Payment For Forest Environmental Services Research Articles

Community-Based Payment for Forest Environmental Services: A Study in Vietnam

The implementation of the Payment for Forest Environmental Services (PFES) strategy is increasingly being adopted through community-based initiatives globally. Nonetheless, the comprehension of such community-based PFES remains considerably limited. This investigation delves into the community-based PFES, scrutinizing the impact of local community involvement in PFES financial management mechanisms on the efficacy of this policy at the community level. Conducted in Dien Bien province, Vietnam, this study employed Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) techniques alongside household surveys. The findings indicate that the community-based PFES is operational with efficacy. It engenders motivation and fosters communal engagement in concerted forest conservation endeavors. Moreover, the pillars of self-administration, equitable distribution of benefits, and robust oversight are pivotal in determining the triumph of this policy approach.

Forest Tales? Unravelling Divergent Land Use and Land Cover Change (LULCC) Maps and State Narratives in Vietnam’s Northern Uplands

The Vietnamese state has advocated for the sedentarization and market integration of upland northern farmers over the past thirty years, leading to both agrarian and forest transitions. This article presents a comprehensive land use and land cover change (LULCC) analysis of two adjacent upland borderland districts, Phong Thổ and Bát Xát, in northern Vietnam, spanning two neighboring inland provinces, Lai Châu and Lào Cai. These districts are primarily home to ethnic minority farmers who are encouraged by Vietnamese state officials to not only protect forests but to also transition toward cash crop cultivation from less intensive semi-subsistence agriculture. Our LULCC maps, covering the period from 1990 to 2020, revealed a reduction in the speed by which closed-canopy forests were disappearing. During interviews, state officials were confident that this was due to a range of state policies and state-sponsored initiatives, including the promotion of tree crops and payments for forest environmental services. Our own fieldwork in the region suggests other factors are also supporting this decline in deforestation rates, rooted in ethnic minority farmer livelihood decision making. Some state officials were also able to point to factors hindering a more positive result regarding forest cover, including population pressure and new infrastructure. Interestingly, despite our positive findings on Land use and land cover change (LULCC) related to forest cover, one-third of state officials, upon reviewing our LULCC maps, firmly maintained that errors had occurred. Some even proposed that there was an actual rise in forest cover. Our study shows that these discrepancies raise compelling questions about officials’ political motivations and ongoing pressures to uphold the central state’s reforestation and agrarian transition discourses.

Vietnam's Payments for Forest Ecosystem Services scheme's puzzling role in protecting longstanding forests as deforestation rates rise

Research on payments for ecosystem services (PES) schemes indicates that few of them in fact implement full marketization, highlighting the need for better understanding of the performance of incompletely marketized PES models. One prominent example of a PES program with limited marketization is Vietnam's Payments for Forest Environmental Services (PFES) scheme, a payment for environmental services program that has been progressively rolled out in 45 provinces since 2008. The program is notable both for its spatial extent and governance structure, collecting funds primarily from taxes on water consumption in hydroelectric dams and water companies, which are then redistributed via contracts managed at provincial and national levels to protect, restore, and plant new forests. We assess the impact of PFES's impact on longstanding forest loss using matched two-way fixed effects models and matched multi-period difference-in-differences estimation. These methods both suggest that PFES restrains forest loss at a rate comparable to or greater than state-managed protected areas but impacts are weak or nonexistent until PFES has been established for over three years. Taken together, these findings provide further evidence PES-like programs can perform well in forest protection even if they lack full marketization.

Uncovering gender disparities in payment for forest environmental services (PFES): A feminist political ecology view from Vietnam

Uncovering gender disparities in payment for forest environmental services (PFES): A feminist political ecology view from Vietnam

Implementation of payment for forest environmental services and its influence on the livelihood of ethnic minorities in Thua Thien Hue Province, Vietnam

Payment for Forest Environmental Services (PFES) is considered a major breakthrough in socializing the forestry sector by transferring money from forest resource users to the local communities in charge of forest protection activities. This paper aims to elucidate the PFES implementation in Thua Thien Hue Province, and to assess the influence of the PFES on the livelihood of forest protectors, especially ethnic minorities. We interviewed 133 out of 397 households in two villages in Hong Kim commune, divided into two different groups: Forest protection groups (FPG) and Non-forest protection groups (NFPG). Our study indicated that the success in negotiating and expanding the number of service users has increased the forest area covered by the PFES for seven years. Nonetheless, revenue from PFES still fluctuates from year to year due to their great dependence on a limited number of service users. PFES payment (only 2%) did not contribute significantly to the total income of forest protector households. Interestingly, both monetary and non-monetary values seem to encourage local people to join the forest protection group. To better implement PFES, it is necessary to identify and expand service beneficiaries. Remote sensing technology improved PFES in TTH by aiding forest patrols, but there is a lack of maintaining forest quality during degradation, needing commitments to restore degraded forests and raise patrol accountability.

FORESTRY DEVELOPMENT IN NGHE AN PROVINCE: THE CURRENT STATUS AND POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

Nghe An has the biggest area of forest and forestland in the North Central region and play an important role in environmental protection, biodiversity conservation, poverty reduction and social stability. Nghe An forestry sector has achieved many results in forest protection and development, forest cover is increasing, biodiversity is preserved, the economic structure of the industry has changed positively. However, the management and protection of forest resources and the organization of forestry production currently have many limitations and shortcomings, and have not brought into full play the potential and advantages of the sector. The study was conducted to assess the status of forestry development in the period 2016-2020 and to propose policy recommendations to develop the province's forestry sector in the 2021-2030. The main research method is to collect and analyze secondary data sources from related units. In addition, primary data and information were collected from individual interviews and group discussions with officials and local people in the province. The results have assessed the status of forestry development in the period 2016-2020 in terms of forest protection and natural conservation, concentrated new forest plantation, timber and NTFPs harvesting, forest interprises, wood processing, payment for forest environmental services, and a number of recommendations has been made to promote forestry development in Nghe An province.

Impacts of Payment for Forest Ecosystem Services on Local livelihoods in A Luoi District, Thua Thien Hue Province, Viet Nam

This paper analyses the impacts of the national Payment for Forest Environmental Services (PFES) policy in A Luoi district, Thua Thien Hue province, Viet Nam. There are mixed impacts of PFES in A Luoi district. While some surveyed households have experienced increases in income since PFES, for many other incomes have fallen. Our findings show PFES impacts on local communities and individuals are limited because most forest areas are managed by state agencies, leaving only 17.9% of PFES payments being channeled to these groups, while the rest goes to state government agencies and commune people’s committees. This disparity in PFES payments has further widened the income gap between state agencies and local households. PFES payments currently contribute little to household incomes, averaging only 2.64% of total earnings. PFES has little impact and additionality in advancing land tenure security and reducing natural forest product exploitation for generating income as impacts are similar to those found in non-PFES villages. PFES poverty reduction impacts vary from village to village, but in general, percentages of poor households receiving PFES payments range from 1% to 59%.

Impact of payments for forest environmental services on households' livelihood: a case study in the Central Highlands of Vietnam

AbstractPayments for environmental services have been popularly used in environmental management and an increasing number of studies assesses their contribution to local livelihoods. This study employs propensity score matching with a dataset of 404 indigenous households in the Central Highlands of Vietnam to evaluate the effect of payments for forest environmental services (PFES) on their livelihoods. Participating in PFES increased households' employment and income from activities related to natural forests. Income from PFES allowed households to enhance productive investment and promote income from cultivation activities. All of this, in turn, increased their annual income, job satisfaction, living expenditures, and reduced the amount of any loan. Additionally, PFES enhanced opportunities to participate in training courses and traditional community activities. This confirms that PFES is not only a good initiative for forest management but also a livelihood policy for communities.

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

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.

The challenges of collective PES: Insights from three community-based models in Vietnam

Vietnam has adopted a national Payment for Forest Environmental Services (PES) policy, which while primarily paying individual households for forest protection, has been flexible enough to allow for collective PES models to also arise. Such collective models have the potential to reduce transaction costs, avoid motivation crowding, and protect common-pool resources like community forests. This paper analyzes three different types of collective PES models that have been tried in Vietnam: community land titles and PES payments to whole villages; group titles and PES payments to collections of households; and collective patrolling with payment contracts but without land tenure rights. We draw on fieldwork across three provinces to examine how these different forms of collective PES have arisen, and how they have articulated with existing forest governance institutions and local social characteristics. We also assess what the advantages and disadvantages for each model are. Overall, we argue that none of Vietnam's collective PES models have achieved unqualified success in generating positive collective action outcomes, and each has challenges that have undermined group efforts, exacerbated underlying problems, or even created new conflicts. Based on our assessment, achieving a mix of individual (primarily financial) benefits together with collective rights and benefits is important for both social cohesion and forest protection. As a result, improving existing local institutional capacities and reinforcing group cohesion to achieve collective action success remain needed within Vietnam’s collective PES models.

Perceptions of indigenous people as service providers on payments for forest environmental services in the Central Highlands of Vietnam

Payments for environmental services (PES) have been used popularly to manage natural resources, and their contribution to conservation and socio-economic objectives has still received concern from researchers. This study uses data from the household survey and focus group discussions on assessing the perceptions of indigenous people about payments for forest environmental services (PFES) policy in Vietnam. The results show that this policy still has some limitations and faces many challenges although indigenous people's perceptions on the effect of PFES on livelihood, forest conservation, and activities of the PFES implementation are positive. The main issues are legal rights for households to participate in forest protection, mechanisms and regulations for forest patrol and protection at the household and community level, and some issues in the payment norm to ensure equality in implementing the PFES program.

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

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.

EFFECTIVENESS OF PAYMENT FOR FOREST ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES (PFES) TOWARD SUSTAINABLE FOREST MANAGEMENT IN DA BAC DISTRICT, HOA BINH PROVINCE

By conducting interviews, summarizing and analyzing secondary documents, and employing a set of published indicators to evaluate the payment for forest environmental services (PFES), the research has examined the current status of the forest in the study area as well as the contribution of special-use and protection forests to revenue improvement from PFES. The results show that PFES in Da Bac district has high transparency, fairness and effectiveness. However, the results of the SWOT analysis demonstrate that the current situation of PFES and forest protection and development in Da Bac have been facing many difficulties and challenges, such as poor coordination among stakeholders in implementing PFES; forest protection and development with low effectiveness and consolidation; lack of forest rangers according to the provisions of law; pressure caused by natural forest exploitation activities of people living in neighboring communes outside the basin; and regularly updated technology requiring forest rangers and staff from the forest protection and development fund to quickly perceive it in order to successfully complete their tasks. Therefore, solutions have been proposed to improve the effectiveness of PFES towards sustainable forest development.

Perception of Households as Service Providers on Payments for Forest Environmental Services in the Central Highlands of Vietnam

Perception of Households as Service Providers on Payments for Forest Environmental Services in the Central Highlands of Vietnam

Implementation of Payment for Forest Environmental Services and its Influence on the Livelihood of Ethnic Minorities in Thua Thien Hue Province, Vietnam

Implementation of Payment for Forest Environmental Services and its Influence on the Livelihood of Ethnic Minorities in Thua Thien Hue Province, Vietnam

Identifying Stakeholders’ Roles in Implementation of Payment for Forest Environmental Services in Hoa Binh Province, Vietnam

The policy of payment for forest environmental services (PFES) has been implemented in Vietnam since 2011 and in Hoa Binh province since 2013. Governmental agencies have conventionally implemented PFES at central, provincial, and district levels. However, there areshared responsibilitiesof the governmental organizations and otherstakeholders at different levels in reality. Using social network analysis (SNA) indicators shows that the provincial Forest Forest Protection and Development Fundplays the most important role among involving stakeholders. Both density and centrality measurements have shown that the stakeholders in the PFES implementation network in Hoa Binh province have good coherence. Additionally,district-level governmental organizations and Viettel TelecomCompany have showntheir powerlessnessin the policy implementation network

Participation of Local People in the Payment for Forest Environmental Services Program: A Case Study in Central Vietnam

In 2010, Vietnam implemented the payment for forest environmental services (PFES) program that was expected to bring additional income to local people and improve the efficiency of forest protection. However, factors affecting the motivation to participate in PFES have rarely been examined. The objectives of this study were to (1) identify factors that influence local people’s participation in PFES, (2) examine how local people participating in the PFES program were involved in decision-making in the Thua Thien Hue Province, and (3) assess PFES impact on local people. We conducted a field survey of 32 households at the study site. We found no difference in the access to PFES between poor and non-poor households. Participation in PFES was considered a reward for labor work in forests and a means to compensate for the legal rights of participants. Local people could participate at many stages of PFES implementation; however, they were only passive spectators with regards to PFES management. Two-thirds of the participants did not participate in decision-making regarding PFES distribution. We conclude that the efficiency of future PFES programs may be increased by enabling and stimulating the participants to take a more active part in the process of PFES management and distribution.

Can payments for forest environmental services help improve income and attitudes toward forest conservation? Household-level evaluation in the Central Highlands of Vietnam

Payments for environmental services (PES) are considered an effective approach to solving both environmental and socio-economic issues. However, there lies a significant research gap in the context of their impact on income and attitudes toward conservation. Using household survey data and the propensity score matching technique, this study evaluates the impact of the payments for forest environmental services (PFES) program on household income and attitudes toward forest conservation in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. The findings of this study reveal that the PFES program has positive effects on both. In terms of income, PFES effects are statistically significant for income sources, total income, and income per laborer but insignificant for income per productive landholding and production cost. The PFES program has also significantly influenced households' behavioral responses in terms of the following indicators: stopping deforestation activities, committing to the protection of forests, informing the government of illegal activities related to forests, and advising others against deforestation. Moreover, there is evidence supporting that the PFES program significantly affects households' cognitive responses. This improvement is facilitated through enhancing their knowledge of policies related to forest conservation by individuals and organizations that are responsible for forest conservation in general as well as for the local forest situation. Additionally, the PFES program has significantly enhanced households' satisfaction with forest protection activities, their interest in participating in policies or projects to conserve the forests, and their concern about local forest information.

Challenges of the Payment for Forest Environmental Services (PFES) program in forest conservation: a case study in Central Vietnam

ABSTRACT In 2010, the Vietnamese government initiated the Payment for Forest Environmental Services (PFES) program to conserve forests and improve local livelihoods. While some researches have demonstrated the effectiveness of PFES, other studies reported inappropriate implementation and distribution at the initial stage. This study aimed to examine how PFES was implemented, and explore the challenges of forest protection efforts faced by the local people under PFES. Thua Thien Hue province was the first province to adjust the distribution of payments according to the type and quality of the forest using the K-coefficient. We conducted in-depth interviews with relevant staff and officials and organized focus group discussions with local people in seven payment areas in the province. The findings showed that the K-coefficient applied in this study was composed of four elements: forest condition (K1), forest function (K2), forest origin (K3), and the difficulty of forest protection (K4). However, forest condition (K1) was the only factor that could increase the efforts of the local people toward forest conservation. The capacity of the staff played an essential role in PFES distribution for local people. Additionally, establishing the relevant institutions and encouraging participation at the local level can increase forest conservation effectiveness. However, there is a lack of regulations for dealing with violations under the current rules. In conclusion, this study recommends expanding the range to calculate payouts, thereby increasing remuneration and motivation for the local people to be involved in forest conservation.

Impacts of Payment for Forest Environmental Services in Cat Tien National Park

This paper assesses the impacts of Payment for Forest Environmental Services (PFES) in Cat Tien National Park, Vietnam. We analyze the impacts and additionality of PFES on local livelihoods by comparing the socio-economic situations in four pairs of villages before and after its implementation, and between places where PFES is and is not applied. In total, 149 people participated in focus group discussions, while 244 households (123 in areas with PFES and 121 in areas without) took part in household surveys. Our research shows that 92% of the people interviewed are from ethnic minorities participating and benefiting directly from PFES. In villages with PFES, the numbers of participating households ranged from 45% to 88% of all poor households in those villages. Of the poor households participating in PFES in the studied villages, 22% have no source of cash income other than their forest protection contracts, while 81.4% have escaped poverty, based on self-defined poverty criteria, through additional income from forest protection. Since the implementation of PFES, the area of forests allocated for community and household management is estimated to be three to 3.64 times higher than it had been previously. Although the number of communities under PFES contracts has not changed, the number of households participating in forest protection contracts is now much lower than before PFES started. On average, PFES contributes 16% to 74% of total household income in villages with PFES. Incomes in places with PFES are significantly higher than in places without. Although our research demonstrates immediate positive socio-economic impacts on livelihoods, it also highlights weaknesses in the current monitoring and evaluation system and a lack of reliable data for measuring PFES impacts in Cat Tien National Park.