New forest monitoring and evaluation system developed to improve landscape governance in Viet Nam

WWF-Viet Nam, RECOFTC, and People and Nature Reconciliation (PanNature) have developed a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation system and its mobile application to support the monitoring and evaluation of forest governance in Viet Nam.

The application is a tool that is part of the forest governance monitoring system, designed to enhance accountability, performance, and participation in policy-making, planning, and law enforcement. The use of the system and the application is a contribution to implementing the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) between the European Union and Viet Nam, which came into force in 2019.

“The data collected by the application will be analyzed to develop national policy recommendations to improve forest governance and contribute to forest conservation,” said Nguyen Bich Hang, Project Manager of the Forest Sector Transformation and the Voices for Mekong Forest (V4MF) at WWF-Viet Nam.

“We developed the application to collect data that would monitor forest governance policy and its implementation in practice,” said Nguyen Hai Van, Deputy Director of PanNature. “We took strong forest governance principle-oriented design and a ground-based approach to developing detailed criteria and indicators to inform the monitoring system. This approach ensures flexibility in the system when it is applied to the local setting.”

In early 2021, WWF, RECOFTC, and PanNature tested the FGMS application in Quang Nam Province. By the end of 2021, the application will be available for external stakeholders, such as non-state actors, to use. A manual in Vietnamese is available to guide people to use the application.

The application and manual were developed under the V4MF project, funded by the European Union. The project works to strengthen the participation of non-state actors in forest landscape governance. RECOFTC leads the project in partnership with WWF-Greater Mekong, WWF-Viet Nam, the East-West Management Institute-Open Development Initiative, Preferred by Nature, the NGO Forum on Cambodia, the Lao Biodiversity Association, the Myanmar Environment Rehabilitation-conservation Network, Raks Thai Foundation, and PanNature.

The forest governance monitoring system will support FLEGT, the REDD+ initiative, and payment for forest environmental services. It is designed to combine with other monitoring initiatives developed by non-state actors or to support other non-state forest governance monitoring systems.