the same problem of bamboo forest degradation has occurred, contributing to poverty alleviation for the ethnic communities in the province.

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Project Snapshot

Grantee:

Consultant Centre for Investment and Development of Science Technology and Environment of Thanh Hoa Province

Country:

Viet nam

Area Of Work:

Biodiversity

Operational Phase:

Phase 2

Grant Amount:

US$ 28,608.00

Co-Financing Cash:

Co-Financing in-Kind:

US$ 15,876.00

Project Number:

VIE/00/003

Start Date:

6/2001

End Date:

10/2004

Status:

Satisfactorily Completed

Photo Gallery

Muong people presenting their indigenous bamboo forest to experts from the SGP 3rd independent evaluation 2003

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Project Characteristics and Results

Emphasis on Sustainable Livelihoods

- Dendrocalamus membranceus Munro sp. (luång) of Thanh Ho¸ is an indigenous bamboo with an age-old existence and a close link with the life of ethnic groups in the mountainous areas of Thanh Ho¸ province. This is a plant of diverse uses with the trunk made into building materials, pulp, chopsticks, and plywood, while the shoot has been always a favorite dish. - Thanh Ho¸ presently has 61,090 ha of bamboo forest, making up over 50% of the total forest area of Thanh Hoa. The area of bamboo forest is expected to increase up to 80,000 ha in 2015. - With a very great economic value and a direct influence on the livelihood of most of the communities in the mountainous area, bamboo is the key crop and very significant in poverty reduction. This is the reason why the community and government authorities of all levels paid much attention to conserving and developing bamboo, helping increase the cultivation area through time.

Inovative Financial Mechanisms

- The Project Management Board formulates a revolving loan programme suitable to the project models (criteria on electing borrowing households, rights and duties of the Management Board and the borrowing households, loan duration, loan capital, interest rates ...) and asks GEF SGP financial managers and the participating communities to elect borrowing households on the basis of criteria formulated by the Project Management Board; - The Project applies the revolving loan programme to households developing the bamboo trees on their own land. Upon the completion of the project, the loans will be reclaimed and turned over for the building and enlargement of the models; - The project loans will be granted in kind to the borrowing households to set up the model during 3 years, including: (i) Seedlings; (ii) Fertilizer; (iii) Pesticides and insecticides - The loans will be managed by the community with simplified and effective loan formalities at interest rates similar to those regulated by the Bank for the Poor.

Policy Impact

- The government reforestation programme (known as the 5 million ha of forest programme) aims to reforest for the purposes of environemntal protection and economic development. The project models fit well with this government programme and therefore will be applied, contributing to conservation and sustainable use of bamboo forests and forest protection. - The project models will be sustainable and replicable thanks to the favourable policies of the local government for bamboo production, and the development of the market for bamboo products in the province and in other areas.

Notable Community Participation

- The project gives priority to community participation. During the project design phase, knowledge and traditions of local people were studied and taken into consideration in project design. The local people were in consultations about the project issues and solutions at community meetings and through surveys/interviews. In order to promote the role and responsibilities and to ensure community ownership, during the project implementation and M&E, the project will: - Provide the community with full information on the project. Representatives from the community will be given the opportunities to attend project opening, mid term and final meetings, and project workshops. - Give community opportunities to participate in all project activities. - The project team will develop the revolving loan mechanism to assist the participating community in purchasing the materials for the project model building. The community select among themselves the participating community based on the selection criteria developed by the project team. The community manage the revolving loan programme. - The community is given opportunities in project monitoring and evaluation. - Mobilising the community to invest their labor and resources in model building. - The project take into consideration the community needs and cultivation techniques when developing training materials. - The community ownership, benefit and participation are cornerstone in project implementation and M&E.

Significant Participation of Indigenous Peoples

- The project was implemented in Têng and Mãt villages of Nguyet An commune, whose residents consist of the Kinh and the Mêng peoples. Up to two-thirds of the households participating the project were Mêng families. This definitely reflects equality among the ethnic peoples in participating in and benefiting from the project.

Replication of project activities

- The results of building the project models have been replicated by the agricultural sector of Thanh Ho¸ province in the business and development of bamboo trees: + These models with economic, social and environmental efficiency have attracted the attention of the communities in areas with bamboo. + Technical requirements are not too complicated, capital investments not too high, and harvest time not to be waited for too long. + The market needs for bamboo have been growing more and more, as the trees can be processed into many kinds of commodity. - Exploitation organizations paying attention to bamboo, like IDE, have set up in situ models of manufacturing microbiological fertilizer to help eradicate hunger and reduce hunger among the mountainous communities.

Gender Focus

- Women are given prioroties in the project capacity building activities and revolving loan programme. - Women take part in most activities of the project model building, including making seedlings, planting, caring, harvesting, and selling products.

Promoting Public Awareness of Global Environment

1. One of the key objectives of the project is to enhance awareness and understanding of the project stakeholders on the following issues. - global environmental issues such as biodiversity conservation, climate change, land degradation and desertification - linkage between poverty and enviornemntal degradation - enviornemntal protection and sustainable development - millenium development goals (MDGs) 2. The project has awareness raising activities on global enviornmental issues, focusing on the project issue of conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity of forest ecosystem. - Oragnising training workshops, dialogues, community contests on the issue of conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity of forest ecosystem - Mainstreaming the project issue in the mass organisations activities and programmes - Using public media when possible - Attending in exchange visits, workshops and environmental communication activities organised by GEF SGP where GEF issues are discussed.

Capacity - Building Component

The project capacity building activities include the followings. - Training workshops in sustainable use of bamboo forest resources - Community meetings and workshops for assessment on project model building and experience sharing in sustainable use of bamboo forest resources - Study tours/exchange visits to learn from other localities in sustainable use of bamboo forest resources - Training items include (1) techniques in sustainable use of bamboo forest resources, (2) techniques in developing nurseries of bamboo trees, (3) mixed cultivation of bamboo and other trees (4) improving yield of bamboo forests, and (5) sustainable land management techniques. - In addition to the project capacity building activities, the project team members attend exchange visits, training workshops on project design and implementation, M&E as well as themtaic workshops for sharing experience and lessons learned organised by GEF SGP. - In addition to the project capacity building activities, key community members attend exchange visits, themtaic workshops for sharing experience and lessons learned organised by GEF SGP. - Training participants are project participating farmers, and commune key farmers and extension workers of participating commune.

Policy Influence

The project has created among local government authorities of all levels as well as the forestry sector of Thanh Ho¸ province proper attention to current and future bamboo forests. - Priority has been given to planting bamboo in protection and production forestation in mountainous districts, helping increase the area of bamboo continuously from 27,000 ha up to 60,000 ha in 2006 vµ this is expected to reach 80,000 ha in 2015. - Encouragement and favorable conditions have been provided to economic sectors processing products from bamboo. Formerly, bamboo trees were used only as building materials and there was virtually no processing establishment. Presently in Thanh Ho¸ there have been 9 enterprises producing paper pulp from bamboo with an output of 190,000m2/year and 6 businesses producing chopsticks from bamboo with an output of 97,000 tons/year. - The success of building the 3 models in NguyÖt Ên has assisted the local government authorities of all levels to determine the measures of conserving and developing bamboo. - The People?s Committee of NguyÖt Ên commune has decided to maintain and enlarge the sugarcane area into areas of planting bamboo (an additional 300 ha has been planted). - The People?s Committee of Ngäc LÆc district has decided to enlarge the area of planting bamboo alternately with multi-functional forest trees in the whole district. - The People?s Committee of Thanh Ho¸ province has applied the results of the 3 models in planning the area of paper raw materials for a factory with an output of 60,000 tons/ year, by defining investments of VND 2.5 million/ha in revigorating bamboo forests and VND 8 million/ha in planting new bamboo forests (carried out in 2004 with the approval of the Central Government).

Project sustainability

The project will be sustainable thanks to the followings. - Enhanced awareness and understanding and capacity of the local authorities and communities on enviornmental issues in general and conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity in particular - The project models demonstrate the environmental and economic benefit of conservation and sustainable use of bamboo forest resources - The use of bamboo trees in planting protection and production forests in mountainous areas with more and more enterprises processing bamboo. With the ever-increasing area of bamboo, new technical measures have been gradually applied to put up the output and quality of bamboo forests. This has shown the sustainability in the use and development of bamboo forests of Thanh Ho¸. The local authorities of the province and district levels have plans to expand the project models in many areas. The application of the project models ensure the project sustainability and replication, contributing to conservation and sustainable use of the bamboo forests in the province. - The revolving programme was well managed with 100% repayment rate and will contibue to assist the local communities who want to grow bamboo. - The local communities benefit from the project training activities and know how to cultivate bamboo. This together with the economic benefit of the project models will ensure that the communities will expand to grow bamboo in their areas.

Planning non gef grant

The relevant local agencies have developed plans to bamboo using the results of the project models in their 5 million ha forest programme and encouraged the local communities to replicate the project models

Project Results

1. Impact on the awareness of the authorities and communities of all levels
- Before the project, the government authorities as well as the communities were not much concerned about the sustainability of bamboo forests. This has led to overexploitation and serious degradation of bamboo forests.
- The community was not aware of the importance and significance of using and developing bamboo forests. In enhancing the economic efficiency of the forests as well as protecting the environment, this was reflected in the thoughtless choice of seedlings and the lack of attention to intensive cultivation techniques.
+ The local governments lacked in policies to encourage intensive forestation, and the sustainable use and development of bamboo forests.
- The results of building the project models have exerted active impact on the awareness and actions of the government authorities and communities in the sustainable use of bamboo forests in Thanh Ho¸ province.
2. The project has brought the benefit for the participating community.
Result of the model building:
+ recovering and revigorating 25 ha of bamboo forests of 5-10 years (tidying up, turning over the soil around bamboo bushes, applying manure and NPK fertilizer). After 3 years, the forest reserve increased from 1200 trees/ha up to 2600-2700 trees/ha, with a shoot-growing coefficient going up from 1.2 to 1.9, the number of trees in each bush increasing from 5.9 to 12.5, and the rate of bamboo trees of Grades 1 + 2 reaching 10%. Forest land was clearly upgraded, with increasing indexes of humus and NH4. The efficiency of the revigoration model is reflected in the increase of exploitation value from VND 3 million to 6.5 million/ha/year.
+ Cultivating 17 ha of bamboo alternately with such agricultural crops as manioc and paddy. On this area of planting bamboo, combined agro-forestry products have been harvested and bamboo bushes have been growing and developing well. After 2 years, bamboo trees obtained a diameter of 4.5cm, a height of 5.2m, and an amount of 5.5 trees/bush;
+ Cultivating 25 ha of bamboo alternately with agricultural arbor trees (canari, E. fordii, and Acacia mangium Wild ). All these 4 species obtained a very high survival rate of 95% and over, and grew and developed well. In the 3rd shoot crop, the bamboo trees obtained a diameter of 3.4cm and a height of 4.9m. This model has been visited by study groups from the communes in the district to build bamboo forests of their own families.
+ In addition, the project also carried out evaluation surveys on harmful pests in the whole area of bamboo forests in NguyÖt Ên commune.

+ The Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Thanh Ho¸ province has established the economic and technical indexes for revigorating bamboo forests which were approved by the provincial People?s Committee in the Plan of the area of paper raw materials.
+ Planting new bamboo must be mixed together with multi-purpose perennial arbor trees. In existing bamboo forests, supplementary planting of arbor trees was also encouraged, where conditions permitted.
+ Clear-cut results from the project models have changed the community?s habits of pure extensive planting of bamboo without applying manure and fertilizer. With new understanding, they have also turned over the soil around bamboo bushes.
- The success of the project has been shared by other projects in the locality, such as the project of planting 5ha of new bamboo forests and IDE project.
- Communication activities of the project and study tours for sharing experience with other projects within GEF SGP family have helped propagate bamboo of Thanh Ho¸ to other localities nationwide which have been planting and will plant bamboo.
- The success of the project has helped the authorities of all levels and the communities in Ngäc LÆc in particular and in Thanh Ho¸ in general understand more about GEF SGP as well as the objectives of the programs under way in Vietnam.

3- The project has developed a good working relationship between the project grantee, the local authorites and relevant agencies at the procince level, including the Department of agriculture and rural development

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