{"id":3130,"date":"2018-07-22T23:58:05","date_gmt":"2018-07-22T16:58:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nature.org.vn\/en\/?p=3130"},"modified":"2018-12-06T16:03:09","modified_gmt":"2018-12-06T09:03:09","slug":"support-designation-of-sacred-forests-as-protected-areas-in-vietnam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nature.org.vn\/en\/support-designation-of-sacred-forests-as-protected-areas-in-vietnam\/","title":{"rendered":"Support designation of sacred forests as protected areas in Vietnam"},"content":{"rendered":"

PanNature<\/a>\u00a0is working to gain legal recognition of thousands of sacred forests in Vietnam as part of the national protected area system through revisions to the\u00a0Forest Protection (2017) and Development Law (FPDL)<\/a>\u00a0and Biodiversity Law (2018).\u00a0\u00a0Hoang Xuan Thuy, vice director of the\u00a0NGO PanNature, which is headquartered in Hanoi, a member of the\u00a0Vietnam Union of Sciences and Technology Associations\u00a0and part of the\u00a0ICCA<\/a> Consortium\/\u00a0Global Forest Coalition<\/a>, of group PanNature<\/a> seeks help in ensuring that all sacred forests in Vietnam, and not only large ones, will be recognized in new laws enabling sacred forests to be designated as part of the national protected area system. This article is seeking your input and advice.<\/p>\n

This is an urgent issue.\u00a0On 15 November 2017 the Vietnam national assembly adopted a forestry law which includes a provision on sacred forests<\/a>.\u00a0 However, the issue of the size of sacred forests relative to biodiversity conservation value is being raised by some in government who are dubious about recognizing small sacred forests. It would help advocates of recognizing all sacred forests, regardless of size, to be able to cite scientific research testifying to the biodiversity conservation value of small sites.<\/p>\n

PanNature<\/a>\u00a0has been conducting an assessment.\u00a0 Their initial findings show that there are many sacred forests in Vietnam which still exist and are well-managed by local communities.\u00a0 In particular, most of the villages and hamlets in the mountainous northern province still maintain sacred forests. But these are often very small, with an area of 2-3 hectares or less, and many of them are located in the middle of rice fields without connectivity with other forests. When\u00a0PanNature reported the results of this assessment to policy\u00a0makers, they asked whether the small isolated sacred forest have a role in the biodiversity conservation.\u00a0 Colleagues in\u00a0PanNature\u00a0are thus looking for academic studies and other materials that provide support for recognizing the biodiversity conservation value of small sacred forests.<\/p>\n

There is a review of the scientific literature published in 2010 as Chapter 2\u00a0\u201cConservation of Biodiversity in Sacred Natural Sites in Asia and Africa: A Review of the Scientific Literature<\/a>\u201d in\u00a0Sacred Natural Sites: Conserving Nature and Culture.\u00a0 Is there more recent work you are aware of that Pan Nature could cite to bolster their advocacy for the protection of all sacred forests, regardless of size? It also seems that if other countries have taken action to recognize the conservation value of small sacred forests that this could be used to support efforts in Vietnam. Do you know of examples?\u00a0 What about recognition of sacred forests in Benin as protected areas, which was facilitated by a GEF medium-sized project: \u201cIncorporation of Sacred Forests into the Protected Areas System of Benin<\/a>\u201d, which may include small sites: these sacred sites are primarily small (70% of the country\u2019s 2940 sacred forests are smaller than 1 ha). For example,\u00a0Benin\u2019s protection of sacred forests<\/a>\u00a0does not appear to place any minimum size limit on the recognition of sacred forests as a protected area. I wonder if in practice there is now a record of small forests being recognized as protected areas? Here is an\u00a0Benin-Sacred-Forest-law-final-English-version-2014.<\/a><\/p>\n

As additional background,\u00a0PanNature<\/a>\u00a0has worked with other stakeholders, particularly with local communities and policy makers at national and subnational levels to promote the recognition of collective right of a community over forests.\u00a0 As a result religious forests (spiritual\/ sacred forests) were listed as a sub category of special use forest (landscape protection area) and community watershed protection fores and have been recognised as a category of protection forest under the new Forest Law of Vietnam (forests in Vietnam are divided into three categories: special use forest, protection forest and production forest). The new law will come into enforcement from\u00a01\/1\/2019.<\/p>\n

Source: CSVPA<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PanNature\u00a0is working to gain legal recognition of thousands of sacred forests in Vietnam as part of the national protected area system through revisions to the\u00a0Forest Protection (2017) and Development Law (FPDL)\u00a0and Biodiversity Law (2018).\u00a0\u00a0Hoang Xuan Thuy, vice director of the\u00a0NGO PanNature, which is headquartered in Hanoi, a member of the\u00a0Vietnam Union of Sciences and Technology Associations\u00a0and part of the\u00a0ICCA Consortium\/\u00a0Global Forest Coalition, of group PanNature seeks help in ensuring that all sacred forests in Vietnam, and not only large ones, will be recognized in new laws enabling sacred forests to be designated as part of the national protected area system. This article is seeking your input and advice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":690,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,6],"tags":[53,66,83,71],"post_series":[],"class_list":["post-3130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-on-media","category-news","tag-co-management","tag-development-policies","tag-environmental-law","tag-forest-governance","entry","has-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nature.org.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nature.org.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nature.org.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nature.org.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nature.org.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3130"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nature.org.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3133,"href":"https:\/\/www.nature.org.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3130\/revisions\/3133"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nature.org.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nature.org.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nature.org.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nature.org.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3130"},{"taxonomy":"post_series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nature.org.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_series?post=3130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}