Building forest inventory capacity in Vietnam and Nepal

Metla’s specialists building forest inventory capacity in Vietnam and Nepal

In 2008 a financing instrument was launched by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs (MFA) of Finland to promote small-scale projects allowing Finnish institutions to provide their expertise to respective partner agencies in developing countries. The objective of these small-scale projects, the so called ICI (Institutional Cooperation Instrument) projects, is capacity building by strengthening the skills and know-how of government organizations (such as ministries and research institutes) in developing countries.

From the beginning of the year 2010 the Finnish Forest Research Institute (Metla) and its National Forest Inventory (NFI) team will start to coordinate a MFA financed ICI project on “Improving Research Capacity of Forest Resource Information Technology in Vietnam and Nepal”. One of Metla’s specialists in forest mensuration and forest management planning, Dr. Kalle Eerikäinen, is acting as the project coordinator. Eerikäinen sees the ICI projects as “excellent tools to offer Finnish expert knowledge in forest research also to forest researchers and forestry institutions abroad.” and continues “to achieve permanent changes, specific development actions for building and improving human capacity are needed … if developing countries can build their own capacity then they are in a better position to tackle those issues that are not anymore national but global, like climate change.”

The main aim of this particular ICI collaboration and development project is to strengthen the capacity and expertise of personnel in partner agencies in Vietnam and Nepal in order to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, a severe problem in those countries. This will be achieved by improving the partner agencies’ capabilities in the collection and analysis of large-scale forest inventory data, environmental monitoring, and reporting of forest resources and statistics related to carbon fluxes.

Metla has a long tradition in designing and conducting field inventories that have produced large-area forest resource information over the past 80 years. A widely acknowledged innovation by Metla’s NFI team is an operative multi-source forest inventory method – a technology that combines remote sensing measurements with the information collected in the field to produce forest statistics and wall-to-wall thematic information about forests. This technique has been applied already in many countries. Recently, the NFI team has also performed studies using ALS (Airborne Laser Scanning) data to develop automated methods for forest inventories. It is also worth considering here that in the first commercial ALS-based inventory for forest management planning in Finland in 2008 the data analysis was carried out by Metla.

“We have, together with our Vietnamese and Nepalese partner agencies, to elaborate their already existing set-ups on forest resources assessments and their needs for the development of new biometrical tools for large-scale forest inventories. says Eerikäinen and continues “One thing is for sure. We are not experts in their local conditions and that is why we have to discuss and create a dialog with our partners and take their expertise into consideration when giving our recommendations. We have to adjust our thinking, techniques and methodologies that we are applying in Finland to those conditions in the two partner countries. Metla can provide options and the partners have to comment and choose.” The first National Forest Inventory in Nepal was financed by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland and it was developed by the Finnish forest researchers in the early 1990s. Satellite imagery and field verification has already been used, but a data management system has to be re-established and the needs for improvement of the model-base be specified, for instance.

Metla’s forest inventory specialists will be involved in the ICI-project for 2.5 years. The gathered information and results are not only shared between Finland and the partner country, but also among the partner countries themselves, between Nepal and Vietnam. Eerikäinen explains that “this was not meant in the beginning of the project planning phase but it was realized that there are parallel interests in the two partner countries. If something works in both of the countries then we can say that those techniques and methods are more generally applicable, also to other countries. That is one very interesting feature. We do not have to invent the wheel again. If something already exists and has been proved to work then it should also be used in the future.”

Vietnam and Nepal are both pilot countries in the UN-REDD programme “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation”. This process is promoted by the United Nations with the aim to obtain a finance mechanism with specified revenue streams: tropical countries would be compensated for reducing emissions caused by deforestation and changes of land use. Both partner countries are already moving towards a forest carbon trading mechanism which requires development of a carbon inventory, verification techniques for estimators and new predictors for forest variables. Eerikäinen explains that “forest inventory is a perfect tool to estimate the present amount of growing stock in those countries, whereas change estimates over time are only obtainable from repeated inventories. The inventory data can help to search for so-called ‘hot spots areas’ where one should work more actively in order to preserve the existing forest resources also for the future.”

Within the ICI-project, Metla will organize inventory-related training periods and promote educational collaboration with forestry faculties in Nepal and Vietnam. Furthermore, workshops and seminars on project-related topics will be arranged. The dissemination of results via the Internet is a very important component of the Metla’s ICI-project in order to support the collaboration between participating organizations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

ICI based finance and collaboration could be applied also to any other fields of institutional activities. Forest inventory-based knowledge on forest recourses is just one example of providing expert knowledge to developing countries. “In the future we could together with our partners in developing countries also improve their skills on silvicultural practices or knowledge regarding economical issues and analyses.” says Eerikäinen and continues “To go to other Asian countries with the same concept would be very interesting. On the other hand, we could certainly combine our expertise with other forest research organizations within the European Union. Metla has been very active in the past in different southern African and American countries. In fact, we are developing at the moment relations with Kenyan forestry institutions to plan a corresponding capacity building project concept as we have done in Asia. The future will show whether the ongoing co-operation in Kenya leads us into another ICI process.”

The Metla Bulletin will follow the different phases of the ICI-projects, and will inform readers about the progress.