Experiences from Bai Bang with global reflections

Experiences from Bai Bang with global reflections

Restoration of degraded forests is very much up on the agenda. The World Resources Institute (WRI) talks about the need to restore two billion ha with degraded land. Restoration work has gone on for long but has met many difficulties along the way. This concerns both intensive industrial plantations and small-scale farm forestry. If programs for restoration shall succeed at a large scale we must try to learn from both successes and failures. This seminar highlights Swedish experiences from the development project in Bai Bang, Vietnam and opens up for a discussion about how these lessons could be used in other parts of the world.

One can easily get the impression that plantations in the South are a great success. In reality many plantations have failed. Many projects run into social problems with increasing attention in the domestic and international media. StoraEnso, Vattenfall, the Diocese of Västerås, SEKAB, ADDAX and others have been engaged in biomass production in the South and evidently with good intentions. These enterprises have, however, experienced problems and heavy criticism. It may be that some of the criticism is unjust, but it seems difficult for Nordic actors to engage in biomass production in the South without running into real problems. Is it too difficult? Many argue that the best solution is to engage farmers in the production, but this is also a true challenge.

The bare hills around Bai Bang that looked like a desert in the 1980s are now covered with forests. The first plantations were established by state enterprises and co-operatives, but after the economic reforms in 1986 (Doi Moi) farmers started to plant trees as a commercial crop. Today, it is reported that more or less all wood for Bai Bang is directly or indirectly produced by farmers. It is interesting to note that the farmers seem to have adjusted the original “intensive” method to suit their own conditions. The open landscape around Bai Bang has been changed into forest, but in spite of this there is no talk of conflict. The seminar focus on the main reasons behind this success, e.g. the establishment of a reliable market or that land was allocated to farmers?

Program

Moderator  Dr. Fredrik Ingemarson, Secretariat for International Forestry Issues (SIFI), KSLA