Inter-institutional development cooperation for "Improving Research
Capacity of Forest Resource Information Technology in Vietnam and Nepal"
Background
Global concern regarding deforestation and its impact on climate change and biodiversity loss has increased awareness of the need to improve environmental protection measures and management of forest resources. Without a proper monitoring systems it is, however, almost impossible to control the destructive use of environmental resources. Many international initiatives and processes are bringing new challenges to developing governments. In order to meet the requirements of these processes, better knowledge on natural resources in Asian countries is needed.
Many international initiatives and processes in relation to forest degradation and climate change are bringing new challenges to developing governments. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) responded to the decision on land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) and started to develop global actions. European Union and Asian countries are also engaged to the prevention of climate change under the international processes related to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). One important outcome of the UNFCCC processes is the UN-REDD programme "Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries". The UN-REDD programme allows donors in developed countries to chip in with resources and to provide funds aimed at increasing the environmental, economical and social potential of forests to the communities in the developing countries. Simultaneously, it contributes to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. A target of the ongoing REDD process of UN is to obtain a finance mechanism with specified revenue streams: tropical countries would be compensated for reducing emissions caused by deforestation and land use. The technique of performance-based incentive payments will be tested in selected pilot countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia, including Nepal and Vietnam.
In order to meet the requirements of these international processes, better knowledge on natural resources in Asian countries is needed. It is expected that modern data collection, management and processing techniques could potentially provide cost-efficient tools for producing up-to-date forest resource information for large areas required for Forest Resource Assessments (FRA) and reporting, for instance, the greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory results. This is important, especially, when the countries like Nepal and Vietnam are necessitated to join to tackle the global issues, such as climate change. These actions require inventory approaches and reporting procedures designed for the monitoring of full regional or national coverage. Remote sensing-based monitoring and inventory techniques that in some industrial countries are efficiently and operationally utilised for the environmental monitoring could also be used in providing comprehensive information over diverse forest areas of Nepal and Vietnam.
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In this project, the expertise possessed by the Finnish governmental organisation, i.e. the Finnish Forest Research Institute (Metla), is made available to its counterparts in Nepal and Vietnam. Interaction between agencies is a pivotal part of the collaboration and needs to be considered in the whole process during the project. It is expected that, in the long-run, this cooperation becomes more beneficial for the partner agencies in Nepal, Vietnam and Finland than just the project proposed.
The project is funded through the Institutional Cooperation Instrument (ICI), a financing tool of Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland (MFA) designed for the inter-institutional cooperation between the Finnish government offices and institutions and their counterparts in the developing countries. The aim of ICI-based development cooperation is to combine the know-how within the Finnish public sector and the needs in a developing country's public sector. A decision to support and finance the implementation of the ICI project was made by MFA in November 2009. The project implementation started at the beginning of 2010. The duration of the project is 30 months, and its budget is 499,731 Euros.
