Impacts of payment for forest environmental service policy in Vietnam: A case study of Muong Nhe protected area

Abstract

Payment for Forest Environmental Services (PFES) is an innovation policy in forest resource management in Vietnam since it was applied in 2011 nationwide. This paper is a case study assessing the impact of PFES policy in Muong Nhe Protected Area (MNPA), Dien Bien Province. The study surveyed 350 households in MNPA buffer zone communes combined with in-depth interviews with key informants. The results show that the impacts of PFES policy on local communities are very large, contributing to increasing incomes for local ethnic minorities, eradicating poverty, promoting sustainable forest management and protection, raising people's awareness about forest conservation, and contributing to the construction of local public facilities. However, the benefit-sharing mechanism from PFES is not transparent. Local people have little voice in decisions about benefit-sharing and monitoring the allocation of funds from PFES. PFES also encountered some technical problems in its implementation. The study made some suggestions to the PFES system at MNPA, focusing on enhancing the role of the community in benefit sharing and monitoring of PFES implementation, building a participatory PFES assessment and monitoring mechanism, accelerating the allocation of forest land use rights to community, and application of a trading mechanism for other types of environmental services such as landscape beauty and carbon sequenstration.