Fairness and Transparency in Payment for Forest Ecosystem Services Programs in Vietnam: A Community Based Evaluation

Abstract

Payment for forest environmental services (PFES) has been widely implemented in Vietnam for enhancing the reforestation and conservation of natural resources. However, fairness and transparency in the implementation of PFES programs have not been given due attention. In order to gather the community's opinions about the fairness and transparency of PFES's implementation, two case studies of direct and indirect payment programs in Bac Kan Province were selected to investigate. In this study, a five-point scale to rank the levels of "importance" and "implementation" of eight criteria of fairness and five criteria of transparency were used. There were 167 people who participated in the evaluation process through a questionnaire. The results pointed out that the community highly evaluated fairness and transparency in terms of "importance". Nevertheless, the "implementation" of these criteria had lower evaluation points. In comparing the evaluation results between the service providers and buyers, there were no statistically significant differences in terms of the "important" criteria. However, the difference between providers’ and buyers' evaluations regarding "implementation" were significant, with the mean values of the providers' being relatively higher than the buyers'. In addition, the analyses also found that participants in the direct program evaluated fairness and transparency higher than those in the indirect program. Finally, we state that policymakers and other stakeholders should include fairness and transparency criteria in designing the evaluation framework of PFES programs in Vietnam in order to promote more participation of people and improve the sustainability of PFES programs.